Driving Ambition - My Autobiography

by Andrew Strauss

  The final nail in our coffin was delivered with ruthless efficiency by Graeme Smith in the third Test at Edgbaston, with one of the best innings I witnessed as an England player. His 154 not out in the fourth innings on a turning wicket was leading from the front in its truest form. It also brought the end of Michael Vaughan’s England career. In a series in which he desperately needed to score runs, he had struggled against Dale Steyn, in particular, and a return of 40 runs in three Tests was enough to tip him over the edge.

  Less than twenty-four hours after the end of the game, he was tearfully announcing his resignation. Even though all of those around him had seen how hard cricket was becoming for him, it was still a major shock and represented a seismic shift in the England cricket team. For me, it was a very emotional moment to see him step down. He was my first captain, the guy who had given me my chance, and also someone who had shown great loyalty towards me when I was going through my own struggles. He was, in my opinion, a fantastic captain, with a particularly natural feel for the game.

  For me, Michael Vaughan had two very strong assets as a captain. Firstly, he was able to achieve the deceptively difficult task of putting players at ease when they were involved in the pressure-cooker environment of international cricket. He never gave the impression that he took it too seriously, which is probably why he was so popular with the players when he followed Nasser Hussain’s more combative leadership. There was a calmness about him, an ability to take all the pressure on his shoulders and spare the rest of the team from its effects. Never was this more in evidence than during the famous Ashes victory in 2005, when the public attention and the fiercely contested nature of the games meant that the captains found themselves in the spotlight as never before. One thing I greatly admired about him was that he was always prepared to make difficult decisions out in the middle. He was not hesitant, he did not need a committee of players to support him and he was ready to gamble in order to achieve victory. His sporting declaration against South Africa at the Wanderers in 2004 was a great example.

  His other great strength was that he read the game particularly well. He rarely let matches drift for extended periods and was always thinking of ways to force errors out of batsmen. He was very instinctive, rarely relying on facts and figures to back up his intuition, and he was as good as any captain I played with or against in this facet of the game.

  I always had the impression that he enjoyed the politics of being England cricket captain. He would drop the odd comment in a press conference or have a quiet word to players, administrators or journalists to ensure that his agenda was being met. Perhaps he was forced to play politics a little too much in the final months of his career, with all the difficulties of managing the transition from the Duncan Fletcher regime to the very different set-up under Peter Moores, but he will quite rightly go down as one of England’s best captains.

  * * *

  Michael Vaughan’s resignation left a gaping hole in terms of leadership. One obvious candidate to replace him was Paul Collingwood, who was already leading the limited-overs team. However, he had endured a harrowing time against New Zealand in the recent ODI series, including getting embroiled in a nasty incident when Ryan Sidebottom prevented one of the New Zealand players running through for a single and Paul refused to withdraw England’s appeal for a run-out. He had attracted heat from all sides as the woolly expression ‘spirit of cricket’ was bandied about.

  I think that having to defend himself and his cricketing morals to such a degree meant that he completely lost his appetite for leading the England cricket team. He saw his opportunity to take a back seat when Vaughan resigned and promptly followed suit with his own resignation as captain. It was a shame because Paul had been one of the great servants of English cricket. Without the huge reservoirs of natural talent possessed by some of his team-mates, he turned himself, through sheer bloody-mindedness and hard work, into a high-quality Test match cricketer. Throughout my time with the team, he was the ultimate team man, selfless to the core, and he believed passionately in the need for the team to come first. Most people probably felt that he wouldn’t be missed significantly when he retired from playing at the end of the Ashes series in 2010, but his boots were incredibly hard to fill, as much for his off-field influence as anything else. I am not sure if he was ever truly comfortable leading the ODI team, but he did a good job in trying circumstances and he was probably the best candidate at the time to take over the captaincy of the Test side.

  * * *

  After losing the ODI series to New Zealand and the Test series to South Africa, and suddenly finding themselves without a captain for either form of the game, the selectors were no doubt feeling under serious pressure. At no time since Nasser Hussain took over the captaincy had English cricket been in such a precarious situation. After judging, wrongly in my opinion, that the experiment of two separate captains, in Vaughan and Collingwood, had not worked, they decided to unify the jobs once again and therefore needed the new captain to be playing all forms of the game for England. If those were the requirements, there was only one possible candidate for the job and that was Kevin Pietersen.

  On the surface, at least, there was some appeal in Kevin being given the job. He was undoubtedly one of the best players in the world and his place in the side would never be in jeopardy. He was also a natural risk-taker and would therefore be prepared to make decisions in the middle that most captains would not. He is a maverick and you can never be sure what he is going to do next. That is potentially unsettling for opposition players.

  There were two obvious drawbacks to his becoming captain, however. First, it was already obvious to everybody that he and Peter Moores did not get on at all. They were barely on speaking terms. The precedent of a captain and coach not gelling had already been set, spectacularly unsuccessfully, by Fletcher and Flintoff, so if it was going to work out, some hasty patching-up of their relationship was required. Secondly, KP would have to convince the players that he genuinely cared for the team and his team-mates, and that he wasn’t doing the job purely for his own advancement. Although we had all appreciated his precocious talents and his ability to turn a match on its head, there were still question marks about his commitment to the team. He was very much the superstar, and superstars often like to separate themselves from the mere mortals around them.

