Driving Ambition - My Autobiography
Page 13
It was incredible how good it felt to be chasing my dream of playing for England once again.
India in England 2007 – The Pataudi Trophy
1st Test. Lord’s, London. 19–23 July 2007
England 298 (A.J. Strauss 96, M.P. Vaughan 79) and 282 (K.P. Pietersen 134, A.J. Strauss 18; R.P. Singh 5–59)
India 201 (W. Jaffer 58; J.M. Anderson 5–42, R.J. Sidebottom 4–65) and 282–9 (M.S. Dhoni 76*, K.D. Karthik 60)
Match drawn.
2nd Test. Trent Bridge, Nottingham. 27–31 July 2007
England 198 (A.N. Cook 43, A.J. Strauss 4; Z. Khan 4–59) and 355 (M.P. Vaughan 124, P.D. Collingwood 63, A.J. Strauss 55; Z. Khan 5–75)
India 481 (S.R. Tendulkar 91, S.C. Ganguly 79, K.D. Karthik 77; M.S. Panesar 4–101) and 73–3 (C.T. Tremlett 3–12)
India won by 7 wickets.
3rd Test. The Oval, London. 9–13 August 2007
India 664 (A. Kumble 110*, M.S. Dhoni 92, K.D. Karthik 91, S.R. Tendulkar 82) and 180–6 dec (S.C. Ganguly 57)
England 345 (I.R. Bell 63, P.D. Collingwood 62, A.N. Cook 61, A.J. Strauss 6) and 369–6 (K.P. Pietersen 101, I.R. Bell 67, A.J. Strauss 32)
Match drawn.
India won the series 1–0.
9
LETTING GO
I am sitting in a plastic chair alongside the cricket pitch in Napier, New Zealand, in March 2008. This is not a glitzy cricket stadium, but actually a rugby ground that has been hurriedly transformed in order to host a cricket match. I have all my batting equipment on, apart from my helmet and gloves, which sit on the ground beside me.
God, I feel tired. I am weary to the bone. ‘I am not sure how much longer I can take this,’ I say to myself, before quickly banishing the thought from my mind.
In truth, I don’t think I have had one full night’s sleep for the last three weeks. As soon as my head hits the pillow, thoughts about the fate of my career come flooding into my mind. Even when I do manage to drop off, I am frequently woken by the same recurring dream. In it, I am frantically trying to get my pads on in time to get out to the middle to bat, but I can never manage to do up the straps quickly enough. Also, my thigh pad seems to be hidden from view, and in my panic to get to the crease before being timed out by the umpire, I am too flustered to find it. Just when all hope is lost, and I am resigning myself to not getting out there in time, I wake up. The team psychologist tells me that it is a classic anxiety dream.
I hate having to wait to bat. All my career I have opened the batting. Although you have to go through the serious challenge of facing the opposition’s best bowlers armed with the new ball, you at least have the certainty of knowing when you have to go through the ordeal. For this series, I am occupying the jinxed No. 3 position. Michael Vaughan, the captain, has elevated himself back up to opening after a prolonged slump at No. 3, so I am having to contend with waiting around, unsure of when my time is going to come.
I am fully aware that the innings in front of me, whenever the first wicket falls, has every chance of being my last in an England shirt. Having been brought back into the side on a hunch for the New Zealand series, I have so far not repaid the faith of the captain in the slightest. Scores of 43, 2, 8 and 44 in the first two Tests and a duck in the first innings of this one have not been good enough to silence the doubters. The media are wondering what I have done to deserve getting back into the team. My team-mates have been supportive, but they too know the score. If I fail in this innings, there is no easy way back for me.
