Strictly Me

LESSONS LEARNED

‘The press boys had labelled Nasser Hussain, Mark Ramprakash and myself as English cricket’s “brat pack”. This was slightly misleading, but I suppose we’d all acquired reputations in county cricket, rightly or wrongly, for being talented but difficult’

– Graham Thorpe

I was only a fortnight past my 21st birthday when I became a County Championship winner for the first time. But at that age, and at that time of my career, I was just too young to appreciate what it meant.

Middlesex clinched the title against Sussex, at Hove, in our last match of the 1990 season, but we had been favourites to win it since mid-summer and, overall, the culture of winning was so great at the club that I think I took it all for granted. I only made 13 as we beat bottom team Sussex by an innings to take the Championship by a 31-point margin, and that probably didn’t help my mood.

When I look back, I was privileged to play in such a fine team when I was so young. In 1990, we also won the end-of-season Refuge Assurance Cup – played between the top four sides in the Sunday League – but I suppose my thoughts at the time were that winning was what we were paid to do and, looking around the dressing-room, it was no surprise that we were regular winners of domestic trophies.

You only have to look at the consistent and high-quality individual performances of the side to see why we took the Championship by such a comfortable margin. Every one of us in the top five played in all 22 matches, too, as did John Emburey. Both he and Mike Gatting, of course, had been suspended by England for touring South Africa as ‘rebels’ the previous winter, and only Angus Fraser (three Tests) and Neil Williams (one Test) were called up for international duty that summer.

Paul Downton would surely have played in every game, too, but for an unfortunate injury sustained when a bail flew up and struck him in the eye during a Sunday League game at Basingstoke, yet in Paul Farbrace we had a capable deputy behind the stumps.

Phil Tufnell was the leading Championship wicket-taker with 65, from 20 appearances, and most of the other wickets were shared around by Emburey (57), Williams (49), Fraser (41), Norman Cowans (36) and Simon Hughes (28). Emburey and Tufnell bowled a significant percentage of the overs between them and gave us great control, as well as wicket-taking ability. Having two fine spinners that season, when the seam on the ball was reduced as an experiment by the authorities, was another distinct advantage for us.

As for the batting, Desmond Haynes topped the Championship averages with 2,036 runs at 63.62, and then came Gatting (1,685 at 58.10), Keith Brown (1,416 at 54.46), me (1,327 at 44.23) and Mike Roseberry (1,497 at 40.45). Emburey also chipped in with 698, while Downton made 530 in his 15 matches, and it all added up to a very solid team performance.

Haynes and Gatting, as the two senior batsmen, were very different in their style and approach; Haynes would even practise opening the bat face in the nets so he could better manufacture shots in matches to avoid fielders and pick up ones and twos rather than hit a classic stroke and see it cut off. But both were very positive cricketers and their influence rubbed off on the rest of us a lot. Desmond in particular would often challenge the rulebook, and seeing his skill level was a challenge to us to up ours.

Fraser was an especially fine bowler then, before his chronic hip injury problems, and his height meant he got steep bounce to go with a decent pace. He hit the bat hard and often hit the splice. He also gave batsmen nothing, such was his accuracy, and he absolutely hated – and I mean hated – giving the batsman even one run.

Cowans was a much underrated bowler for most of his career. He played 19 Tests between 1982 and 1985, but England never picked him again after the age of 24. Why, I will never know. By 1990 he had lost a bit of his pace, but he was still a fantastic bowler and he often took wickets with the new ball. Simon Hughes had a quick arm, was shorter in build, mixed it up a bit and swung it, while Williams had good pace and swung it regularly. As a four-pronged pace attack, they were as effective a unit as any in the country.

But it was the presence of Emburey and Tufnell in our attack which meant we had all the bases covered. Embers was so steady and dependable, and very economical, while Tufnell was more attacking in style, like his predecessor Phil Edmonds. They made as good a combination and I don’t think many people at Middlesex realised how lucky the county was to have had two such potent pairs of spinners for such a long time.