  At this stage my name was not in the mix. I was not in the ODI team and had only recently re-established myself in the Test side. If the selectors had decided to stick with separate captains, then perhaps my name might have been mentioned for the Test captaincy, but that was not the preferred route. I understood the situation and in any case I was still feeling grateful just to be in the team after the struggles of the previous two years. My captaincy ambitions had dimmed somewhat, but I was certainly interested to see how Pietersen would fare. It was going to be an entertaining ride, one way or another.

  The early signs of Kevin Pietersen’s regime were encouraging. He showed plenty of energy and seemed determined to take his chance to shape the way that English cricket teams played the game. A win in the final dead-rubber Test against South Africa was followed by an impressive ODI whitewash against the same opposition. His new tactic of using Flintoff, Harmison, Broad and Anderson as a four-pronged attacking force had clearly unsettled the South Africans and boded well for a far more attacking style of one-day cricket.

  From that moment, however, things became far more difficult for both him and the England cricket team as the result of a couple of events that were difficult to foresee. One was the Mumbai bombings. The other was the Allen Stanford fiasco.

  Most cricket fans remember the arrival of Allen Stanford on Lord’s cricket ground, courtesy of his own private helicopter. They probably also recall him posing next to a perspex case loaded with cash to publicise a new deal forged with the ECB, in which it was agreed that his Stanford XI would play a series of games against England over a five-year period, with each game being played for 20 million dollars. Thi
s kind of money was unheard of. Each player in the team would stand to earn one million dollars for one day’s work. There was one catch, however: it was winner takes all. The loser would end up with nothing.

  It goes without saying that the players were pretty excited by the arrival of this new revenue stream. We were talking about life-changing amounts of money as the game of cricket entered a new era in which the glitzy nature of Twenty20 cricket was breaking down long-established boundaries. Suddenly cricket was sexy and its new-found popularity brought with it the money men, not only in India, in the form of the IPL, but also from other parts of the world.

  The ECB, who were keen not to be held to ransom by the BCCI (the Board of Control for Cricket in India), had actively sought to find ways of exploiting Twenty20’s incredible potential and that is how they had crossed paths with Allen Stanford. What both the ECB and the players found difficult to dispel, however, was the perception that this association was purely mercenary. In effect, the England team were being hired out. They were not playing another international team and there was an air of moral corruption about the whole thing. The media certainly saw it that way and kept posing awkward questions to Giles Clarke and David Collier, the chairman and chief executive of the ECB.

  Similar questions were being asked within the England cricket team. There was a fair amount of debate about how the booty should be split up. If it was just going to the eleven players who were selected for the game, then it would be unfair on those in the squad who were left out. What about the player who was selected for the vast majority of England Twenty20 games but was left out for this particular game because of the conditions on the day? Was it fair to say ‘Tough luck, you may get your chance next year’?

  Also, was it fair on those players who toured around the world constantly on Test and ODI tours, enduring months away from home, to miss out completely on this new-found wealth while Twenty20 specialists walked away with all the spoils? And wouldn’t giving the money simply to the Twenty20 players create a major incentive for players to specialise in Twenty20 cricket at the expense of Test cricket? Was that something the ECB wanted to encourage?

  With all these questions flying around, it was unsurprising that division lines were beginning to form within the wider England squad. When a game of that nature is staged, with money the sole motivator, players follow human nature and look only at the dollar signs. I can’t imagine for one moment that any player had serious thoughts about the pride of wearing the three lions or the potential to entertain millions of people. This was about money, pure and simple, and everything else was window-dressing. The final decision was made to split most of the money between the eleven players, with a lesser amount going to members of the Twenty20 squad who missed out on the game and the support staff. This, of course, was dependent on England winning the game.

  Very few people paused to ask where all the money was coming from. Allen Stanford was a businessman and so it was fair to assume that there must have been good financial reasons for him to invest 100 million dollars into the concept over five years. The players might not have been interested in how he planned to recoup that investment, but the ECB should have been. Perhaps there was a sound economic model, but it always had the whiff of being too good to be true. In light of his subsequent conviction for fraud on a massive scale, a lot of people, including the ECB and some of the West Indian former greats who were by his side throughout the tournament, have cause to shuffle around uncomfortably whenever his name is mentioned.

  After months of meetings and squabbles, the game finally took place in November 2008 in Antigua in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd. I was over there playing for Middlesex in a far less important domestic version of the main event and I was surprised by the electricity in the ground on the day of the game. In under three hours, people’s lives were going to be changed for ever.

  The atmosphere, however, did not serve to inspire the England cricket team. Players who had seemed particularly uncomfortable throughout the week did not turn up to perform and the game was won at a canter by the Stanford Superstars. It is an understatement to say that it was a damp squib.

