Strictly Me

YOUNG CRICKETER

‘Ramprakash, two days away from his nineteenth birthday, took them to within three runs of victory, batting throughout in his cap with confidence, style and a rare charm’

– Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, 1989

I had an inkling that a contract with Middlesex might be coming because I had played in five Second XI matches in 1986, when I was still sixteen, and had held my own. Then, early in 1987, I went to Sri Lanka with the England Under-19 team and performed well – especially in what was termed the third Test against Sri Lanka’s U19s, in which I hit hundreds in both innings.

Michael Atherton captained the trip, with Trevor Ward of Kent his deputy. Other players in that England Young Cricketers squad were Nasser Hussain, who also scored a lot of runs, Martin Bicknell and Warren Hegg. I scored almost 600 runs on the tour and after I returned to England at the end of February I was soon signing a summer contract for Middlesex.

Little did I know that as soon as 25 April 1987 I was to make my first-class debut in Middlesex’s opening three-day County Championship match of the season.

During the fortnight or so before this game I had taken my England U19 tour form into pre-season matches, scoring three successive hundreds: the first for Middlesex seconds against Durham University, then 180 for Stanmore in my debut game for my new club, and 152 for Middlesex Under-25s against Leicestershire U25s.

Both Chris Lewis and Phillip DeFreitas were playing for that Leicestershire team, and that third hundred was perhaps the most impressive knock I had played up to this point in my youthful career, because it was on a quickish pitch and was against two fairly serious fast bowlers. Don’t forget, DeFreitas had already played Test cricket and had just returned from the 1986–87 tour to Australia, in which England under Mike Gatting had retained the Ashes.

It clearly also elevated me in the pecking order, and in the thinking of the Middlesex selectors, because suddenly I found myself included for that opening Championship match of the season, against Yorkshire at Lord’s. Gatting, Clive Radley and Roland Butcher were all injured, which had given me my chance, but it was still a tremendous thrill to be picked.

On the day before the game, however, when I turned up at Lord’s to join the first teamers for the pre-match preparation, I was late. Not a good start. Someone had told me the wrong time, but I can still remember arriving at the Nursery Ground that morning and seeing all the other players already sitting around on the grass doing their stretching and general warm-up exercises.

Paul Downton, the former England wicketkeeper, called to me to come and join in, and I looked around to see other players such as Phil Edmonds, Wayne Daniel, John Emburey . . . all Test cricketers, too. Anyway, we finished the warm-ups, had an initial net session, went to the Tavern for lunch and then came back in the afternoon for more nets.

On the first morning of the game I sat myself down next to Emburey, who was captaining in Gatting’s absence. I will always be grateful for the way he made me welcome in that match and helped me as much as he could to feel settled and relaxed.

In truth, I was in a bit of a daze because there was just so much to take in. Being thrown in at the deep end like that, though, at the age of 17, does mean that you have no time to get really nervous: you just get on with it.

My first ball in first-class cricket came from Arnie Sidebottom – Ryan’s father – and although it was a length ball outside of off stump I must confess I didn’t see it! It was a very good job it wasn’t straight. Then, next ball, Arnie bowled me a bouncer that I didn’t see much of either.

I was wearing my Middlesex colts cap and I must have seemed so naive and young to those Yorkshire players as I came in to bat at number four. I also remember that Paul Jarvis, another England fast bowler, played against us in that game. I generally just scratched around before getting out for 17, caught at short leg by Richard Blakey off Jarvis’s bowling.

After getting back to the dressing-room I had a chat with Simon Hughes, one of our fast bowlers, and he agreed that I could borrow his helmet for when I had to bat in the second innings. Bowlers like Jarvis were much quicker than I was used to, and again my naivety about the realities of facing such men meant that I had not even considered I would need a helmet of my own.

I enjoyed myself in our second innings, however, with helmet firmly on, reaching 63 not out before we declared. Wisden records that I made ‘a glowing impression’ but what I remember most about my debut match is thinking how quickly the ball came on to the bat. To me, at that time, the pitch was really quick – although to the seasoned professionals, it wasn’t. It was like lightning compared to the club pitches I was used to, and I was hitting shots off the back foot because I felt the ball was coming on so much faster.

