When David Gower pulled his first ball in Test cricket for four,
his was not the only life about to change, remembers Eleanor Oldroyd
Friday June 2, 1978. It was a big day for English cricket . . . and a big day for me. It was my 16th birthday. I got only one card in the post but after breakfast my parents, my two brothers and I got in the car to drive to Birmingham. On the way we stopped in Kidderminster where my brothers bought me Abbey Road by The Beatles. We then made our way to Edgbaston, where Pakistan were due to resume on 162 for 9.
The reason I know all this in such detail, 31 years later, is that I recently found, hidden in a box in the corner of the loft, a grey school exercise book – my diary of the summer of ’78, my first tentative foray into the world of sports journalism.
I recorded that Chris Old had taken four wickets in five balls the previous day. “Wicket, wicket, no ball, wicket, wicket! Incredible!” That Brearley and Wood opened for England – Wood was out first, lbw, and Brearley was run out soon after – followed by the moment that I can picture so clearly, without the help of a teenage diary.
“Then Gower came in and hooked his first ball in Test cricket for 4! He proceeded to make a super 58, with some beautiful strokes. It really was a pleasure to watch – I’m sure I’m privileged to have seen it.”
He had pure, unadulterated
talent and disregard for
stuffiness and convention
To those who are now insisting it was a pull, not a hook, I say in my defence that I was new to the technicalities of the game. Two years earlier I had been captivated by the magnificence of Viv Richards, Andy Roberts and Michael Holding, the grit of Bob Woolmer, David Steele and Dennis Amiss in that sizzling summer of ’76.
I told my parents I no longer wanted to read Jackie magazine and they took out a subscription to The Cricketer for me instead. So I was no mere dilettante, no giggling girl swooning at the blond curls and pale blue eyes of DI Gower. I was an aficionado of his elegant late cut and languid leg glance (once I’d worked out what to call them).
Five years on I was studying Modern Languages at Cambridge, although Fenner’s was a fatal temptation from essays on Molière and Goethe. My journalistic ambitions had developed, too; and as sports editor of the student newspaper Stop Press I could choose my own assignments.
So when Leicestershire rolled into town for a gentle early-season work-out, I plucked up courage to approach Gower for a chat. He “didn’t see why not” (according to the summer 1983 volume of the diary), and thus I found myself armed with tape recorder and notepad, sitting on a rainy Cambridge day conducting my first real, grown-up interview.
He was “pleasant, chatty and relaxing”, confiding that he was finding the newly acquired press interest hard to deal with.
“The intrusion comes when the phone keeps ringing; it’s a cross between good and bad, because it’s good when you’re the centre of attention but it’s a pain when the phone goes again and it’s another bloke wanting the same opinion.”
Looking back now, I realise he gave me great quotes – no patronising of the rookie student journalist. He was frank about the disappointment of losing the Ashes the previous winter, honest about his ambition to be England captain one day and thoughtful about the desirability of extending county matches to four days rather than three.
When the rain stopped next day he scored the opening first-class century of the season, against the “demoralised” CU bowlers. But between my interview and that ton is a tale which, for many, sums up the man. “Gower’s century was all the more remarkable as it took place after a late-night dip in the Cam [I wrote]. He made his acquaintance with its murky waters on Monday night on a punting trip with other members of the Leicestershire team. Undergraduate-style horseplay from his team-mates dislodged the England batting star from his position on the end of the punt.”
And maybe this is what makes David Gower my favourite cricketer: pure, unadulterated talent, of course; a healthy disregard for stuffiness and convention. Doesn’t buzzing the wicket in a Tiger Moth during a tour match in Australia make the Fredalo incident look puny? But behind it all, a professionalism for which he did not always get proper credit. Eighteen centuries and over 8,000 Test runs in a career that fizzled out over a personality clash hardly suggest a man unwilling to apply himself.
He makes broadcasting
look easy – just as
he did batting
And of all the sportsmen-turned-broadcasters, he has to be one of the finest: laconic and witty as a commentator but utterly professional. I saw him a couple of years ago at The Oval perfecting the walking piece to camera while going down a flight of steps in front of a mildly inebriated crowd willing him to trip up. He made it look easy – just as he did batting.
To refresh my memory with footage of some of those beautifully poised, effortless strokes I went on to YouTube. Surely they would have the double hundred against Australia in 1985? Or even that famous shot off Liaqat Ali in ’78? But no. “David Gower and Jonathan Ross Feel a Female Bodybuilder”, from the late and not very lamented They Think It’s All Over, springs to the top of the list.
So I think I’ll stick to my own memories of the day I turned 16 – and had two significant presents. I still love Abbey Road, and David Gower is still my favourite cricketer.
ELEANOR OLDROYD is a BBC Five Live sports presenter