When I joined the Middlesex staff, it was clear that Tuffers was being groomed to take over from Edmonds, but he was quite a sight. He had very long hair, which he wore in a ponytail, and pranced around in crocodile-skin shoes. He was into acid house, rave, parties and dancing all night. He was married at 20, and divorced at 21.

Yet, apart from being a lunatic for a lot of the time, he was a really nice guy underneath and in 1990 he played a massive role in that Championship title win despite still only being 24. He had also probably benefited from the county’s decision the previous year to release a player called Jamie Sykes from the staff. Tuffers and he were big mates off the field and they used to get into all sorts of scrapes. The club felt that one had to go, and Sykes, a talented cricketer, was the one deemed surplus to requirements. Middlesex decided that Tufnell offered them the most, and how right they were because he was a magnificent bowler.

My first senior England recognition also came along at the end of the 1990 season, when I was selected to tour Pakistan and Sri Lanka with the England A team in early 1991, under the captaincy of Hugh Morris.

There was a dramatic start, as the tour schedule in Pakistan was cut short due to the first Gulf War, but Sri Lanka offered us the chance of a longer visit there and for me it was a significant trip. I came of age particularly on that tour as a player of spin, notably in an innings of 158 against Sri Lanka A at Kandy, which took me nine and three-quarter hours of really hard graft against a good attack in hot conditions.

It was a breakthrough innings, in terms of concentration especially, because sometimes you were only scoring 30 runs in a session because it was so hard to get the ball away, but you had to learn to stick in there and then make the bowlers pay when you got the chance. Also, facing quality spinners for hour after hour meant that I soon learned to put into practice what Mike Gatting had told me about allowing the ball to come on, and playing it with soft hands. I also made 91 in the first one-day ‘international’ against the Sri Lankan A side and felt I grew in stature as a batsman on this tour.

We also had a first sighting of Muttiah Muralitharan in a two-day game towards the end of the trip, when he was picked for an invitational side when still at school. He took six wickets. But we had an excellent side, especially in batting, that included Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe, Neil Fairbrother, Ian Salisbury and Richard Illingworth. The Sri Lankan opposition was strong, and in their own conditions they presented a considerable challenge.

The subsequent summer of 1991 was memorable for me, as I was selected by England for the first time and ended up playing in all six Tests of that season, but for Middlesex it was more of a struggle. My Test commitments meant I played in only 12 of the 22 Championship games, scoring 877 runs at 48.72, and despite Mike Gatting’s 2,044 runs at 78, and 134 wickets between them by Tufnell and Emburey, we finished 15th.

Unfortunately, the club had for some reason decided to do without an overseas player that season (Desmond Haynes being with the West Indies) and we predictably missed a player who had topped 2,000 runs in 1990. It would never happen in these two division days! Yet it was injuries to the fast bowlers, in particular Fraser, Hughes, Ricky Ellcock and Dean Headley, and the premature retirement during the season of Paul Downton, as a result of his eye injury of the previous summer, which hit hardest of all. With me away a lot, too, we simply began to run out of ammunition.

Personally, I found my first experience of jumping between county and England games very demanding, although I felt in decent form with the bat throughout the season. I remember on one occasion, at Cardiff, getting out and having a huge tantrum in the dressing-room because, as an England batsman, I felt I should be contributing more.

There was also an incident early on that season at Lord’s, when we were hammered by Sussex. I got runs in both innings, including a hundred as we were bowled out for a second time, and I got involved in a running exchange of pleasantries with Peter Moores, who was keeping wicket for them. We had several full and frank exchanges of views. I think I was reacting to the additional pressure I felt I was under; I may have been only 21, but I felt I had to play like a senior player – an England player.

A lot happened to me in the winter of 1991–92, much of which is dealt with elsewhere, but suffice it to say that I was not in the best frame of mind by the time the 1992 summer began. Indeed, before the Championship season had even started, I found myself in trouble.

I had been home from the England A tour of the West Indies for less than a fortnight when Middlesex continued their warm-up to the new season with, allegedly, a first-class friendly against Cambridge University at Fenner’s. I say ‘allegedly’ for good reason: to my mind, this was not cricket of first-class standard. Nor did it turn out to be very friendly.