Of all the situations in which to bat for your career, this one feels a long way down the list. Having been 4–3 in our first innings, we had recovered well to make 253 on the back of a Kevin Pietersen century. A fine bowling performance by Ryan Sidebottom wrested the initiative back in our favour, skittling them out for 168, but we are now batting in the final session of day two on a wicket that has yielded twenty dismissals in less than two days, knowing that this innings is likely to dictate the direction in which the series goes. Also, I am on a pair. No cricketer likes facing the prospect of getting two ducks in the same game, and I am having to contend with that prospect on top of the far more serious task of saving my international career. If only I wasn’t feeling so tired.
I don’t really know what to do with myself. I am too nervous to sit still and relax, but I am too tired to be jumping around and psyching myself up. Besides, I have no idea how long I am going to have to wait. I watch Michael Vaughan taking strike against Chris Martin. We are sitting side-on to the action, so I can’t see how much he is swinging it. All I can see is that he is getting it through to the keeper pretty well.
He bowls a short-of-a-length ball. Vaughan spots it early and unfurls one of his trademark pull shots. It bounces a little more than he expects and catches the edge of his bat on the way through to the keeper, Brendon McCullum. The noise in the ground increases as the New Zealanders launch into the tell-tale confident appeal and wild celebrations that precede the raising of the umpire’s finger. Vaughan looks forlornly at his bat and begins to make his way back to the pavilion.
I place my helmet on my head, strap each glove on my hands, pick up my bat and start making my way out to the middle. I have this one innings to save my career.
My route back into the England team was created far more by England’s failings in the subcontinent before Christmas than by my stellar form for my team in New Zealand, Northern Districts. Ravi Bopara, in particular, had struggled in the difficult and draining conditions in Sri Lanka, finishing the series with the dreaded pair in the final Test. It was enough for the selectors to wield the axe, only three games after he’d come into the side as my replacement. From the outside, it looked pretty harsh on him, given that I had endured a fruitless twelve months leading up to my own axing from the side, but in many ways it came about as a result of the manner of his dismissals, which some regarded as ‘soft’, rather than the lack of runs.
For my part, I was absolutely delighted but also a little unnerved by my speedy return. By the time the side was picked, I had not played any first-class cricket since the end of the miserable summer of 2007, and even though I was about to play some one-dayers and Twenty20 cricket in New Zealand, my reserves of confidence were hardly brimming over. Fortunately, I did feel fresh and in a far better place mentally for the challenges that lay ahead.
By the time I met up with my England team-mates at the conclusion of the ODI series in February 2008, I was genuinely relieved to be back in the fold. My time with Northern Districts had not been a complete success. The cricketing diet of Twenty20s and one-dayers had really not been the ideal preparation for a Test series. Most of my practice sessions had revolved around clearing my front leg and mowing the ball over midwicket in order to take advantage of the fielding restrictions in the Twenty20s, which was just about the direct opposite of how I wanted to play in the Test matches.
I had found the month with the young New Zealand players fascinating but ultimately very trying. It was immediately noticeable that professional cricket in New Zealand stood somewhere between club and first-class cricket in England. In a rugby-mad country, it was not hard to see that this English sport played second fiddle. There wasn’t a lot of money going around, many of the facilities were basic and if players had not made it into the New Zealand side by their late twenties, they were usually looking for a new form of employment. There was no room in the budget for old, experienced heads in provincial sides.
I greatly admired the attitude of both the players and the administrators of Northern Districts. There was far less cynicism than is prevalent in English county cricket, probably owing to the absence of bitter and twisted old pros, and it was clear that players were intent on following their dreams. The lack of money in the game meant that you either made it up a step to international cricket, or you didn’t have very much to pay the mortgage with. Provincial cricket was not an end in itself, as county cricket is for so many players in England, but rather a means to an end.
The players were fit, dedicated and willing to learn, but the standard, also because of the lack of experienced players, was definitely lower than back in England. I suppose that, with a far smaller population than the UK, there are just fewer good players to go around, and the lack of resources did not help either.