To have made my first-class debut at Lord’s, and to have done well, was a real boost to my confidence and my ambition to make a career out of cricket, but I couldn’t get carried away. The day after that match ended I was back studying for my A levels at Harrow Weald Sixth Form College.

In 1988, I again only played the second half of the season for Middlesex because of my A-level work but managed to top the county’s Championship batting averages – with an average of 57 – despite only having a top score of 68 not out. But a number of other not out innings helped boost the average, and I was not complaining.

I had also represented England U19s again early in 1988, at the inaugural Youth World Cup held in Australia. Once more the team was captained by Mike Atherton, and both Nasser Hussain and Chris Lewis were included in the squad. I didn’t do particularly well, but I learned a lot and it was a fantastic experience. We reached the semi-final before losing to Australia, who then beat Pakistan in the final.

Alan Mullally was playing for Australia’s U19s, and Andy Caddick for New Zealand, while the West Indies team was led by Brian Lara. The Pakistan side had both Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mushtaq Ahmed playing for them.

The innings which really brought my name to the public’s attention, however, and led Mike Gatting to say that I was a better batsman at eighteen than he himself had been – which was a real tribute, because he was a tremendous player – was in the NatWest Trophy final on 3 September 1988, in which we beat Worcestershire by three wickets at Lord’s.

It was two days before my 19th birthday and I had not played in the competition up to that point. Worcestershire scored 161 for 9 from their 60 overs on a difficult, seaming pitch, thanks in the main to Phil Neale’s 64, and I came in at number six with our score at 25 for 4. Graham Dilley had struck three times with the new ball and Gatting had been run out for a duck, so it wasn’t looking too good.

But I hung around with Roland Butcher until the total reached 64, when he ran himself out for 24 in the 29th over. John Emburey, though, was a great man to come in at that point and together we put on 85 until John was out for 35 in the 53rd over. I had made 56 when I was also out to Dilley, who finished with 5 for 29, with just three more runs required for victory. I was then named man of the match, which made the celebrations even better that night, and received a lot of fantastic publicity for the innings.

The 1989 season was my first full one as a professional and I was pleased with my progress: I topped 1,000 runs and averaged 36, and at the age of 19 I didn’t think that was too bad, especially as this was the summer of the ‘high seam’ ball. The faster bowlers (Allan Donald, Malcolm Marshall and Wasim Akram finished first, second and fourth respectively in the first-class averages) used it effectively all around the country and for batsmen it was very hard work.

The standard of bowling in the late 1980s and early 1990s was high, and most counties had bowlers of real pace, as well as the traditional ‘English’ seamers, who always do well when conditions are more in their favour. I was especially pleased to score my maiden first-class hundred, against Yorkshire at Headingley in July. As the summer neared its end, I was being mentioned as a possible England A tourist for the following winter and was appointed to captain the England U19 team against the touring New Zealand U19s.

This was all positive, except that in a Championship match against Nottinghamshire in late August, in between the first and second four-day U19 Tests against the Kiwis, I was hit on the toe by a ball from Andy Pick. It turned out to be broken, meaning I missed the third and final U19 Test in early September, but I wanted badly to play in the second match at Canterbury, beginning on 29 August, as we had lost the first Test at Scarborough.

The New Zealanders, however, led by Chris Cairns, batted well in both innings and we could not prevent the match from being drawn. I scored 47 and 38 not out, but an article appeared in The Times, by John Woodcock, in which both my captaincy and my ability were criticised in quite disparaging terms. It was a bit of a shock, to be honest, especially as I had played in quite a lot of discomfort, and it was the first piece of negative publicity I had received. Coming from a writer whom I had never met, and who certainly didn’t know me, I thought it was unfair. Perhaps my expectations, following that 1988 NatWest Trophy innings, had been set a bit too high.

Anyway, as far as I was concerned, I was still a baby in cricketing terms. I was still learning the game; I felt that I had consolidated well during the 1989 summer, as I had come to terms with the demands – and quite considerable demands, too, for any young player – of playing week-in and week-out on the county circuit.

I remember well one particular game which not only opened my eyes to how difficult making runs could be in certain conditions, but also led to a piece of advice from an opponent which was valuable to me as I sought to improve my game and my chances of achieving the levels of success that I desired.