Perhaps I should not have played in that game, and instead had a bit more rest before the Championship programme began. After all, I had been away, first in New Zealand with England, then in the Caribbean with England A, from just after Christmas until early April. But it was clearly felt I needed some readjustment to English pitches and so, on 17 April, we began a three-day game against the students.

After the frustrations and the sheer hard slog of the winter, what with hardly playing during my seven weeks in New Zealand and then facing some very good and hostile bowling in the West Indies, on a number of difficult pitches, the last thing I needed was to come up against two very ordinary off-spinners pinging the ball consistently two feet outside leg stump with seven fielders on the legside.

I scored 49 and 48 in the game but got out again to one of the off-spinners, a bloke called Marcus Wight, when I tried in vain to catch hold of yet another ball speared down outside the line of my pads and top-edged a catch. I was not very happy about this, nor about what had gone before, especially as, in my opinion, Wight’s action was not even legal.

As ball after ball was fired in negatively – and this in a pre-season warm-up match, remember – I began to wonder what on earth I was doing playing in this sort of cricket. It was a joke. I was not slow, either, in voicing my opinions to the Cambridge players and anyone else who would listen. And when this guy Wight came out to bat later on the final day in the University’s second innings, I let him have both barrels.

Only a couple of weeks earlier I had flown back to England having been tested hugely by the challenge of a month facing a four-pronged West Indies A pace attack of Courtney Walsh, Tony Gray, Kenny Benjamin and either Linden Joseph or Ottis Gibson, plus a classy Jamaican off-spinner called Nehemiah Perry. Now this.

I know it was childish, and I know I should just have taken what practice I could get and walked away, but to me this was not first-class cricket and it was a disgrace. And, I reasoned, if guys like Marcus Wight felt that this was the right thing to do in a first-class game then I was going to give him something else to remember the experience by: the sort of reception that, like it or not, is all part and parcel of top-level cricket. Even by that stage of my career, I’d had a lot said to me on a cricket field and I’d had to take it. I thought it was now time to give some out.

When Wight came out to bat, I certainly had a lot to say to him, and John Emburey, who was captaining us in the game, told me to leave it alone. I told him what I thought, too, and in the end Embers sent me down to field at third man. I should not have behaved the way I did and it was foolish. Then there were words said in the dressing-room after the match and I was fined by the club.

It was an unhappy start to the new season and, unfortunately, I now found out what it was like to have a disciplinary ‘record’. And as an international player, I discovered, even something that happens in a non-match at Fenner’s, with hardly anyone watching, can rebound on you very hard. I was also naive to believe, at that age, that anything that happened in the privacy of the dressing-room – and said in the heat of the moment, for instance – would remain private. I soon learned that things got reported, almost word-for-word in some cases, in papers like the News of the World.

Emburey was quite correct to tell me to cut it out during the Fenner’s incident, but I couldn’t accept that it was not my right to stick in my twopenny’s worth. It was all, looking back, an accumulation of the frustrations and tough times during that previous winter and my desire to start the season well in order to get a recall to the England seniors. I had gone on that England A tour simply because I had wanted to. I had specifically asked the selectors to be included because I wanted to play cricket; I wanted so much to do well.

As a result of this Fenner’s incident, however, I had put my name into the public domain in a disciplinary situation, and it was unpleasant. To make it worse, I had no idea of the commotion it would cause because it was tagged to me being an ‘England player’.

The England A tour to the Caribbean had finished well for me, with a hard-fought 86 against Walsh, Gray, Benjamin, Gibson and Perry in the third unofficial ‘Test’ against West Indies A at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados, and overall I had scored 322 runs at an average of 40 in the five first-class matches.

I had joined the tour at the warm-up stage in Bermuda in late February, having initially flown with the senior England side from New Zealand to Australia as cover for the World Cup squad. Allan Lamb was a fitness doubt for a short while, and I remember I was even kitted out with some World Cup gear before being told that I was not required after all. That was when I asked to go straight to the A tour.

We lost the three-match Test series against Walsh’s West Indies A team by a 2–0 margin, but that was no disgrace. They had some fine players, with the likes of Clayton Lambert, Carlisle Best, Junior Murray, Roland Holder and Jimmy Adams in addition to a truly Test-class bowling attack.

