David Gower (Text Only). David Gower

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СКАЧАТЬ such an important part of the one-day game, I enjoyed it even less because my shoulder injury would not let me contribute properly. To be unable to do something you actually used to do reasonably well – in my case, throw the ball with slightly more grace than a shot-putter – was frankly depressing. Sunday League games were the worst, and I got to the stage where I almost got resentful about playing in them. The formula is numbing and unless the team is close to the top of the table, the game becomes the chore it shouldn’t be.

      If there is a bonus to Sunday League cricket it is perhaps because you see fewer batsmen wearing helmets, owing to the restriction on bowlers’ run-ups. Ironically, the only time I have ever been badly ‘pinned’ was on a Sunday afternoon in 1977, during a rain-affected ten-over slog, when I top-edged a pull into my face. I first wore a helmet on my first tour to Australia in 1978-79. The idea had been around for a long time, and it was probably only tradition that prevented helmets from coming into general use many years before they did. The more macho characters resisted at first, some of them holding out for years, but very few players have never worn one at all. Viv Richards and Richie Richardson, in fact, are the only two who come to mind. It may have taken some of the romance out of batting, particularly for the spectators, but when you have just collected one on the cranium from the likes of Richard Hadlee, you tend not to dwell too much on the loss of some precious heritage: preservation of your head seems somehow more important. I’ve tried batting without one against quick bowlers, and I remember leaving it behind in the dressing room after tea during a Test against New Zealand at the Oval. I was feeling pretty confident – en route to a hundred – when Hadlee (hackles raised by my impertinence no doubt) let me have one, and it zipped off the side of my head for four leg-byes. He gave me a look that suggested I’d be better off going back to the dressing room to fetch it, but on the ‘lightning not striking twice’ principle, I carried on. Happily without further damage. It’s not a hardship, nowadays. It does get hot wearing one, but they are now quite lightweight and a long way removed from the old motor cycle crash hat. I’m sure that no-one who thinks properly about it would suggest that players should run the risk of serious injury when there is equipment on hand capable of preventing it. I have no truck at all with anyone who suggests banning helmets for either batsmen or fielders. There is the old argument that they make you less aware of danger, a bit like cycling through the rush-hour traffic plugged into a Walkman, but when you are twenty-two yards away from an object that could easily kill you, it really doesn’t cut much ice. I thought about not wearing one in Antigua in 1981, because I was in such good form, and was rather glad that I resisted the urge when Colin Croft crusted me with one that I had lost in the crowd. A lot of great batsmen have got by without one, but the history of the game is also studded with people who would have been a lot better off with one on. Nari Contractor, for example, required several blood transfusions and ended up with a fractured skull and a plate in his head after being hit by Charlie Griffith in the West Indies. I’m pretty sure Larwood and Tyson were something above slow-medium, but there have been some rapid bowlers around since I started playing, not all of whom appear to regard the bouncer as an occasional weapon.

      ‘Who was the fastest you ever faced?’ is a standard question, and although one or two m.p.h. here or there hardly matters when you are talking in the nineties, I think Sylvester Clarke might receive my vote on the strength of several deliveries at the Oval one day. He ripped the top of my glove off, and he would also bowl you the occasional delivery you simply never saw. He also had a genuine streak of meanness that made it additionally unpleasant to face him. Everyone gets worn down by fast bowling in the end, and I was certainly less keen to face it at thirty than I was at twenty. Barry Dudleston, who was a fine player for Leicestershire, told me that when he first came into the game that if anyone bounced him he said, ‘Thanks very much.’ However, when he was starting to get on a bit, he wasn’t so much thinking of four runs as staying out of hospital.

      The game is nastier now, no doubt about it – verbally as well as physically. When you’ve got the two combined, someone bowling very fast at you and also being rather unpleasant, it can be highly disconcerting. If the world sledging championships were held tomorrow, you would have to install the Australians as 1/2 favourites, and they invented the term of course. On the other hand, some of those who have complained about them have thrown their stones from exceptionally large greenhouses. The West Indies, Pakistan and India are not too far behind them I’d say. It’s a hard old game today, not always edifying, and you can even find some high-class sledging in county cricket. It might be more acceptable if it was more witty, but most of it is very basic stuff.

      Another perceived problem with the modern game is over-rates, although the authorities are convinced it is one of the major evils and the only cure is to impose harsher and harsher fines. It’s one of the few jobs in the world whereby the longer you work at it the less you get paid. Personally, I think the powers-that-be have become a bit paranoid about this question, although when play was still going on at twenty to eight against the West Indies at Lord’s in 1988 I might have had a different view on the matter. I would guess that the game has become a touch more professional now (maybe more cynical as well) in that the Don would never score 300 in a day 50 years on. The fielding captain would have put his men back, and ordered his bowlers to snap a bootlace twice an over. It’s sad for the spectators if this run feast dries up, but the modern professional will see it as a legitimate tactic. I did it in Lahore in 1984, when we set Pakistan a target on the last day, and Mohsin Khan and Shoaib Mohammad smashed the thing all round the ground. I had to slow it down, and we eventually frustrated them into giving away wickets. Fines may be the answer, and the spectators may deserve more for their money, but I’m pretty sure that if I had walked into that press conference in Lahore and said, ‘Sorry, lads, I could have saved the match, but it would have cost us five hundred quid apiece,’ then anyone picking this quote out of the morning papers would not, understandably, have been very impressed.

      The respect in which I count myself most fortunate was to be born a batsman. There is a lot more glamour in scoring a century than taking wickets, and from a marketing point of view, it is also more lucrative than being a bowler. Endorsing bowling boots is not the sort of sideline calculated to make you rich, and players such as myself, Gooch and Robin Smith have made more money out of spin-offs than the likes of Dilley, Foster and Willis. The one source of income open to all, provided he puts in the required amount of service, is the benefit, and I picked up £105,000 tax free from my own in 1987. People will say that the benefit system was not really devised for the likes of people like me, more for the honest-to-goodness county pro who has not really had the chance to earn bigger money, and I would have a certain amount of sympathy with that. However, the common denominator is the reward for long service, to which all players – Test or county – are entitled, and if potential benefactors do not want to give to a player because they consider he is already earning enough money, then that is his or her privilege. Benefits are much more commercialized than they used to be, and in coming ever closer to the technical limits that are imposed upon them, may well attract the interest of the taxman at some stage in the future. In my year we did something like twenty theatre shows the length and breadth of the country, which were too close to being a commercial venture not to declare it to the Revenue as such. No player wants to queer the pitch for others who are following.

      There have been any number of more successful benefits than my own, including some of the county stalwarts who deserve them most. Paul Pridgeon, for example, managed to raise £150,000 at Worcester, which came about through a combination of his own popularity and having very efficient people running the benefit for him. Others have not done so well, and when Graham Roope was awarded one with Surrey, it went so badly wrong that he almost ended up losing money. One or two Test players, myself included, have raised eyebrows by staging events outside the county they have been playing for, but when you perform on a higher stage your supporters are not all confined to one county. There is a publican near Worcester – inappropriately named David Drinkwater – who has been a supporter of cricket and cricketers for a very long time, and has been a great friend to players from all parts of the country. I had three lunches there during my year, and Worcestershire queried it with him. Quite rightly, however, he told them that it was entirely his business who he chose to help in this way, whether it be Worcestershire players or not. The СКАЧАТЬ