We played Lancashire at Lord’s in a three-day Championship fixture which began on Saturday, 1 July and resumed on the Monday following a 40-overs-per-side Refuge Assurance League game on the Sunday. We lost both games by some distance, but on a very quick pitch it was still an experience facing the likes of Patrick Patterson, Wasim Akram and Phil DeFreitas. Paul Allott, another international-class fast bowler, also played in both games.

We thought we had done quite well when, after asking Lancashire to bat first on a surface that was also quite well-grassed, we bowled them out for 161, with Norman Cowans taking 4 for 29 and Angus Fraser, Simon Hughes and Ricky Ellcock sharing the other six wickets equally. But by the close we were 66 for 8 and I had been one of the four victims of Patterson, the West Indies fast bowler, who then ended up with 5 for 48 when our innings was finished off for 96 on the Monday morning.

By then, of course, we had been beaten in the Sunday League game, from which Patterson had been rested and Wasim brought in! I had followed up my 9 of the previous day by being out lbw to Wasim for 6. Indeed, I only faced three balls from him: bouncer, bouncer, rapid inswinging yorker – thank you and goodnight.

The worst was still to come, though, because after we had bowled out Lancashire for 196 in their second innings, we were ourselves skittled for a mere 43. And that included a ten-run stand for the last wicket! Patterson and DeFreitas were absolutely fearsome, and the ball was flying through. They bowled unchanged, sharing 21.2 overs, having had a rest overnight on the Monday when we were 12 for 4 and I was on 2 not out.

I made it to 7 the next morning, the joint second-highest score in the innings, when it took Patterson and DeFreitas, who finished with figures of 7 for 21, just another 65 minutes to finish us off. Desmond Haynes had recorded a pair (two noughts) in the match, as had Angus Fraser, and the other three batsmen to fail to score in our wretched second innings were Mike Gatting, Mike Roseberry and Paul Downton.

After the Championship game had finished around that Tuesday lunchtime, however, I wandered down to the Tavern for a quick drink and got chatting to DeFreitas and Patterson. I knew DeFreitas well, as he had also grown up in the Middlesex youth ranks, and he told me that I needed to look at wearing a helmet with a grille. Not only had he been bowling at me on this quick pitch, but he had also seen how I’d gone against Patterson and Wasim, and he felt it was important for me – especially at 19 – to make sure I was properly protected when I was facing bowling of that speed on quicker pitches.

Even in the short time I had been at the crease on those two days I had narrowly avoided being hit by short-pitch deliveries. I remember them whistling past my face, very close, and of course the helmet I was using was completely open at the front. A couple of those short balls could easily have cleaned me up.

DeFreitas said that if wearing a grille was good enough for the likes of Haynes and Gatting, then it should also be something I did, and it was a piece of advice that really stayed with me during the weeks that followed. It was also very much appreciated, especially from an opponent. DeFreitas had obviously seen that the pace and ability of Wasim and Patterson was a bit too much for me at that age and he took time to have a quiet, considerate word.

Many people have asked me over the years whether I have ever been scared out there in the middle, facing the fastest bowlers in the world, and what I would say is that on those three days at Lord’s I was as close to being scared on a cricket pitch as I have been. The ball was jagging about, flying through at you at extreme speeds, and being bowled by magnificent bowlers who had great command of line, length and the ability to move it about either in the air or off the pitch.

Physically, you were left wondering if you could actually react fast enough as a batsman to get out of the way and – although I had my youthful reactions on my side – I had rarely at that time faced bowling of this speed and hostility. It was taking you close to the edge in terms of your courage and your character, as much as your ability, and Wasim on the Sunday was really a bit too much for me at the age I was then.

As a result of that conversation with DeFreitas, indeed, I went away and practised a lot with a helmet and grille, because it does take some getting used to when you have never worn a grille in front of your face. By the end of the following winter, I was totally used to it and wore one from then on.

Apart from the occasional chat like that with an opposing player or one of your own teammates, it was the lot of the county cricketer in those days to work things out for himself. In the Middlesex dressing-room of the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially, it was certainly a case of getting your own game sorted out.

Looking back now, I realise just how lucky I was to begin my professional career in an environment which was so used to winning. The expectation at Middlesex under Mike Gatting, and before that under Mike Brearley, was to win trophies. A season without any silverware was the exception, not the rule.