The first Test was played on a minefield of a pitch at the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad. We were at a distinct disadvantage against their firepower when Devon Malcolm, our strike bowler and someone who had taken ten wickets in the match when Graham Gooch’s England had narrowly failed to beat the West Indies on that same ground two years earlier, suffered a back injury just before the game, which also ruled him out of the second Test.

My own most disappointing moment came in that second game at Arnos Vale in St Vincent when, on a much better surface, I had reached 41 and put on 88 for our second wicket with Hugh Morris when I attempted to hit Perry over the top and was caught at mid-on. I was batting well, but it was possibly the wrong shot and I mishit it and slightly dragged it, and Tony Gray, a tall man, was able to jump up and take the catch.

It was simply poor execution, as much as an ill-judged stroke, but a comment from Keith Fletcher, our England A coach, got back to me second-hand and I was not best pleased. Keith had told someone that some of us ‘were playing like millionaires’ and it was a criticism that stung. It upset me because he had not spoken to me about it and also because this was a development tour. We were not the finished article and that was why we were all on the tour in the first place, a tour I had also taken it upon myself to join simply because I was so desperate to learn and improve.

I had also toured Pakistan and Sri Lanka the previous winter under Keith as coach. Overall he was nice enough to me and we had a decent relationship. This was an occasion, however, when I don’t think he communicated with me as I think he should have done. Indeed, when I look back on my early career, there were several times when I believe I needed a coach to ask me a few questions – in private and at the appropriate moments – and get me to talk about my own game and how I was trying to improve it and build it.

Keith Fletcher was someone about whom I had heard a lot of good things, both as a man-manager and especially as a coach, but in my experience I didn’t really see that and it was a shame because I was there to learn; I was eager to learn.

Back in England, though, and after the Fenner’s incident and the decision by Middlesex to fine me, I was perked up by a century against Lancashire at Lord’s in our second Championship fixture and then, against Surrey at Lord’s towards the end of May, my maiden double-hundred. I finished on 233, from 319 balls, but frustratingly Surrey hung on for a draw with their last pair at the wicket after being totally outplayed.

Selected for England’s opening Test of that summer’s series against Pakistan, I made a duck and was immediately dropped. For most of the rest of the season, and despite being picked twice more by England at the end of that five-match series, I was struggling to find any real rhythm with the bat. I was not playing well and I wasn’t exactly going about my business with a smile on my face; what overall was a difficult summer had a very poor ending because of another unfortunate incident.

This happened at Uxbridge, on 16 August, and it was especially frustrating and annoying for me because I had just played a decent innings of 58 as we chased down a Yorkshire 40-over total of 194 for 6 in a match that, if we won it, would clinch us the first Sunday League title in Middlesex’s history with two games in hand.

It was a very hot day and, because we could win the title after a great season in the Sunday League, there were 3,500 people packed into Uxbridge’s compact ground. I had put on 107 with John Carr, but towards the end of our stand Sachin Tendulkar had come on for Yorkshire and the ball had begun to swing all over the place. He bowled clever, non-bouncing medium pace and he was wobbling it both ways. I actually began to think that Yorkshire had done something with the ball, because it had started to swing so suddenly, and then I was stumped off Tendulkar’s bowling with the total at 159 and I felt I had let the side down.

In sheer disappointment, I took a bit longer than usual to drag myself off the field and, as the applause for my innings was dying away, someone in the crowd shouted out in a very loud voice: ‘Come on, Ramprakash, get off the field you f****** Paki bastard.’

I felt this was out of order and I lost my rag. I shouted ‘F*** off’ very loudly back, and was aware of everything going very quiet as I walked on through the spectators and into the dressing-room. But I was very angry and was still upset about it as I took my batting gear off and went to get a drink and watch what I hoped would still be a victory for us from the players’ viewing area.

Because of the heat, and because I was very hot and sweaty having just batted, I only put on a T-shirt with the arms cut off over my whites. Bob Gale, the Middlesex cricket committee chairman, who was also in the room, told me that what I was wearing was not appropriate and to go and put something else on.