All of this meant that I really should have stood out in the team. I was older, more experienced and highly motivated to get runs under my belt before the Test series. My consequent lack of success, therefore, was acutely embarrassing. Up to my final game for the side, my highest score was a paltry 39 in my first game, and I really couldn’t get to grips with the twenty-over game at all. Knowing that I didn’t have the power to clear the ropes in the middle overs put me under a lot of pressure to get off to a flyer. I was never able to simply wait for a ball in the right area like so many of the really good Twenty20 players, confident that it would definitely go for a boundary. I found myself going harder and harder at every ball I faced, and as a result losing timing and rhythm.
I know that many people probably see Twenty20 cricket as a bit of a slogathon, but it is a difficult game for batsmen. With the lack of time in the innings, you have to worry about not getting out but also make sure that you score quickly enough to keep the scoreboard ticking over. It is horrible to see a cricket game slip away due to you using up too many balls. I would have preferred a low score every time to that degrading feeling of coming back to the dressing room having effectively lost the game for the team.
Probably because it was not an easy game for me to play, I was both fascinated by and more than a little jealous of the players who made it look easy. The Northern Districts wicketkeeper, Peter McGlashan, was a particularly clever exponent of the various unorthodox shots that have become so prevalent in the game today, but the player I have most admired in that format actually plays for England, Eoin Morgan. I always found it phenomenal just how much power he was able to extract from his relatively small stature. Also, his calmness at the crease, combined with great confidence in his ability to pull out the big shots when they mattered, set him apart from many other big hitters in world cricket. Partly because of limited availability, he has only shown glimpses of what he is capable of in the IPL, but if I were running a franchise, he would be one of the first names on my team sheet.
Thankfully my time with Northern Districts ended on something of a high, with a century in my last fifty-over game on the back of some outrageous fortune. Early in my innings, an attempted pull shot ballooned up to mid on, offering the simplest of catches to the fielder. There was no way he could drop it. As soon as I saw it going towards him, I started the long, shameful walk to the pavilion and my partner, a talented young player called BJ Watling, gently jogged down the wicket in a sympathetic pretence to run a single. Quite amazingly, the fielder managed to lose his composure completely and drop the ball, before regaining it and running out BJ, who was now stranded in the middle of the wicket. Lady luck deserted my young partner that day and shone instead on me. Who knows what would have happened if I had re-entered the England ranks completely devoid of form, rather than feeling relatively perky after registering my century later in the day.
As soon as I met up with the team in Christchurch, it was immediately apparent just how much I had missed being involved. There is no doubt about it, international cricket is a drug. It is intoxicating, exhilarating and, having been denied my regular fix for so long, I was relishing everything about it. I loved catching up on the gossip with Michael Vaughan and Matthew Hoggard, the other two Test specialists training with me prior to the arrival of the rest of the squad, who were involved with the ODI series. When you are out of the side, you are out of the loop completely. Everything that goes on during a cricket tour passes you by. It’s not that the players are deliberately trying to exclude you, but they are caught up with what they are doing and focused on playing cricket for England. Their attention is on the matches themselves, the politics, the day-to-day rigmarole of touring and the other players alongside them, not the players who used to play with them. Nothing demonstrates to a player more starkly the fickle nature of cricket at the highest level than a spell out of the side. The bandwagon simply rolls on without you.
I have to say that the gossip I was hearing was slightly disconcerting. There was a growing feeling in the camp that the team was not operating on all cylinders. I got the distinct impression that Michael Vaughan, in particular, was struggling with Peter Moores’s new regime. Moores has never been a person to take a back seat, and Vaughan, who had been used to getting a fair amount of leeway when Fletcher was coach, seemed uncomfortable with the increasingly hands-on role of the coach and his support staff.
One of the biggest quandaries for any coach is how much to push and challenge players and how much to encourage and support them. At times the two are mutually exclusive. Peter Moores had earned an excellent reputation at Sussex and with the England Academy by challenging players to get better. He is one of those people who can never sit still, always coming up with new ideas. The sheer energy he gives off is catching and in the county cricket environment his methods had proved very successful. Pushing and cajoling county players to keep going while the mental and physical demands of a never-ending season take their toll is a fantastic way of separating your team from your competitors, especially when the county cricket culture doesn’t really encourage players to push themselves too hard. His repeated success with Sussex showed that his methods worked, and he brought a very similar philosophy into his new role with the national team.
