Music was similar to cricket in that we were judged collectively, but vulnerable to individual error. St Paul’s is a hard place to sing, because it has an eight-second echo in the dome, and if one of the thirty choristers makes a fractional misjudgement it can all fall apart. The choir master, and the professionals with whom we were surrounded, would not have been amused.
I wasn’t fazed by the more important concerts, or the pomp and ceremony of certain services. I was the workhorse, the guy who rarely took solos, never got ill and sang consistently to an acceptable standard, all good preparation for professional sport, where coaches love the player they can rely on, rock solid without being exceptional.
Management specialists love to talk about success leaving clues, and it is certainly true that talent has a traceable timeline. Mum remembers me pestering her with a soft ball when I was not much older than two. She’d break off from the washing-up and throw it at me across the kitchen, with the promise I’d get a biscuit if I caught it at the furthest point in the room.
It was only later that I realized she would throw it that little bit harder when the treat was due. I wasn’t deterred. I would sit on the floor of my bedroom, with my head resting against the side of the mattress, throwing and catching the ball off the ceiling, walls and furniture. I was unconsciously developing hand–eye co-ordination.
We rehashed countless snooker World Championships in the kitchen, on a table measuring two feet by four feet, propped up by stools. Before I went up to St Paul’s the family would play tennis or badminton in the village hall three times a week. A combination of nature and nurture was involved across disciplines.
Musically, my parents were talented. They used to sing in the church choir at Wickham Bishops, and I had learned to read music by the time I was six. My paternal grandad was a very, very good violinist and would make instruments for my brothers. I specialized in the clarinet and saxophone but couldn’t consistently play by ear.
That’s an incredible skill; even now, the only piano piece I can play without a music score in front of me is the intro to ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, by Queen. I’m a diligent learner, though. If I were to practise daily for a week, I could probably get the whole song off pat. As for my angelic singing, it went south when my voice broke at the age of sixteen. It’s difficult to retrain.
There is an ethereal quality to the best choirs, a natural ease and beauty. I’m not sure you can say the same about my batting, though I do consider myself a natural batsman in that I am largely self-taught. In the choir I read the notes; at the crease I watch the ball. I have scored runs at every level because I have an ability to play every ball on its merits, no matter how daunting the occasion. I’ve never felt overawed, and, as strange as it sounds, can almost sight-read the bowler.
Dad opened the batting for Great Totham and partnered Joe Root’s father-in-law when he played for a time in Gloucester. He bowled right-handed but batted and played golf left-handed. My grandad tried to teach me to play golf as a right-hander, but as soon as I was alone, I would twirl the club around and play left-handed. Ironically, in everything else I am strongly right-handed.
I would watch left-handed batsmen such as Mark Butcher and Graham Thorpe on TV, then go out into the garden and try to copy them. That’s probably where I developed the instinctive trigger movement of going back and across my crease. I never realized I did the double backlift until I was about fifteen. It was an unconscious action; when I tried to take it out of my game for a couple of months I was terrible.
Don Bradman famously hit a golf ball with a stump for hours in his back yard. My classroom, in a cricket sense, was the eleven-yard pitch in the back garden. We taped up tennis balls or used slightly softer practice balls with a seam, known as Incrediballs. Adrian, as the eldest brother, demanded to bowl. Laurence as the youngest, kept wicket. I batted and was highly competitive; Adrian, naturally, tried to knock my head off.
He was quick for his age, and because the pitch was so short, he would never let me play a drive. If I did so, and hit the greenhouse at extra cover, we’d all get in trouble. The ball would come through to me at hip height; that’s why and how I learned to play my trademark shots, the cut, the pull and the clip. I was small, and lacked power, but my technique was good.
Occasionally I pretended I was Brian Lara – as a bowler I tried to mimic Darren Gough, Angus Fraser or Gladstone ‘no neck’ Small – but when Adrian raced in from the patio the challenge was realistic because it was so personal. This was brother against brother, him versus me. I love the individual battle in cricket, within the team context.
It is a game that allows you to share experiences and memories but doesn’t always shine the best light on your personality. I’ve always been stubborn. My grandad once asked me to get my stumps from the garden when it was raining. I refused point blank, even though I was told off for challenging his authority. I argued that since they were mine I could do what I wanted with them.
I definitely had a temper on me, and hated failure. One day Dad came home with a video camera. Naturally enough, we were his cinematic guinea pigs. I went into bat, pads and helmet on, did the Robin Smith crouch and the exaggerated knee jiggling, and Adrian got me out first ball. That was it. Tears everywhere.
Dad found my meltdown hilarious, and filmed me sitting behind a tree, screaming. I’m not entirely sure I’m over it to this day. At least I was forced to bowl, against my will. In retrospect that was a valuable test of character. You don’t often see the bigger picture when you’re ten, and aware of people saying you have real talent.
I played for the Under-11s at eight, scored 50 for the Maldon thirds when I was eleven. I was too young to regard failure to score runs as an educational experience; perspective comes later, when you realize there will be days when you dominate the bowler, and days when he dominates you. The important thing was that I played a lot of cricket because I wanted to, rather than being made to.