  Ironically, after months of deliberations about money, the England team walked away with nothing but damaged pride, regrets and an unhealthy dressing-room atmosphere. Kevin Pietersen, the captain, sat in the middle of it all and was under pressure, less than two months into the job, to heal the divisions before a traditionally arduous and energy-sapping tour of India.

  I didn’t envy the task that Pietersen had on his hands. A seven-match ODI series against India, who are near to unbeatable at home, was next on the England cricket team’s agenda, in November and December 2008. They would have to contest that series with a group of players who, if they weren’t in shock after letting a million dollars slip through their fingers, were inwardly bitter at not being given the opportunity to play in the game. It was hardly a recipe for success.

  The tour progressed largely the way many people expected it to. India were too strong for an England side who were struggling once again with subcontinental conditions. A 5–0 scoreline was a fair reflection of the gulf between the two teams. Having played no part in the proceedings, it is difficult for me to know exactly what the dressing-room environment was like during those difficult weeks, but I suspect that the combination of the Allen Stanford affair and the dispiriting losses to India brought many of the fault lines within the side to the surface. The England cricket team was not a happy ship.

  South Africa in England 2008 – The Basil D’Oliveira Trophy

  1st Test. Lord’s, London. 10–14 July 2008

  England 593–8 dec (I.R. Bell 199, K.P. Pietersen 152, S.C.J. Broad 76, A.N. Cook 60, A.J. Strauss 44; M. Morkel 4–121)

  South Africa 247 (A.G. Prince 101; M.S. Panesar 4–74) and 393–3 dec (f/o) (N.D. McKenzie 138, G.C. Smith 107, H.M. Amla 104*)

  Match drawn.

  2nd Test. Headingley, Leeds. 18–21 July 2008

  England 203 (K.P. Pietersen 45, A.J. Strauss 27; M. Morkel 4–52, D.W. Steyn 4–76) and 327 (S.C.J. Broad 67*, A.N. Cook 60, A.J. Strauss 0)

  South Africa 522 (A.B. de Villiers 174, A.G. Prince 149) and 9–0

  South Africa won by 10 wickets.

  3rd Test. Edgbaston, Birmingham. 30 July – 2 August 2008

  England 231 (A.N. Cook 76, I.R. Bell 50, A.J. Strauss 20) and 363 (P.D. Collingwood 135, K.P. Pietersen 94, A.J. Strauss 25; M. Morkel 4–97)

  South Africa 314 (N.D. McKenzie 72, J.H. Kallis 64; A. Flintoff 4–89) and 283–5 (G.C. Smith 154)

  South Africa won by 5 wickets.

  4th Test. The Oval, London. 7–11 August 2008

  South Africa 194 (G.C. Smith 46) and 318 (A.B. de Villiers 97, H.M. Amla 76)

  England 316 (K.P. Pietersen 100, P.D. Collingwood 61, A.J. Strauss 6) and 198–4 (A.N. Cook 67, A.J. Strauss 58)

  England won by 6 wickets.

  South Africa won the series 2–1.

  11

  MY TURN

  Little over a week after the final shots from the Mumbai attacks had rung out, the England cricket team made its way back into the country. The process of getting players to agree to continue with the tour had been a particularly onerous one for Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, who tended to be thrust into the limelight only when things were going wrong, and Reg Dickason, our security consultant.

  In the hours and days immediately after our return, the idea of going back into the country that had just witnessed such terrible acts sounded absurd to most of the players. It seemed perverse to escape from potential danger, only to return to it again so soon. It could also be argued that, although cricketers often think of themselves as being more important than they actually are, the combination of an English cricket team and India, where cricketers are deified, represented a tempting target for any other terrorists who might have entered the country and been lying low.

  My own mind on the subject changed once I heard Reg Dickason’s ass
essment that, from a safety point of view, the tour could proceed. The Indian government, in a desperate attempt to show the world that they were in control of the situation, had promised ‘presidential levels of security’, with specialist soldiers on call to ensure that the team was looked after at all times. India badly needed the tour to go ahead.

  If our security consultant reckoned that it was all right to go, then I really couldn’t think of a compelling reason not to. If players did not believe him, or were prepared to follow their own ideas about potential safety, then it was pointless employing him in the first place. We had to trust him and get back to doing our jobs. In any case, it increasingly felt like the right thing to do. The world had to get back to normal and the show had to go on, otherwise in some small way the terrorists would have won. Other players were less inclined to go back than I was, but after some rather fraught discussions, we were all persuaded that it was the right course of action.

  Given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding our return, any hopes of a normal build-up to the two Test matches had been thrown out of the window. A three-day trip to Abu Dhabi was hastily arranged in order to prepare ourselves as much as possible for the first Test, which had been relocated to Chennai in order to provide more safety for both teams. Nonetheless, we would only fly into India two days before the start of the game.

  Bizarrely, all the distractions and commotion meant that we approached the match in a far more relaxed frame of mind than usual. It was one of those occasions when the fact that it was being played at all was more important than who won. Certainly, I can’t remember any other Test match in which I felt so completely at peace and at ease with myself throughout the game. It was an absolute pleasure to be on the cricket pitch, doing what we do best, after everything that had gone on over the previous fortnight.