When I arrived on the scene in 1987, the county had won ten trophies in the previous eleven seasons, including five Championships, in 1976, 1977, 1980, 1982 and 1985. In my time at the club we were also to win Championships in 1990 and 1993, the Sunday League in 1992 and that NatWest Trophy in 1988.

Don Bennett was already a long-serving coach when I joined the Middlesex first team, and he was a bit of a godfather – albeit a kind but firm one – in the dressing-room at that time. Don had overseen my own development through the junior ranks, too, and although he didn’t say much he was often on hand with a little word here and there.

It was Gatting who ran the first team, as captain, and who had the final say in everything concerning the senior squad. But Don was always there in the background, and he and Gatt worked closely together. When I turned 17 at the end of the 1986 summer, I felt I needed to move to a Middlesex Premier League club – and thus decided to move that winter to Stanmore. It was a club just ten minutes from where I lived, and it was ideal in terms of my desire to move up and play in a higher league.

But my move created a bit of a stir in club circles, with some people criticising Middlesex for ‘forcing’ me to move; in fact, they had done nothing of the sort, yet it was the first example, indeed, of me getting into trouble for something that was no fault of my own!

Don Bennett’s style as Middlesex coach was very close, in my view, to how Duncan Fletcher operated when he was head coach of England from 1999 to 2007. Duncan was never the most talkative person either, but if he said anything you listened and, like Don, he would be quick to let people know if they were not behaving as they should in any way. It only took a look, actually, to get people back into line.

To me, with my own interests now in coaching, it is fascinating to look at how different coaches have done their jobs. Sometimes coaches can be tempted to talk too much to a player, as if they need to justify their position by doing so. Don and Duncan both preferred to stay a bit in the background, to be consulted by the players and to approach you only if they had a specific piece of information or advice to get across.

They both wanted players to come to them. If you approached Don, for example, he would often answer your question by asking you the question back. He wanted to get you to talk it through, and by doing that to try to deal with the particular issue, technical or otherwise, chiefly by yourself. In what was a very boisterous Middlesex dressing-room, he was also a calming influence. People were not shy about offering an opinion or three, so to have Don sitting quietly in the background was often good for younger players like me.

There are occasions, though, when players don’t like the fact that a coach is sitting back and mainly observing; they don’t like the fact that they don’t know what he is thinking about them. Players can easily start to fret, about an aspect of their game or about their role in the team or whatever. Sometimes as a player you need confirmation that you are doing OK. Often even a quick, ‘Keep going, you are doing well,’ is all that you need.

Mike Gatting’s influence was also a very positive one for me. Being positive was what Gatt was all about, in fact. And not only was he a larger-than-life character, but he was also captain of England when I first walked into the Middlesex first-team dressing-room, an Ashes-winning captain, and a fantastic player. He loved to take on the fast bowlers and he was a wonderful player of spin. To bat at the other end to him was a learning experience in itself, and he was a huge influence on me early in my career.

He really backed me, too, right from when I was coming up through the ranks and in those early seasons, initially when I was still at school, and then when I was taking my first steps as a full-time professional. He backed me 100 per cent, he talked to me about how to approach my batting and my cricket generally, and to have his belief at your back was a tremendous thing for a young lad.

Gatt was also very straightforward in the way he dealt with other players and how he captained both on and off the field. He was upfront and got stuck in. Some players would challenge him, but he would listen, take it all on board and then get on with it in the way he thought was right.

As time went on, it was great for me that Gatt rated my ability because I began to see that players whom he didn’t rate to go a long way in the game didn’t tend to hang around at Middlesex for very long. But you still had to perform – that was the key to everything.

The Middlesex dressing-room then was a rough, tough place, and it was also highly competitive. Players were highly motivated to do well, both for their own careers and for the benefit of the team. But a lot of those guys were competing for England Test places, too, and getting their individual performance right was all that mattered.

It was a very professional environment, and if you didn’t perform, then your teammates soon let you know about it. Looking back, I know now that I was fortunate that there were so many good players in the team during that era that I was able – as a young player – to make a few mistakes and have them covered up by the performances of others. Yet I still knew that I was expected to perform, and to learn quickly.

I was a bit shy and reserved at that young age and so to join this boisterous place with so many top-class players who loved to have a go at one another was something of a culture shock for me! Often, too, to get a point across, players would do it in a mickey-taking way. That is hard for many players to take, let alone someone of my age at the time, and I didn’t take to it that well. It wound me up a treat, and as I was the young kid it was easy for them to wind me up.

