David Gower (Text Only). David Gower

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ like Colditz really, although the penalties for a break-out were perhaps not quite so serious, although the penalty for failing to negotiate one of the spiked railings was fairly severe. I remember one lad losing his footing one night, and instead of the planned evening out he ended up with the school matron applying several layers of sticking plaster to his posterior. Mostly we made it though, and the prime job then was to get around town without detection.

      Two of my better friends at King’s were one Andrew Newell, the headmaster’s son, and Stephen White-Thompson, the Dean of Canterbury’s son. Andrew was similar to Alec Stewart in as much as he did not let his background prevent him from being one of the boys. The point, however, is that between the two of them it was not very hard to acquire a key that gave one access to the postern gate, and thus an easy exit to the town and beyond. It was relatively easy to take away a key for long enough to get a copy cut, which of course ruled out the need for crampons, pitons, and the possibility of reporting to matron with a punctured posterior. I nearly got rumbled once when one of the masters found this strange key in my possession and gave the relevant gates a try. Fortunately it had been cut badly, and only worked if you waggled it around in the lock, so I got away with that one.

      I was doing well with the work and sport, but the blots on the copybook were beginning to add up, and discovering girls was next on the agenda. On one particular occasion the school had been granted a day off for some reason or other, though this was due to finish with a roll-call at round about six o’clock in the evening. I had made it as high up as a house monitor, which in terms of high office would hardly give you vertigo – roughly equivalent to lance-corporal I suppose – but I thought at the time that it might be enough not to qualify me for roll-call. Wrong. I’d actually disappeared off to Ashford, which was about a twenty-minute train ride away, to meet a girl I had met at one of the dances that the school occasionally organized, and after a couple of drinks we decided to see a James Bond film at the local cinema. By this time, apparently, we had both been reported AWOL, and as we came out of the movie the search party that had been put out for her came upon us strolling down Ashford High Street. She was dragged off, not quite in chains, and off I went to catch the train back to Canterbury. Unfortunately, the events of the day – in particular the sojourn in the pub – had left me drained, and I woke up at the end of the line in Ramsgate. I did manage to hitch a lift back to Canterbury, where a vast tub of hot water awaited, and it was back to the ranks – an unfamiliar feeling then, if not now.

      In most respects, school had gone reasonably well. I’d enjoyed my sport, and if I had also enjoyed one or two extra curricular activities too well for an unblemished record, I’d studied hard enough to end up with eight O levels, three A levels, and one S grade in history. I sat the history exam for Oxford, and although I wrote quite competently on half the questions, I found myself rambling on at one stage about King Arthur, a man whose career I had never actually studied. I was, much to my surprise, invited up for an interview. So I spent the next few weeks swotting up on Arthur, before driving up in the family Anglia (the car which we had brought back with us on the boat from Africa) for the interview. Unfortunately, Sod’s Law struck, and most of the interview consisted of questions about what Richelieu and his mates were doing at the Court of Louis XIV, all of which I’d just about forgotten. Needless to say, it did not go well. Another piece of misfortune was that I had applied to St Edmund Hall, which had quite a sporting reputation, but apparently at precisely the time they were starting to think about their academic reputation. Bye, bye Oxford.

      I already had a place at University College, London, but between my mother and the headmaster at King’s it was deemed to be a good idea to stay on at school and try for two more A levels. This is where I lost enthusiasm. In the summer of 1974 I had played a few games for Leicestershire 2nds and their under-25 team in the previous school holidays, and had rubbed shoulders with the likes of Micky Norman, Maurice Hallam, and Terry Spencer, scored a few runs, and had an offer to join the county the following season. This also had an extra bearing on a distinct lack of application concerning these two extra A’s. So I went to the headmaster, told him I’d had enough, and he more or less agreed that I was wasting my time. My mother was upset, of course, but off I went to Leicestershire and said, ‘Here I am, I’m yours for the summer.’ Mike Turner said, ‘How much do you want?’ I replied, ‘How about £20 a week?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you £25,’ and we shook hands on it. This to me was bliss, though the wages and my attitude to the game have both changed somewhat since.

      I’d enjoyed my previous summer’s cricket, and Leicestershire represented the next beginning in my life. I’d arrived at Marlborough House at the age of eight which was a bit intimidating, starting again at King’s was much the same, and believe it or not, so was turning up at Lutterworth for Leicestershire 2nds versus Middlesex 2nds. Even though a certain amount of natural eye and ability got me through okay, the one thing I remember most from those first senior games was how much I struggled against the turning ball. Good spinners take a long time to develop, and I had hardly any previous experience against this type of quality bowling. Still, here I was back for a full summer, living at home with no overheads and no commitments, and getting paid what for me at the time was a handsome amount of pocket money. I knew I would be taking up my university place in London come October (Mike Turner was the first to advise me not to abandon the academic option), and although to a certain extent I was playing as the carefree amateur, deep down I think I was already two thirds of the way towards full time cricket. The summer of 1975 did nothing to alter that view. Leicestershire won the championship for the first time in their history, in which I featured in about three games, and I also played in half a dozen Sunday League matches.

      I was never that committed to university, where the only thing we really had in common was the fact that the place was situated in Gower Street. I was supposed to be studying law, but in the six months I was there I learned a good bit more about kebab houses in Charlotte Street. The best way to put it is that we parted company by mutual consent the following summer, and almost before I knew it I was playing in a Benson and Hedges quarter-final at Worcester. I forget who was missing from our side, but I opened the innings and got thirty-odd, which was satisfying enough at the time, even if we did lose a high-scoring match.

CHAPTER SIX

       ‘Bloody hell, Gower. Have you just come in?’

      THE first game I played for Leicestershire was a Sunday League match. I’d been in The Hague for an under-19 youth tournament, playing for England North against sides from Holland, Belgium and Canada. I got a stack of runs there, and won a bat as batsman of the tournament, so I was in a pretty good frame of mind when the team caught the ferry back across the channel to Harwich. I got a train to Liverpool Street Station, tube to St Pancras, train up to Leicester, and phoned my mother from the station to tell her that I was just about to get the connection to Loughborough and would she be so kind as to come and collect me? She said, ‘Oh no, darling, I think you had better stay in Leicester and get a taxi to Grace Road. They want you to play this afternoon.’ She was right. John Steele was injured and I opened the innings with Barry Dudleston. It was very sudden and I was too tired to be nervous, but I do remember thinking that the Surrey attack was a little more tricky than Belgium under-19’s. Caught Skinner bowled Intikhab 11. ‘Gower played one or two pleasant shots before falling to a careless stroke,’ according to the Leicester Mercury. Doesn’t sound like me, does it? He must have been mixing me up with someone else.

      My next match was also in the Sunday League at Grace Road, against Sussex, and I appear to have made 21 before getting out to another spinner, John Barclay. The Mercury man must have spotted something, though, as he wrote: ‘Gower, slung in at the deep end at 28 for 2 from nine overs, showed a great temperament and is clearly a man with a big future.’ I got a couple of fifties later on, and I made my championship debut that year against Lancashire at Blackpool. The match was drawn, and I made 32, batting at No 7, before being caught Reidy bowled Shuttleworth. I don’t remember how, but the one thing I do recall from that match was dear old Raymond Illingworth, СКАЧАТЬ