My technique had to be natural, since we rarely had formal coaching. I never saw myself bat until I was thirteen, when I realized the local paper, which had prematurely praised me as the new David Gower, might have gone a little over the top. I lacked his fluency and languor. At best, I was crablike but effective.
I was aware of a climate of expectation, but it didn’t become oppressive because it wasn’t generated by my parents. They cared, of course, but they never pushed me. They seemed to trust the self-reliance I had acquired as a boarder. It wasn’t quite sink or swim, but they didn’t exactly rush for a lifebelt if I got into deep water.
My own perspective of parenthood tells me such measured detachment must be healthy. On the schools circuit there have been more naturally gifted players emerge and break records, only to regress in senior cricket, where they seemed worn down by the responsibility of meeting parental demands. If my son Jack wants to play cricket in the future that’s fine, but I will never force the game on him or renew my competitive instincts through him.
All you can do is allow a young player to be himself. There is a danger, across sport, of academy players becoming homogenized. They are treated like a protected species, nurtured in three-day England training camps at the age of thirteen. Talent becomes a barrier to a normal life; a promising cricketer may not be allowed to play a variety of sports because of the danger of being injured in, say, schools rugby.
They specialize too early, and consequently lack the balance of someone who develops other skills in other sports, such as athleticism or physical resilience. They are shielded from everyday life. A boy who knows only cricket has a problem, because he hasn’t been given the environment to become a well-rounded human being. There is more to life than being a slave to the MCC coaching manual.
I left St Paul’s at the age of thirteen, having won a music scholarship to Bedford School. Andy Pick, Richard Bates and Derek Randall coached me at Bedford, but rarely analysed my technique with the intention of making fundamental changes. A development session with Essex led to
the observation that I needed to make my eyes level on addressing the ball, but I didn’t really have too much technical input until I was eighteen.
My attitude was a far more powerful formative influence. I was fifteen when Jeremy Farrell, the master in charge of cricket at Bedford, challenged me to become fitter and stronger by joining preschool swimming sessions with the staff. He felt I was too weak to consistently hit the ball square.
Though I could just about tolerate swimming if I wore goggles, I honestly loathed it. The first morning I turned up at the pool Jeremy Farrell and Barry Burgess, the rugby master, ordered me to swim for twenty minutes. I could barely do twenty-five metres, yet my competitive streak kicked in. Within three months I was quicker than my cricket teacher. It took me six months to overhaul the rugby master, but ultimately, I was flying past the pair of them.
I was obsessively single-minded. I swam twice a week and went out running with the boarding-house dog before breakfast. Derek Randall, a World Cup finalist as a player and a world-class eccentric, got up early to work with me on the bowling machine. The 7.45 a.m. alarm call on down days was a luxury because of the principles which had been unconsciously instilled in me at choir school, where I had to be up by seven each morning and have the time-management skills to juggle twenty-four hours’ music a week around normal academic work.
Although I was studying music at Bedford, the St Paul’s choir master had read me well. His final report concluded that he expected to hear more from me as a cricketer than a singer in the years to come. I enjoyed my musicality, and particularly loved singing Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’, which has been rearranged as the Champions League anthem, but knew I lacked the passion to be the best in that field.
Sport was my priority, my best chance of carving out a career. Although that led to occasional friction, I was fortunate that Andrew Morris, the school’s director of music, was an MCC member and an ardent cricket fan. I played in the school jazz band and sang in the choir but began to define myself by the conventions of a professional athlete.
It wasn’t quite a binary, win-or-lose lifestyle, but, philosophically, my apprenticeship had begun. I was storing realities for future reference. Batting gives you nowhere to hide. You either score runs or you don’t. Your actions have consequences. You must learn to live with everything that goes with that. It involves balancing satisfying moments of success with setbacks that demand urgent self-questioning.
I’d had a distinctive upbringing. The hard graft of five years in choir school meant that I lost my innocence prematurely, but also ensured that I cherished slithers of spare time. It taught me the truth of that trite assertion that, if you want something done, ask a busy man. I would eventually sacrifice teenage rites of passage such as chaotic lads’ holidays to Ayia Napa or Magaluf, but I don’t think I missed out on much.
My close friendships at home in Essex were usually developed in school holidays, through cricket. One in particular has provided painful perspective. I knew David Randall through the Maldon club. We opened the batting together from the age of eleven and were named in the same England development squads. Since Ravi Bopara batted at three with us for Essex, the poor guys down the order rarely needed to strap on their pads; we were dominant.
We knew David as Arkle. He scored more runs than me and Ravi but, as is often the way, he never pursued professional cricket, preferring to go to university. His death, from bowel cancer at the age of twenty-seven, hit hard, because it reminded us of the limits of mortality. It united the Maldon cricket club, and inspired the local community. The work done by the charitable foundation established in his name, in helping those with life-limiting illness, remains close to my heart.
Though our paths diverged professionally, we had remained close personally. I found boarding at Bedford a release after the slightly claustrophobic environment of the choir school, and though I was small and relatively immature physically, I was determined to make an immediate impact in first-team cricket.