It was hard to understand why your teammates would want to take the mick if you had just missed a straight one or something, and often the mickey-taking would be about non-cricketing issues as well which, again, was sometimes difficult to handle at a young age.

The Middlesex dressing-room of that time was, however, a very professional place. The team expected to win things, and all those trophies told you everything about the talent in the squad and the drive to be the best they could. It was like, as a young footballer, walking into the Manchester United or Arsenal dressing-room. If you performed, that was all that mattered. If you didn’t, whoever you were, your teammates let you know.

The environment in which I learned to be a professional cricketer, then, was a very boisterous one. You sank or swam by your own performances, and by your own actions; performance alone was the bottom line. This is not the way the game is now, by the way, because you are just not left to pick things up as you go along. Now, with more and more coaches and support staff around, you are encouraged to forge togetherness as a team, to build team spirit, to be mates with one another and encourage each other, and enjoy everyone’s success as well as your own.

There are a lot of lovey-dovey, idealistic things said in dressing-rooms these days and although that may be preferable for the young players in particular it is not a pre-requisite for success. We also had a lot of fun during that time, but the only way to survive and be in the in-crowd, if you like, was to perform.

Quite a number of players could not handle the way it was at Middlesex in the late 1980s and early 1990s, because they did not gel with others and didn’t feel welcomed. Good players such as Graham Rose, Colin Metson, Aftab Habib and Matthew Keech all left the club during this era because they felt they would do better elsewhere.

As for myself, looking back, I just wish someone – quietly – had got hold of me in a friendly, fatherly sort of way and tried to educate me a little bit more about how to behave in certain situations, and how to handle the ups and downs of being a professional sportsman. I was a kid in a grown-up world, really, and I just followed the crowd. I also didn’t know it when they were just winding me up. I would react, but I was just the youngster.

With hindsight, I know I would have valued that sort of help because then things would not have festered so much. You had to be self-reliant in those days, because that was simply the way it was done, but I was so wrapped up in my game – and in wanting so badly to do well – that I couldn’t see the bigger picture. Nor was I mature enough to see it, and that is where some help could have been given to me.

Yet I don’t blame anyone at Middlesex at the time for not doing so. Not only was there the culture of having to work things out for yourself, but I was also an extremely intense character when it came to my batting, and very intense in particular about doing well. I think the coach and others on the sidelines might have been a bit reluctant to come over for a chat because, on many occasions, that would not have been an easy thing to have done.

No one held your hand, no one said, ‘Come over here and have a look at this bit of video of yourself,’ or this StatsMaster, or whatever, ‘and let’s analyse what’s going on here.’ That sort of thing just didn’t happen, and you were also in this dressing-room that was full of cricketers with totally different styles as well as personalities. There was Keith Brown, Clive Radley, John Emburey, all with idiosyncratic batting techniques, while someone like Roland Butcher had about eight different techniques even in the time I played with him.

I only played a couple of times with Phil Edmonds, but he was obviously another highly individual character at Middlesex when I was coming up through the club. The dressing-room could often be quite a sight: Emburey effing and blinding, Fraser being his usual cynical self, Wayne Daniel wandering around in just his huge bowling boots and a jockstrap, and everyone with an opinion.

Today, players have so much support for them and so much analysis of their own games as they come through the system that it is no surprise that so many of them feel far more comfortable in their dressing-room environment. The game has changed so much in 20 years.

Is it better now? I’d have to say so, because players are guided and helped. It is a smoother path for individual players to walk. Some old-school players would say that the new generation of cricketers do not think for themselves enough, but I think that management of players has improved, while technical back-up allows players to understand their own games so much more quickly.

As early as my debut season in 1987, which continued after I finished my college term in July, I was given an insight into what can happen on the road in county cricket. I remember it as a tremendous early learning experience, and immensely frustrating at the time!

Called up to play in the Championship, against Essex at Chelmsford in mid-August, I top-scored with 71 in our first innings out of just 166 – the next highest score was Wilf Slack’s 20 – and was feeling pretty pleased with myself against an attack which included Neil Foster, Derek Pringle, John Childs and Geoff Miller.

