As one half of a long line of cricketing brothers to play for England, Adam Hollioake is an example of a true warrior cricketer who never knows when he is beaten. He played the game as tough as they come, yet off the field he was a fun-loving, laid-back guy who enjoyed life to the full. He was perhaps never quite as laid-back as his brother, Ben, or as naturally talented, but he made up for it with his competitive instincts. He was a big reason why Surrey had as much trophy-winning success as they did during the late 1990s and early 2000s under his captaincy. It is one thing to have the talented players he had at his disposal; it is another to get the best out of them, and that is why England gave him the one-day captaincy for a spell. It didn’t quite work in the same way for England, but he gave it everything and earned a lot of respect, certainly from me.
Before I tell this story, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: I love Alex Tudor like a brother. He is a tremendous fella who is much loved and respected throughout the cricket world, and by none more so than me. He knows this, and when you read the following tale you have to take it in the spirit in which it all happened, which is two team-mates and friends doing what team-mates and friends do – only it didn’t quite go according to plan, and there is no bragging whatsoever involved.
Those who know what I’m up to now as a professional boxer and mixed martial arts fighter will realise that I have always had an interest and a respect for fighters and athletes who fight. I get the biggest adrenaline rush of my life when I step into a ring – it takes a lot of hard work, sacrifice and dedication from both men to be in a position to go hammer and tongs at each other. I’ve always loved that aspect of sport and the bravery it takes to front up to your opposite combatant and take him on. Even in a non-contact sport like cricket I loved that sort of contest, when a fast bowler was steaming in at you as a batsman and it was a case of hit or be hit.
Anyway, while I was at Surrey, I used to train in the winter using boxing and sparring as one of my fitness tools. One year I thought I would take my little brother Ben and his mate Alex along with me, because I thought as two young lads on the staff it would be good for them. They hadn’t done it much, but they were really talented sportsmen and both had good hands and feet. Still, it wasn’t really fair for me to go toe-to-toe with them when I’d been doing it for a fair few years.
The rules we came up with were as follows: they could hit me wherever they wanted, but I wouldn’t be allowed to hit them above the shoulder. It worked and the two of them enjoyed the sessions and I think they got a lot out of it. The only problem from my point of view was that, by not being able to land any shots to the head, every time I led with a punch that had to be lowered, Tudes would come round the other side and catch me on the head. It was fine, but after a while he started to grow in confidence. When he became quite handy at picking off a shot to the head, the banter would start.
‘I schooled you, Smokes!’ he would say after a session, and I would smile and remind him that if it had been a proper fight he wouldn’t be so cocky.
We’d been training like this for about two years when there was a rain delay during one match and not much happening, so we went down into the gym for a bit. I was sparring with someone else and Tudes said: ‘Come on man, let’s do a bit.’
‘Okay, but if we do it I’m not just taking the body – I can hit you wherever, just like you can hit me.’
We both agreed to this and got the gloves on and started messing about. It was all going fine, but each time he jabbed me he was bringing his hands back a little bit low, and I told him, ‘Keep your hands up, they’re too low and I can come over the top.’
I told him four or five times, and then he jabbed and caught me with quite a sharp blow and instinctively I just hit him. It wasn’t the hardest punch in the world, but it just caught him flush on the side of his face and he went down like a 20-storey block of flats being demolished. The legs went and the body followed – he was gone. I tried to catch him to stop him from hitting the hard floor, but he’s a big boy and I couldn’t hold him. He was out for the count, but he soon came round and was just a bit dazed.
There were two problems, though. Firstly, a few of the boys, including Alec Stewart, had watched the whole thing, so there was no getting away from what had happened and Tudes was going to be in for a bit of ribbing for going down, and me for laying out a team-mate. The other hitch was that five minutes later the umpires came in and said the rain had stopped and we’d going back out soon . . . and we were bowling! All I could think was, Holy shit, I’ve knocked out our strike fast bowler and we need him to bowl!
He was in no shape to bowl that day and had to sit things out for a while. He came back and bowled later on with a thumping headache, which showed his bravery and his toughness.
What I would say is that, after that, he got a bit of banter from the lads, who can be pretty harsh at times, and I didn’t like it when they called him ‘Glass Jaw Tudor’ and such like because none of them were brave enough to step into a ring with me. I genuinely didn’t mean to do it. The worst thing a fighter can be seen as is a bit of a bully and that isn’t me. Now I’m a professional fighter I never spar too hard with fighters who are inexperienced, and I always make sure I look after my training partners.
Others found that episode a lot funnier than I did for obvious reasons, but a couple of years later there was an incident at The Oval which had me crying with laughter. It was just after the quarter-final of the first ever Twenty20 competition and Mark Ramprakash had inevitably been scoring millions of runs. Every time he picked up a bat and walked out to the middle he came back with a hundred to his name. As a result, he was picking up every award going, whether it was player of the month in the championship, player of the month in the one-day competition, man of the match, or just the ‘I’ve got a lot of runs’ award – you name it, he got it.
So we had finished this game at The Oval and there were all sorts of gongs being dished out. Ramps’ name gets called and he goes up for his award. He picks up the giant cheque and stands there waiting for the photo to be taken of him accepting it, but everyone has gone silent and nothing is really happening. We’re all trying to work out what is going on, and the Tannoy is blaring out something but it is all a bit distorted and no one can really make out what is being said.
Ramps remains where he is, waiting for the photo, but all the while someone to the side is trying to point out to him that he’s not there to pick up the award – he’s been called out to present it to a little kid who is standing next to him. The problem is that, by now, the whole thing has gone on a bit too long, so they’ve got to move on and they start to shoo the little kid away and pretend that the award is for Ramps and not the 12-year-old, but he’s having none of it. So you’ve got this stand-off between Ramps and this lad for an award that should have been a special moment, but instead becomes a battle of wills. In the end they are both ushered away from the stage a little perplexed while the rest of the Surrey team are rolling around the outfield in howls of laughter. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on a cricket ground.