After the initial honeymoon period of his first summer in charge, it had become apparent that those methods were working less well within the England cricketing environment. It may just be that the job of following Fletcher was a particularly difficult one, given that most of the senior players were very much wedded to his ideas and philosophies. However, international cricket differs from county cricket in the sense that players need far less pushing and prodding in order to get themselves up for a game of cricket. Every time they go out there to play, they are playing for their careers. They are bound to be up for it. What is required at the highest level is a coach who is able to calm players down, allowing them to play to their strengths and instilling confidence in their methods. People may think that an England dressing room during the days of a Test match is a hive of energy and activity, but it has always been very relaxed and chilled out when we have been playing our best. Energy conservation, both mental and physical, is very much the order of the day for the players not out there in the middle. Moores’s philosophy that ‘energy cannot be saved, it can only be created’ ran very much contrary to that.
It was clear by the start of the New Zealand tour that some of the senior players were getting mildly irritated by the constant nannying of the support staff. No batting, bowling or fielding practice was complete without the coaches getting involved in some capacity, telling players how they should be doing things differently or better. For players who were fiercely protective about their games, it was unsurprising this made their hackles rise.
By the time I arrived in New Zealand, many of the ODI players were particularly irked at having had to do a fitness session minutes after a tense tied ODI against New Zealand, in order to ‘show them how strong and committed’ the side was. The camp was not happy and Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood, the captains of the Test and one-day sides, had the difficult jobs of bridging the gap between the players and the management.
Although I never had the close relationship with Moores that I had with Duncan Fletcher, I did, and still do, admire him greatly. He chose the difficult option when he started working with the England side. He could easily have come in, not changed things very much, cosied up to the senior players and kept the status quo. Instead, he decided to shake things up and try to take the England team forward. It is clear that his methods did not work as well as he would have wanted them to, but perhaps the team did need to move in a different direction. Perhaps we had al
l become too stuck in our ways. I am sure that if he had his time again, he would do things differently, and he probably learnt a huge amount through his time as England coach. I am certain that he will be a very fine international coach again one day.
* * *
Having been out of the side for the Sri Lanka tour, I found myself playing the therapist’s role of listening to players talk through their grievances with the new regime. Clearly, a few of the lads wanted to get things off their chests and I was the perfect sounding board for that. In truth, though, I was in no real position to be making judgements on Peter Moores and the rest of his staff at that stage. My focus for the tour had to be on getting myself back into the side and into form. If neither of those happened, then I would be reading about the ups and downs of the England team in the newspapers like everyone else, far from the inner sanctum of the dressing room.
I knew as well as anyone that this series was going to be make or break for me. I had been lucky enough to get a second chance. A lean time with the bat now would mean a possibly permanent return to county cricket. If I am honest, I was petrified at the thought of my international career coming to a premature and painful end, and it was this thought that kept me awake at night.
Sleeping has never really been difficult for me. I have always managed to drift off peacefully at the drop of a hat, a habit that frequently exasperates my wife when we settle down for a video or take a trip to the cinema. In the first few years of my career, I might have had the odd night when it would take a bit of tossing and turning before finally settling down. In New Zealand, though, it became a problem. On the nights when I knew I wouldn’t be batting the next day, I would usually get to sleep all right, but when there was a chance that I might have to perform, most of the night would be spent staring at the ceiling. The early hours, when the rest of the world is eerily quiet, pass by with the pace of a funeral procession. A lonely hotel room, thousands of miles from your support network, is the perfect environment for your mind to run amok. Thoughts you would never countenance in the daylight hours take root and start to multiply. By the time morning comes around you have been on a mental ghost train, terrified by all the things that could possibly go wrong.