We ended up with a draw, thanks mainly to Mike Gatting’s second innings 132, but on a pitch taking some spin I was lbw to Childs for a second ball duck as the slow left-armer went on to pick up 10 wickets in the match. Also, two days earlier, in the Sunday League match against Essex which was sandwiched into the Championship game, I had been lbw to Foster for a duck even though we won a low-scoring affair, so it was with some trepidation that I travelled down to Cardiff on that Tuesday night for another three-day Championship game against Glamorgan, starting on the Wednesday morning.

When we arrived at the ground, we were astonished to see a pitch that was green on one half and closely shaved, dry and dusting on its other 11 yards! Neither Emburey nor Edmonds were playing for us, because they were at Lord’s playing in the MCC Bicentenary match, and so Glamorgan had prepared a surface to suit their seamers at one end and the off-breaks of Rodney Ontong at the other.

The umpires duly reported the pitch to the Test and County Cricket Board and, in the end, we almost won the game with both Phil Tufnell and Jamie Sykes, who bowled some off-spin, taking five wickets each in the match as Glamorgan finished up hanging on at 156 for 9. But that did not mean too much to me: I had been caught off Ontong for 1 in our first innings and then stumped off Alan Butcher’s very occasional left-arm spin for 0 second time around.

It was horrendous. At Chelmsford on the Saturday I had batted as well as I had ever done in my short career up to that point, posting my then top score in first-class cricket, but in four innings in six days after that – and on totally varied pitches – I had managed to make 0, 0, 1 and 0. I didn’t take it too well, either.

Next up was a long drive up to Wellingborough that Friday night for yet another Championship match beginning the next morning, against Northamptonshire. It rained for much of the time there, actually, washing out the Sunday League match and allowing just an hour and a half ‘s play on the Saturday. The third day of the game was washed out too, but on the second day we reduced Northants from 51 for 1 to 127 all out and then I went in with us 12 for 2.

Winston Davis, the West Indies fast bowler, was leading the Northants attack, and although all the other batsmen were complaining that the pitch was too slow and too difficult I found I could hit the ball on the up and that Davis’s pace meant that it came on to the bat nicely! It was only a club-standard pitch, but to me at that time it was like the ones I was used to. I was on 31 not out when play ended for the day and I remember Don Bennett asking me how I found the pitch.

That was the end of the game, as it rained all the next day, but I was still relieved to get some runs again. An interesting 11 days on the road, though, ended with me having a massive ruck with Angus Fraser about who was going to sit in the front seat of the car on the way home. Stupid, but that was sometimes what it was like when you were travelling around the country playing day after day of county cricket . . .

At the start of the 1990 season I was only 20, but by then I had played throughout one full season for Middlesex, plus two half-summers, and had captained England U19s. I should have been relishing the new season, but by April I was low on confidence and that was because I had just endured an unhappy winter in Australia, playing club cricket in Melbourne.

I had been keen to go, as I had heard so much about the standards of grade cricket and how strong it was. I thought it would do a lot for my game, and me as a person. Clive Radley, however, when he heard where I was going, said I’d be back home in three weeks. He knew what I was like at that time, and he didn’t see me sticking at it.

North Melbourne were my club, and I lasted the full five months there. But I had a pretty horrendous time and, in the end, I did the whole winter only because I wanted to prove to people – and myself – that I wasn’t going to quit.

I found the whole experience tough. There were a lot of brash Australians seemingly queueing up with loads to say about me and what I was doing, and some of the pitches we played on were not very good. I remember that our opening batsman had his jaw broken in our opening game, from a ball which flew up off a length.

In six knocks before Christmas (don’t forget, grade games are two-innings affairs played over successive Saturdays) I didn’t get into double figures once. I was not pleased, and I was also hugely frustrated because I had made runs at every level I’d played at up until then and I was only in Australia to try to bring my batting on. I was moody, and as the weeks went on I was not much fun to be with.

I didn’t mix well enough either with the rest of the players in the team and, once again, it was a situation that was crying out for someone to get hold of me and make me see the bigger picture. I thought everything was about how many runs I got, but it was not; it was also about my game in general and in becoming more mature in my behaviour and my outlook.

Initially, too, I lived in a house with two young Aussie Rules footballers. One of them, Wayne Carey, who was then 18, subsequently went on to become one of the sport’s biggest stars. At the time, though, they were just two very loud, very brash, Aussie kids and there were bits of half-eaten pizza left lying all over the lounge and beer cans thrown everywhere. We even had ants coming into the house at one stage, attracted by all the mess.