Not so quickly, young sir. Jeremy Farrell took me aside before the first game of the season and explained he had instead picked a sixth-former named James De Groot, who ironically, I now see regularly in his role as MCC’s Head of Catering. I was told to go out and score runs for the Under-14s; I did so, making 80-odd not out as we chased down 140 against Haileybury, but my name still wasn’t on the board announcing the team to play MCC the following Tuesday.
I was drifting in double physics, gazing out of the window on to the playing field, where the first team was warming up, when Mr Farrell interrupted the lesson. MCC were one short, and he wondered whether I fancied filling in. I didn’t give him time to reconsider. It normally took seven minutes to walk to my boarding house; I reckon I did it there and back in six.
More lessons for later: in sport the biggest opportunities have a habit of presenting themselves when you least expect them. Be ready for anything. Make the moment matter. The MCC captain said I’d be batting at three; I’d barely got my pads on before I was walking to the wicket. Someone blurted out ‘send him back to primary school’ and I was greeted with a couple of bouncers.
Cricket, like other sports, is a state of mind. I could sense the tide turning in my favour as my score increased and the fielding team became more subdued. I reached my century with a shot that is daunting even for a senior pro, running down the wicket to clip the ball over midwicket, against the turn of an off-spinner. The match petered out into a draw, with the school eight wickets down in reply, but I felt like a winner as Mr Farrell shook my hand.
I was an honorary adult for the day and allowed to enjoy the rituals of men’s cricket. I sat in the away changing room, drinking beer and listening to the stories become more improbable, before they drifted off. I returned to the boarding house around 9 p.m., gabbled my story to my parents and woke the next morning as a new man.
Suddenly, I was a name around school. I was still a little kid, but by the following Saturday my name was on the first-team message board. I read it several times, to make sure it was real. Word was getting round that I was a half decent player, and when I played for Essex seconds at Dunstable at the age of fifteen there was a whisper that Nottinghamshire, a county with strong links to the Bedford coaches, were after me.
I don’t consider myself insecure for recognizing my fear of failure. Doubt has always been there, but manageable. Motivation for the extra batting sessions, or the early morning runs, varies; for some it is the prospect of adulation, basking in the crowd’s warmth as they walk off, bat up, helmet removed to reveal a reddened face and sweat-streaked hair.
There’s nothing wrong with that sort of egotism. It’s earned and legitimate. Sometimes the exuberance of the celebration is a sign of relief, an acknowledgement of the inner struggle. Everyone loves a pat on the back, but I was simply driven to do it all again the next day. Success counts for nothing if it is not repeatable.
I knew the big score would be irrelevant if I failed the next four times I was at the crease. That’s what kept me back, as the last man hitting balls. That’s what made me train harder than anyone in my generation. I had to have an edge in personal fitness, because the regimes now employed by the likes of Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow – proper athletes – were giving the game a different dimension.
My breakthrough moment as a young pro was discovering the meaning of mental toughness. It involved dealing with the Gimp, the bloke on my shoulder who loved to beat me up in moments of difficulty. The day I learned to live with him, and not become too down on myself, was a massive turning point in terms of my career’s longevity.
This is not the it-was-better-in-my-day rumination of an old pro, but I watch some young county cricketers train today and wonder whether they appreciate the privilege of the life-changing opportunity they have been given. Why wouldn’t you do more than the standard session, between nine and lunchtime? Why wouldn’t you do that little bit more than the next man?
God-given talent offers no insurance. Will
you fulfil your potential if you’ve half an eye on that afternoon on the golf course, or the session on the sofa, playing FIFA with your mates? Cricket has rewarded me with everything I have. There are no short cuts. I was lucky that I knew the value of hard work from an early age. I love it when I see younger players taking the same approach.
Maybe their programmes are too precise, too considered. My generation worked more on instinct and had greater self-awareness. I’m imperfect: I’m not the quickest and probably didn’t do enough preparatory work with the strength-and-conditioning coach. But would more speed have made me a better player? I don’t think so. I concentrated on long-distance running, to enhance my endurance.
Maybe the modern teenage boy needs a little bit more freedom to be himself, to think for himself, but there are obvious sporting examples they can follow. The common denominator, linking Owen Farrell to David Beckham, Rory McIlroy to Graham Gooch, across the generations, is that they were there, working, when everyone else had gone home. That’s why they are, or were, the best.
I’ve worked sixteen-hour days on the family farm in Bedfordshire, doing the job until it is done. There’s not that much difference, in terms of mindset, from reporting to pre-breakfast sessions with Goochy when I was taken on by Essex. I lapped up every word he said. The end, the reward of my first professional contract, paying £667 monthly after tax, justified the means.
I hadn’t yet learned to drive during my first year as a pro – not that I could have afforded a car – and Mum and Dad weren’t prepared to be taxi drivers, so that meant catching a bus at 6.43 a.m. and a connecting train to Chelmsford at 7.15. Provided public transport didn’t let me down, I’d be at the ground for eight. I’d grab breakfast, spend two hours in the gym, at least two hours batting, and then do the reverse commute.
The Autobiography Page 3