By now, with Carr and especially new batsman Paul Weekes both batting brilliantly, we were winning the game – and with it the title – but I suddenly felt that I could not be bothered with all the aggravation and so I went and got my kit together and left the ground. I missed the trophy and medal presentations, the after-match TV stuff, because Sky were covering the game, and the team’s celebrations.

The incident at the end of my innings was obviously upsetting, even if you discount the racial unpleasantness, but I was also upset because of my reaction, and then I had Bob Gale, whom I felt should not even have been in what was supposed to be an area for the players to relax, having a go at me for not wearing a Middlesex shirt. I just wanted to get away from it all.

Back at Uxbridge the following day, for the final day of the Championship game with Yorkshire, I scored a rapid 94 to lead a successful chase for 231 in 46 overs, and that innings and our six-wicket win made me feel a whole lot better. We then jumped into our cars for the drive down to Bournemouth, where another Championship fixture was starting against Hampshire the next day.

When we reached our hotel in Bournemouth, however, I was summoned to see Mike Gatting and Don Bennett. Captain and coach told me that, in the light of what had happened at Uxbridge 24 hours earlier, I was being left out of the Hampshire match for disciplinary reasons.

I was very upset indeed at this suspension because I knew it would be linked to the Fenner’s incident and I knew that the media would be pinning the ‘bad boy’ tag on me again. There was also the public humiliation, and all because of a stupid and offensive comment being shouted out from the crowd and my silly reaction. I knew that I should not have reacted in the way I did, despite the provocation, and I knew, too, that Middlesex had to deal with it in some way following what had happened at the start of the season at Cambridge.

Phil Tufnell was my roommate in Bournemouth that night and I will always be grateful for the way he calmed me down and talked to me. He himself had been through a few disciplinary incidents by then, of course, but he was a massive help to me that evening because my whole world had been shaken by what had happened.

I was so wrapped up in my career, with my frustrations at not being able to nail down an England Test place after two home summers and one winter with the national squad, and I just knew that this affair was going to have ramifications when it came to the selectors sitting down in the weeks ahead to pick the side for that coming winter’s tour to India and Sri Lanka. Not yet 23, though, I couldn’t release all my emotions nor see that my ambition to succeed was all-consuming.

The next day I was told to play instead for Middlesex seconds, who just happened to be playing down the road at Southampton against Hampshire seconds. I lashed my way to a hundred, and then Bob Gale came up to me in the pavilion afterwards and said that he had spoken to the England selectors. They had assured him, said Bob, that the disciplinary action the club had taken against me would not harm my chances of being included by England on that winter’s tour to India.

After that Second XI fixture was over, I duly rejoined the first team squad for their next match and continued on with what remained of the season, hopeful that the whole matter had been put behind me.

On the evening of 5 September, my 23rd birthday, I was at my parents’ house when the telephone rang just as we were finishing dinner. It was Ted Dexter, the chairman of England’s selectors. And after telling me that he was sorry that I had not made the squad for the winter tour, he outlined to me that the main reason was that England were worried about my disciplinary problems.

My parents hit the roof when I told them the bad news. Why had Bob Gale gone out of his way to tell me the exact opposite of what had then happened? Was it that Middlesex were trying to get me to take my punishment without any further ado and finish the season with everything thus smoothed over? Even with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t know – but that’s how it looked at the time.

What I would say here is, looking back on that decision by Dexter’s committee, it was fair enough merely on cricketing grounds because both as a player and a person I don’t think I should have gone to India. The England selectors probably did me a favour. Nevertheless, my dad and I then asked for a showdown meeting with Middlesex at the end of the season. Both my parents came to the meeting with Mike Gatting and a number of club officials, in fact. We felt very let down by the club. During the discussion Gatt said that his opinion was that players should not react to things shouted out to them from the crowd and – it was true – Gatt himself had suffered some terrible abuse during his long career without reacting to it.