Around Christmas time, I was happy to be able to move out. I had begged a guy from the cricket club if I could move in with him and his parents, and fortunately he and they had agreed. But I didn’t make any real friends and there also didn’t seem to be any other young English professionals around in Melbourne.

Through knowing Michael Bell, of Warwickshire, however, I managed to get some more cricket with a Sri Lankan team who played on Sundays, but in my second or third game with them I got myself banned for three weeks for striking an opponent! It was a park game, really, and the opposition were unbelievable with all their sledging, which was getting very nasty.

I got to the point where I’d had enough and, as I was by now batting, I just walked over to this particular guy who was fielding in the gully and put one on him. All hell broke loose. Blokes were flying in from everywhere to break it up. The game continued once it had been calmed down, but it didn’t save me from the suspension.

Soon after Christmas I did manage to make 96 for North Melbourne in a first grade match, but that remained my highest score, and the rest of the season was blighted by rain and lots of low-scoring games.

I got a job in the sports department of Myers store, working for four days a week from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., and that kept me going, gave me a focus and a bit of extra money in my pocket. I also spent a lot of time watching Australia’s Test and one-day international matches against Pakistan and Sri Lanka on television, as they were the two teams who were touring that Aussie summer. But the overall result of my five-month stint Down Under was that I came back home in March feeling very low on confidence. I was glad that I’d stuck it out, but it hadn’t done a great deal for my cricket.

During the first half of the 1990 county season, too, I felt that I was not being consistent enough. I got the odd decent score, but nothing brilliant, and I felt I was not progressing well enough as a batsman.

Then came a run of three hundreds in just over three weeks, in July, which transformed my season and which – in the case of the third century – also helped Middlesex to pull away from our nearest challengers and move towards the winning of the County Championship.

It began on 1 July, at Lord’s, on a beautifully sunny day when everything hit the middle of the bat and I scored 147 not out from 90 balls against Worcestershire in the Refuge Assurance Sunday League. There was a short boundary on the Tavern side, and I hit eight sixes. We had batted first, and so there was no pressure of chasing. It was just the sheer exhilaration of hitting the ball, hard and often. It was a bit of a breakthrough innings for me as well as being my maiden Sunday League hundred.

Ten days later, at Uxbridge, both myself and Keith Brown hit hundreds – and his was quicker and better than mine because he took us all the way to victory in a tight NatWest Trophy second-round tie against Surrey in which we chased down their 60-over total of 288 for 8 with just two balls to spare. But I was very happy with my 104, as I had gone in at number three when Desmond Haynes was out for nought, gloving a hook at Waqar Younis in the first over. Waqar was rapid, and it was very pleasing that Mike Roseberry and I – two young lads – were able to see him off and also give us a great platform to chase what was a big total. Gatt was nursing an injury, too, and so only came in down the order, which meant that both Keith and I had the main responsibility of getting those runs.

Yet it was my 146 not out against Somerset, also at Uxbridge, on 24 July which perhaps gave me most pleasure of all. We had been set to score 369 in what proved to be 69 overs and this was a tough ask, even though it had been a high-scoring game and the weather was still hot and the outfield quick.

Haynes made 108 but was out with our total on 215, and Gatt had also gone after adding only 36 to his first innings 170 not out. The last 20 overs began with us still needing another 149 and although I was seeing it really well it looked as if it would be too much for us. By this stage both Brown and Emburey had come and gone too, and Neil Williams, in at number seven, was having a bit of a problem getting the bat on the ball because the pitch was taking quite a lot of spin.

That was when Chris Tavaré, the Somerset captain, came up to me and asked if we would still go for the victory if he fed me some runs. I just said, Yes! We were actually going for it anyway, but it was just that Neil was genuinely struggling to get the ball away. I wasn’t going to turn down a chance like that, though, and Tavaré himself bowled an over which I took for 20 runs, including three sixes. It also took me breezing past my century, which was only my second in Championship cricket at that stage. I will be eternally grateful to Tav for his fine gesture. As Dennis Amiss once said to me, it always seems easier when you’ve reached three figures.

