Coming Back To Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick. Marcus Trescothick

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       Chapter 3

       A JAMMY BASTARD

      ‘It absolutely confirmed that this was the life I wanted to live, to play and bat against men, not boys. And it showed those around me in the dressing-room that, if nothing else, I wasn’t easily intimidated …’

      I was 16 years old when I became a Somerset player. I was 24 when I became an England player, and the eight-summer journey was long and anything but straightforward.

      I encountered a few spectacularly massive highs and some pretty low lows along the way. Many times I doubted whether I would ever fulfil my potential and a number of county bowlers were kind enough to suggest I might be right.

      In my first full year, 1994, aged 18, I scored more than 2,500 runs in all forms of cricket – first-class, domestic one-day and England Under-19 Test and ODIs. Most important from my point of view was that I made 924 championship runs at 48.63 with a top score of 121 and almost certainly would have become the youngest Somerset batsman to score 1,000 runs in a season had England not insisted I miss three county matches to play for the Under-19s against India. Within three years however, I was not far short of being convinced that I was finished, undone by a technical flaw I could not seem to eradicate no matter how hard I tried. By the time my career kick-started again in July 1997, a measure of how desperate my situation had become was that the innings that did it, a marathon 322 against Warwickshire at Taunton came in the 2nd XI, for whom my previous best that season had been 55. I was batting at number five, in the process of being converted by our coach, Dermot Reeve, into an all-rounder and wondering where all this was going to end. And it took not one winter in Australia, but two, to help me find the tools I needed to rebuild my hopes and forge my future as an international cricketer.

      I had mixed feelings when, as arranged, I walked through the gates at the County Ground in Taunton on 17 August 1992, to embark on a career being paid to play cricket. England’s three-Test Under-17 series against a South African side starring their ‘gun’ player Jacques Kallis had gone well, particularly the second at Oundle school where I made 158 and 79 in a high-scoring draw, so I was not short of confidence in my own ability. I was extremely uncomfortable about leaving home, however, and the first week or so was pretty tough. But gradually, after forcing myself to get involved and do the stuff that I had to do, I was able to push the feelings of homesickness into the background.

      It helped that we were into playing cricket almost straight away and that I had already turned out for the seconds that summer and scored some decent runs. It was also greatly in my favour that in one of my early matches, against a Surrey side containing Adam Hollioake and Mark Butcher, I had withstood a rather tasty spell from the South African paceman Rudi Bryson. This is what it’s all about, I thought, as I prepared to face Bryson for the first time, with a score to make and a total to reach for victory on the last day. This is what all those hours in the nets, all that batting, all that practice had been for. Bring it on.

      Bryson spent the next two hours bowling four or five bumpers an over at my head. I had never seen a ball travel so fast or rather, initially, not seen it.

      For what seemed like ages, I just kept ducking it and ducking it, trying desperately to show no outward signs of the truth that I was, in fact, inwardly screaming: ‘JESUS CHRIST, DON’T LET HIM KILL ME. DEAR JESUS CHRIST, JUST DON’T LET HIM KILL ME’.

      Somehow, I got through it, managed first to survive then make solid enough contact to score 34 not out to finish off the game. It was the most exhilarating experience of my cricketing life. On the one hand I was asking myself: ‘How the hell could anyone bowl so fast?’ And on the other I was thinking: ‘No matter how fast he bowled, I won.’

      The experience did two things for me. It absolutely confirmed that this was the life I wanted to live, to play and bat against men, not boys. And it showed those around me in the dressing-room that, if nothing else, I wasn’t easily intimidated, though some might have ascribed that characteristic to the old adage about no sense, no feeling.

      I made my second significant contribution to team morale in my first match as a ‘contracted’ player, against Sussex at Eastbourne. We stayed at a rather tired-looking seaside hotel and I was rooming with Iain Fletcher, one of a number of slightly older young players trying to make the grade at the club. When we went down to breakfast on the morning of the match I couldn’t work out why he was having quite so such trouble containing his mirth, until he announced to the assembled assortment of old stagers and young shavers that he had just witnessed me making my own bed. Mum would have been proud of me. The other lads thought it pretty hilarious that I had no idea hotels employed people to do that kind of thing for you.

      That winter I was off abroad again, this time with the Under-18 schools in a very short four-nation tournament in South Africa, at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town.

      When I turned up at pre-season training in 1993 I was ready in my own mind to take the next step, hoping that my chance would come soon and confident I would be big enough to take it.

      And the kit. Oh Lord, the kit. If ever someone asked me to go on Desert Island Discs, if I managed to get past the title of the programme, as well as the complete works of Eminem to listen to there would be no question of my luxury item. It would be a spanking new kit catalogue stuffed page after beautiful page full of brand new kit. From a very young age my idea of paradise on earth on a rainy day was to pore over the pages of the latest catalogues revealing all the joys of this year’s new kit; bats, pads, gloves, inners, boots, sweaters, shirts, boxes, arm-guards, thigh-pads; I adored them all, especially anything worn by Graeme Hick, whose batting I found inspirational to watch.

      I was already obsessed by bats, to the extent that if anyone in the dressing-room wanted a couple of millimetres shaved off the bottom, or a new rubber grip put on the handle, I took it upon myself to do the job. And even if they didn’t want me to, I’d do it anyway. Anything to do with bats and bat care, I was the expert, and that has never changed. Call me Doctor Blade. Even at this age I told Iain Fletcher that when I retired from playing I wanted to be a bat-maker and I still might, at that. Fletcher reckons my behaviour was something between dedicated and obsessive compulsive; which, incidentally would explain a lot of other things like my sausage-only diet and later, when it was time to try and get myself fit for England, the fact that you would have to blindfold, cuff and gag me to get me away from the gym.

      For now, when I turned up at Taunton as winter was giving way to spring that year and saw wave after wave of new kit coming in, all this brand new stuff to ponce around in was bliss. The idea that I was going to be given it for free, rather than have to pay, as I had done until this point – quite frankly I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful on God’s green earth.

      Then there was the money. Three thousand pounds of real actual money for the summer, just for playing cricket. At 17, with mum and dad still supporting me, no car yet, lodgings supplied and only maybe a bit of food and drink to have to fork out for, how the hell was I going to spend all that loot? I’d been paid for odd jobs around the house before, and we were always doing little earners like the paper round for three quid a week. And suddenly three thousand pounds was coming my way. The figure was quite fantastic.

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