He had a thick skin, but he also said players needed to learn not to react as I had done. Of course, he was right in what he said, but I couldn’t help thinking that even Gatt himself had still had his moments on a cricket field. My dad said that it might be easy to ignore comments to start with, but it was like a dripping tap eroding something placed beneath it. Eventually – and especially in the heat of the moment, when sportsmen are experiencing the strong emotions that come with performing in the heat of battle – passions will always ignite.

He also had a very good point, but the bottom line of this affair was that I had learned a very tough lesson. And it was a lesson that I simply had to learn. My season had been tainted, and all the pleasure I should have drawn from our Sunday League trophy win had been taken away by this incident. That was also a huge shame.

The summer of 1991 had been, overall, a very good one for me and I had felt that I had made something of a breakthrough in my career, even though I had not put a really big score on the board in my first six Tests for England. But 1992, after such a tough winter, had been a difficult experience both when I was given some more England opportunities and during my time with Middlesex.

Off the field, especially, it had been a testing time and the result of everything was that I had a winter at home to contemplate. In many ways I needed the rest and recuperation, but it was still a big disappointment not to be picked for England’s winter tour. It meant that I had dropped out of the Test reckoning again and that I had to regroup, both in terms of my cricket and my behaviour, if I wanted to get back to that level again.

Therefore when the 1993 season came around, I had made the decision that – no matter what – I would not get into trouble again either on the field or with the sort of incident that had blown up in my face at Uxbridge. My main goal, going into that new season, was not a cricketing one. It was to stay out of trouble. And, do you know what, that attitude meant that I had what I will always consider to be my worst domestic season.

Mentally, that priority took something significant out of my game. At the time I was not aware of it – certainly in the first part of the season – but I began to realise that it took a lot of the fire out of my personality and my approach to batting. In many ways, my heart was not in what I was doing. And that, for someone like me, who is so passionate about my game, is quite a state to get in.

I know I have always walked a fine line when it comes to my competitiveness – not just in cricket but in football, too, when I was younger – but it is in my make-up to have that desire and passion to do well. For most of 1993, I was not truly being myself.

Another big change that season was that, for the first time, the County Championship was made up entirely of four-day matches. As someone who had grown up with three-day cricket, this required a totally different mindset. You obviously got many fewer first-class innings per season than before, and so mentally you had to be right on the money every time. You had to be fully focused as a batsman, and I wasn’t.

I only had 22 knocks in 16 Championship appearances that season, compared to 38 in 22 Championship games back in 1990. It was a big difference and meant a big adjustment for batsmen around the country.

No Middlesex batsman scored 1,000 runs in 1993 and I ended up with 813 at an average of 38.71, which might look respectable enough but was boosted only by an innings of 140 against Yorkshire at Scarborough in mid-August and then an unbeaten 117 against Lancashire at Lord’s in our penultimate match.

By then, too, we had been confirmed as Championship winners and – although the season ended with this flourish and with my sudden recall to England arms in the final Ashes Test at the Oval – I felt, overall, that I had not contributed hugely to our triumph.

Indeed, although there always seemed to be someone who chipped in with the bat at crucial times, only Gatting with 981 runs at 65.40 stood out among the frontline batsmen, and our comfortable 36-point eventual winning margin was very much down once again to the 68 wickets at 18 and 59 wickets at 20 which John Emburey and Phil Tufnell, respectively, took with their potent spin partnership. Angus Fraser would not want me to forget his 50 wickets at 24.38 either!

Looking back now on that Championship triumph, with the perspective of another 16 years in this world, it was immature of me not to have enjoyed it as much as I should have done. Irrespective of my own form, winning the Championship again – for the second time and at the age of only 23 – should have been a fantastic experience.

Yet it was such a competitive environment at Middlesex that I only really took full pleasure from achievement when I had made a significant contribution to that success myself. I also had very high expectations of myself and that summer it didn’t really happen for me with the bat for the reasons I’ve explained.

My lack of a competitive edge also made it a summer that I do not remember with great affection. Of course I was pleased we had won more silverware, but I couldn’t see the big picture in those days.

However, with those two late hundreds and with my unexpected Test return, at least I could say at the end of it all that I had achieved my goal and had been ultimately rewarded for it. I had stayed out of trouble, I was a county champion and I was back in the England team!