I then hit Harvey Trump, the Somerset off-spinner, for two more sixes and – although Williams was dismissed – we suddenly needed 12 from the last over. Neil Mallender bowled it, and I managed to run three twos before hitting the fourth and fifth deliveries of the over for four. We had won the game, which for me was a fantastic feeling because I really felt I had made a significant contribution; it was also our fifth win in six games in the Championship and kept up our momentum at the top of the table.

Psychologically, this was a big innings for me. I had won Middlesex an important game, carrying the side’s hopes through the second half of our chase, and all this at the end of a game in which I had been awarded my county cap, together with Phil Tufnell and Micky Roseberry.

Yet those three hundreds had not come about by accident. My leap in form had coincided with some work that I had been doing in the nets at Lord’s with Desmond Haynes. I had been getting out a lot lbw because of a habit of putting my front leg straight down the pitch from a middle guard. Professional bowlers soon work out that if they hit the line of off stump and nip it back a touch then they stand a good chance of getting you, and first-class umpires are also more inclined to give you out even if you are thrusting your front pad down the track.

I experimented initially in net practice with a leg-stump guard, but I kept on nicking the ball on or just outside off stump and I was beginning to despair of ever getting something worked out. Desmond noticed my problems one day and came over for a chat.

He told me to keep my middle guard but to practise hitting the ball straighter, between the bowler and mid-on instead of wide of mid-on. But he said I must not move my head across, and also that I must not hit across the line, and so he and I worked on opening up my front foot in my stance so that instead of standing totally sideways on, as I had been taught and had always done, I freed my front foot to go down the pitch on the line of leg stump and not middle.

This was simple advice, in many ways, but because it came from a player like Dessie Haynes, one of the very best batsmen in world cricket at the time, it meant everything. It was fantastic that he took the time to help me, and that is not meant to be a slight on any of the Middlesex coaches. It was just that I had by then batted with him quite a bit in the middle and as a younger player you naturally look for guidance from those who have played at a higher level – a level you want to reach.

It was also a matter of styles; someone like Gatt stayed on leg stump and looked to hit through the offside, to cut whenever he could. Desmond, like a lot of top players, looked to get across his stumps and make anything straight disappear through the legside.

In a short time, I felt everything clicking into place and I found I was hitting the ball with a full face of the bat, and through mid-on, as Haynes had commanded. I found myself getting into a real rhythm at the crease, and I was not getting agitated and frustrated. My hands were not holding the bat so tightly, and I was not trying to hit the ball too hard. At a pivotal time in my career I was also not getting out lbw so often. And, if you can survive early on, and not get out so often when you are at your most vulnerable, you are clearly in a better position to make more runs. It was a big turning point for me, and Desmond Haynes was magnificent.

What was especially good about the way he tweaked my technique was the way he went about it. Too many players make technical adjustments which actually end up making their problems worse. In fact, after I began to bat with my front foot slightly open, I noticed quite a lot of other players on the circuit trying to do the same. But they made the mistake of turning their shoulders too, which meant that the bat was coming down from gully instead of straight, and they got into all sorts of bother. What Dessie saw in me was the opportunity to make a small change without it affecting anything else in my technique.

The great thing, too, about Haynes, Gatting and Emburey at Middlesex was that they all loved to talk about cricket. There were many times on the road when Angus Fraser, Micky Roseberry and I would go out for a meal with those three senior players and enjoy all sorts of discussions – and sometimes quite heated debates – about various cricketing topics. It was great for us youngsters, but often it perhaps went a bit too far.

I remember, back in 1989 when I was still only 19, absolutely flying into Gatt for agreeing to lead England’s rebel tour to South Africa the following winter. I had studied politics at A level and was quite interested in things like that, and I tore into him for accepting what I told him was blood money. I said there were 20 million black people in South Africa who didn’t have the vote and all he was doing by going there was helping to prop up the apartheid regime. The dressing-room, as I recall, began to empty a little quicker than usual as I continued this tirade and Gatt came back at me. What had started out as a bit of a wind-up became a furious argument.

Again, looking back, I should have realised that Gatt had not taken the decision lightly and that his poor treatment by England had contributed quite a bit to how the situation developed, but at the time I was convinced I had a point and the way all the players were with one another meant that I didn’t hold back, even though I was still a teenager and Gatt was a former England captain almost twice my age. In the end, he stormed off, but we were fine about it soon afterwards. I can laugh at it now, too.