David Gower (Text Only). David Gower

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СКАЧАТЬ of an unmemorable century from David Lloyd, our wicketkeeper, Roger Tolchard, had missed stumping him off Illy because he was standing too far back. Tolly then got injured, Barry Dudleston took the gloves, and soon afterwards he whipped off the bails with Lloyd about a yard out. Unfortunately, the bails fell back into the grooves on top of the stumps, at which point Raymond exploded. He booted his chewing gum up in the air, and frothed: ‘Well, bugger me. One useless (expletive deleted) can’t reach t’bloody stumps, and t’other useless (expletive deleted) hasn’t got strength to knock t’bloody bails off.’

      I didn’t play the next game – possibly because of lily’s tantrum at Blackpool, we played two wicketkeepers, or at least David Humphries made his debut as wicketkeeper and Tolly played as a batsman. I then played against Northamptonshire (0 and 21) and my only other championship match that summer came in fairly unusual circumstances against Kent at Tunbridge Wells. I was actually 12th man, but Brian Davison went home to Leicester when news came through that his father-in-law had died. The game had already started, but Mike Denness gave permission for me to step in, and although I didn’t contribute much (1 and 11) it was a vital match in the championship, and we sneaked home by 18 runs. It was an average start to put it mildly, but it was marvellous just to be involved that year. We not only won the championship for the first time, but also the Benson and Hedges Cup.

      I was a bit wet behind the ears to begin with, and had turned up for pre-season training in a suit. I had no idea of how I should be dressed for my first day at the office, as it were, but it appeared to cause a fair amount of mirth. I was very shy and retiring to begin with, but the atmosphere at the club under Illy was so good that the little boy lost feeling didn’t last very long. All in all, this was to be a good summer and a turning point in my life. The attractions of a career playing cricket meant that from now on the idea of pouring over books in the law library was never likely to be a serious rival.

      I might never have gone on to become a full time professional cricketer had it not been for the death of my father in 1973. When the various crises came at school, only my mother was around to deal with them, and knowing my father’s determination for me to pursue an academic career, things might have turned out very differently had he still been alive. I was 16 when he died. He had been ill for two years – a combination of Hodgkin’s disease and Motor Neurone disease, which by and large comes under the umbrella of Multiple Sclerosis. He had not been working, and was gradually fading away. The brain remains very sharp, but the body just gives up. Eventually he got too weak to do anything at all, and went into hospital and died. It left a big gap.

      Because I was away at school so much it probably helped me cope better than I otherwise might have done, and it was harder for my mother than it was for me despite her own independent and strong character. I’m sure he would have tried to be a bit sterner on school matters, but he was very supportive of my sporting pursuits and maybe things would have turned out much the same way. That’s something we’ll never know. Sadly, he only had one chance to see me play representative cricket before he died, and that was at Rugby School playing for Public Schools against the English Schools at under-16 level: the likes of the Cowdreys against the likes of the Gattings. I remember hitting a six which he greeted by tooting the car horn. It was a cold and windy day, typical cricket weather, and what with his illness he had sensibly confined himself to the car with the heater turned on. He loved watching me do well that afternoon, and I’m sure he would have enjoyed most of what has happened since. My father’s encouragement on the cricket front had also extended to rigging up an old net in the back garden, although my mother probably ended up bowling more overs in it.

      He was an intelligent, well-organized man, which just goes to show that not everything is inherited in the genes, but he also had a keen sense of humour that I like to think was handed down. He also loved his sport. He would quite often take me to soccer matches on a Saturday afternoon, Nottingham Forest one week, Leicester City the next, and occasionally to Leicester Tigers or Loughborough Colleges for a rugby match. Things were okay financially when he died, in that while we were never what you could call genuinely wealthy, one of my father’s talents was that he was quite clever with the financial side of life and made all the right sort of provisions. He dabbled in the stock market, leaving my mother with a reasonable amount of collateral in stocks and shares, which she in turn passed on to me. He was a good bit shrewder than me in this sort of area, and definitely less extravagant.

      My father’s death obviously left a void, but we were both able to cope fairly well. Nevertheless, as my cricket career began to develop, there was always this feeling of how much he would have enjoyed being around to see it. I felt it most acutely in the summer of 1976, when I scored my maiden first-class century. We were playing Middlesex at Lord’s, and I had a fairly undistinguished first innings, bowled by Selvey for 0. However, in the second I had played pretty well to be not out at lunch on the second day, and came out after the interval to complete what one or two observers imagined to be a thoroughly relaxed and nerveless hundred. On this occasion they would have been confusing relaxed with half asleep (I spent the lunch break fully asleep) because, I have to admit, I had not spent the previous evening preparing in a wholly professional manner.

      I’d been out on the town somewhere, and while I think I managed to beat the milkman to the hotel door the next morning, it would not have been by much. The apparently laid-back Gower at the crease the next day was in fact trying desperately hard to stay awake, an exercise only achieved by repeated stabs between overs from the business end of Brian Davison’s bat. It was probably the least he could have done for me as Davo had become something of a soul mate of mine – and when it came to burning candles at both ends he was close to being world champion. If, after the likes of Roger Tolchard and Jack Birkenshaw had scuttled off to bed in mid-evening, anyone felt like giving it a bit of a late thrash Davo was definitely the man. What I took rather too long to discover was that he was better at it than me – better than most if it comes to that. Anyway, Davo was smashing it to all parts as we were looking to set up a declaration, while I was groping around in a fog attempting to make contact. I think Illy went on longer than he had wanted to so that I could make the hundred, so there was less glory attached to that innings than I might have liked. Lest anyone, by the way, get the idea that Raymond was a sentimental old fool on these occasions, I would like to point out that earlier in the season he had declared on me in the match against the West Indies at Grace Road when I was 89 not out. The Lord’s innings more than made up for that disappointment, although it was probably the first time I had gone out to bat in what could be described as less than pristine condition. If the century suggested that it was possible to spend all night on the tiles and still deliver the goods next day, there have been one or two cases along the way since that have provided strong evidence to the contrary.

      Shortly after that I spent six weeks in the West Indies with a Young England side that included the likes of Mike Gatting, Chris Cowdrey, Paul Downton and Paul Allott, and that autumn, immediately after the English season ended, there was a Derrick Robins’ invitation trip to Canada. It only lasted three weeks or so, and when I came home, I went out to work for the first (and as it turned out, last) time. Mike Turner fixed me up with a job with one of Leicestershire’s bigger sponsors, Bostik, and, if you will pardon the fairly awful pun, being glued to a desk all winter did not quite fit my romantic image of the professional cricketer.

      The next season was another enjoyable (and reasonably successful) one, and life at this stage seemed wonderful. I had climbed onto the rollercoaster and was going along for the ride. On the other hand, my cricket had become significantly more serious. I was earning a bit more than £25 a week by now, was sharing a flat near the ground with Roger Tolchard, and was being tutored by Illy in the art of becoming professional. ‘These pretty twenties and thirties are all very nice, Gower, but if you could possibly manage the occasional hundred we’d be obliged.’ Raymond was inclined towards the belief that cricket was a fairly serious business, and cricketers who smiled a lot were to be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. Needless to say, I caused him the odd moment of aggravation, not least on one occasion while he was bowling during a Sunday League match against Derbyshire. We’d been down to Westcliff to play Essex the week before, put down every catch СКАЧАТЬ