David Gower (Text Only). David Gower

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СКАЧАТЬ got 125 and 98, which got him into the Test side. As for myself, I was starting to get a few honourable mentions in more influential organs than the Loughborough Echo (proud though I was of earlier cuttings snipped from that paper), although mention of me in connection with the England side did not really begin to build up until the following year, 1977.

      I overheard Illy voicing his opinion around the dressing room that I would be playing for England within the next couple of years, and coming from him I thought that was as good a recommendation as you could get. In subsequent years, when he appeared to be recommending sons-in-law and prospective sons-in-law for the captaincy of Yorkshire, England, and the Universe, I would have questioned his judgement a touch more than I did then, but at the time it was a pretty impressive reference. By the end of that summer, there had been enough speculation from other quarters to make me wonder, anxious even, about that winter’s tour to Pakistan and New Zealand. Ian Botham was now in the side and it seemed to be a question of whether someone like Mike Gatting or myself might make the squad as a young batsman, taken along to gain some experience. As it turned out, Gatt made it and I didn’t. I was disappointed because I had actually become quite excited about the speculation, but it soon wore off and I was happy to make yet another Derrick Robins’ tour, this time to the Far East. I developed my friendship with Chris Cowdrey out there, behaved pretty poorly, but also got in some decent cricket in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sri Lanka. From there it was a short hop to Perth where I played club cricket for the remainder of the winter, with a fair amount of success, and did well enough in the early summer of 1978 (one of the few years I’ve started off a season in good form) to get myself into the England side for the one-dayers against Pakistan. I scored a century in the second of the two matches, and was then selected for the first Test at Birmingham. So I had already had the settling effect of having played at international level when I made my Test debut, and although hitting your first ball for four would have to rank as a reasonable way to launch a career, the Pakistani attack at that time could hardly be equated with that of the West Indies when G. Hick arrived at the wicket in 1991.

      Imran wasn’t playing, barred through Kerry Packer, and had he delivered the same ball on the same length as dear old Liaquat Ali, or Liquid as we came to know him, they might have been picking bits of me out of the fence as opposed to the ball. Mind you, I might not have been quite so keen to unveil the pull shot first ball against an Imran or an Andy Roberts. I might have been young, but I had learned a few of the facts of life by now. I did actually wonder to myself at the time whether I should have played the shot, even against Liquid. First ball, first Test, probably not the done thing, and if it had gone straight up in the air it might have caused a bit of a stir – Brian Johnston choking to death on his chocolate cake I shouldn’t wonder. But as I remember, it was just an instinctive shot to a bad ball. Eventually I did hit one straight up in the air, having made fifty-odd, relaxed a little and done something silly when a century was there for the taking. Some might say ‘So what’s new?’

      Whenever I have made fifty in my career, I’ve invariably said to myself, ‘Okay, head down, let’s get fifty more.’ The trouble is, I’ve always had to work to say it. It’s a failing, simple as that. I have to fight to stave off the feeling of: ‘Oh yes, I’ve hit a few good shots today, that’ll keep me happy,’ as opposed to having the blinding determination to plough remorselessly on. Sometimes when I get a little bit too relaxed, a bad shot that I get away with might snap me back into it, but contrary to a certain amount of public opinion I am always fighting a battle with the little man up there in my head. I believe that it is all part of the character: some parts may be good, others not so good. Some people have the capacity to put a padlock on the brain and throw away the key – mine likes to go for a wander. More often than not, I don’t like it any more than an exasperated spectator, or selector, but no-one is entirely free of weaknesses, and this happens to be one of mine.

      The philosophy I’ve tried to live by is to retain a sense of enjoyment in what is a sport as well as my livelihood. If you can be successful by asserting your own character rather than someone else’s, that to me is the ultimate in personal satisfaction. Sure, I’ve fouled up many times, but it would be a tedious old game if we all came out of a factory would it not? At the same time, there is a lot of satisfaction in succeeding almost against your own character – such as grinding it out when you are itching to give it a go – but it’s not something I have managed all that often. I was annoyed with myself for getting out in that first Test innings because I realized that I had missed out on the chance for a really big one. But, character failing or not, I wasn’t going to sit around all day moping about it.

      What I envy any new Test player is the feeling you get before your first game. It’s an event just to walk into the dressing room for the first time, where there might be one or two players you have never even met before. Just looking at the team sheet gives you a buzz – Brearley, Wood, Radley, Gower … it’s a big thrill just to see it pinned up there. There is a special feeling about a Test match dressing room for the first time, a sense of anticipation and excitement that is beyond anything I’d had before, and corny though it sounds, the blood does start pumping a little harder through the system. And then, once you have played for your country, it gives you a billing to live up to when you return for a county match, and maybe puts a bit more pressure on you as well. As a young up and coming potential England player you are allowed to make the odd mistake, but as an actual England player you’ve got less leeway in terms of how other people see you. A lot more, for instance, was expected of someone like Mark Ramprakash after he had played relatively well in his first Test series against the West Indies.

      Cricketers, by and large, are a very supportive lot, but some pros look at their colleagues and opponents with fairly critical and sometimes jaundiced eyes. This is especially true if it concerns the solid county cricketer who is never going to play for England casting his eye over the fresh-faced youngster who has just won his first cap. When Sachin Tendulkar, at seventeen, scored a century at Old Trafford to save India from defeat against England in the summer of 1990, one English player said, ‘Let’s see how he goes at the Oval when the ball will be up around his nostrils.’ It’s the traditional English reaction to someone doing well.

      I averaged 51 against Pakistan and 57 against the New Zealanders later that the summer, but if a lot more was expected of myself at Leicestershire after I had made it into the Test side, the bare statistics of 1978 do not suggest that they were fulfilled to any great degree. Nine games, 15 innings, one not out, 347 runs, top score 61, average 24.78, and in the county game against Pakistan I was bowled by Liaquat for not very many. In a season like that, with six Tests and four one-day internationals, you end up by playing barely any cricket at all for your county, and given the poor scores I made when I did, it was probably fair to say that I batted for England and fielded for Leicestershire. My county average has always been significantly lower than my Test average, and as such it is hardly surprising that the odd grumble from the ranks of the county membership has come my way. The bigger the occasion the better I seem to perform. Yet overall, I was definitely on a high at that stage in my career, and my form for England at least was good enough to win me a place on my first overseas tour that winter. It was a memorable tour both for me – a century at Perth and a decent amount of runs overall – and for the team itself, although a 5-1 victory in the series had a lot to do with an Australian side seriously depleted by the absence of the rebels playing for Packer.

      The 1978-79 tour to Australia was as one-sided as the final score suggests, but Australia felt the player-drain to Packer more acutely than we did. Both the Chappells, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh were signed up by World Series Cricket, and while they had some talented younger players to call upon – Kim Hughes and Rodney Hogg, for example – the key difference between the two sides was experience. To some extent, the Australian system allows their players to scale the jumps from grade to state to Test cricket a shade more easily than our own, but a good, inexperienced team will rarely beat a good experienced one and 5-1 was an accurate reflection of our dominance. Having said that, Hogg, in short spells, was as quick and mean a bowler as any I have faced, and he also had the temperament to match. When I was leaving the field with a century to my name in Perth, the fact that I had edged and missed a few СКАЧАТЬ