SEVEN
MIKE GATTING
‘I like to think I treated them as I would like to be treated, as a human being.’
Mike Gatting is one of England’s most endearing and enduring characters. Known to one and all in the game as ‘Gatt’, he served Middlesex and England faithfully through three decades, has been an England selector, and is now responsible for all cricket underneath the first-class game in his position as a leading administrator with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). Having played a couple of charity matches with him for the Lord’s Taverners, of which he has been President, I forecast he’ll still be punching balls through the covers when he’s a pensioner.
Gatting captained England between 1986 and 1988, reaching the dizzy heights of Ashes success in Australia in 1986–87, before plumbing the depths in 1988, when his alleged dalliance with a barmaid, coming not long after a spat with Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana, saw him sacked at what should have been the height of his powers. It was a sad day for England cricket, from which the sport took a long time to recover. Three other captains were used against the West Indies in 1988 to little effect, and David Gower was re-appointed for the Ashes of 1989 despite Gatting having been the original preference of new chairman of selectors, Ted Dexter. When Gatting learned his re-selection had been vetoed behind closed doors at the TCCB, his disillusionment resulted in him taking charge of the ill-fated rebel tour to South Africa in early 1990.
In leading England to Ashes triumph, however, Gatting achieved what no other England captain has been able to do since: win an Ashes series in Australia. He rightly earned huge plaudits for masterminding the 2–1 smash-and-grab victory with a tour party that, according to one British broadsheet writer, prior to the first Test ‘couldn’t bat, bowl or field’. But the two wins in Brisbane and Melbourne that brought him his greatest prize remain the only occasions that Gatting triumphed as an England Test captain. Of his 23 Tests in charge, 16 were draws. Some of the cricket, in New Zealand and on the subcontinent particularly, was turgid in the extreme, enlivened only by the other events that eventually led to his downfall.
In the context of this book, however, where captaincy and the Ashes are the subjects to be linked, Gatting’s achievements must be held in the highest regard. Subsequent England defeats in Australia have made his success all the more remarkable, but perhaps it should not have been that much of a surprise. Gatting was a pugnacious, lead-from-the-front captain who loved a challenge. Furthermore, he had a deep affection for the Australian way of life and a penchant for getting one over on the old enemy.
His early captaincy experiences were in grade cricket for Sydney side Balmain, for whom he played for three years. In his last season, he assumed the joint role of captain and coach. It afforded him a close look at Australian methods and a greater understanding of the collective psyche of their players. At county level, meanwhile, he served a useful apprenticeship under Mike Brearley, man-manager and Aussie-slayer extraordinaire, without ever expecting to succeed him. ‘When Brearley was in charge, and with all the senior figures around, captaining the club never really crossed my mind,’ Gatting said. ‘Yes, I’d captained school teams before because I was the best player, but captaincy never worried me too much. I loved simply playing the game, and my ambitions were to play and stay in the first team.’
‘But then in 1982 John Emburey went on the rebel tour and didn’t tell the club, which meant he lost the vice-captaincy,’ Gatting said. ‘So when Brears retired at the end of the 1982 season, they said they’d heard some good reports from Australia about what I’d done out there and asked me if I wanted to captain the county. I thought, “Yeah, I’d love to.” It’s not something you turn down really.’
Brearley was a difficult act to follow, but there was never any chance of Gatting trying to imitate his mentor. Brearley was a sophisticated motivator of players, whose training in the field of psychoanalysis meant he knew instinctively which buttons to press. Gatting’s methods would be simpler. He had an honesty and straightforwardness about him that endeared him to his teammates. A belligerent player who liked to carry the attack to the opposition, with Gatting what you saw was what you got. Attack-minded, passionate and engaged, Gatting would forge his own path.
‘I’d learnt a lot playing under Brears, but he had unique gifts as a captain and there wasn’t any point in me trying to emulate him,’ Gatting said. ‘I remember in one of my early games when things weren’t going too well and he could see me drifting off in the field he asked me, “What do you think we should do then, Gatt?” I was sort of lost for words. At the time I didn’t think too much about it other than, “Jesus, Mike Brearley has asked me what I think! He actually thinks I’m part of it and have got something to offer.” Looking back, I know he was just trying to get me concentrating on the game, but it also hit home because it was a good way of making a young person feel part of the team.
‘When you watched Brears a bit more, you understood what he was doing. My way was always going to be more straightforward, but I was always mindful of looking after players like that. From a tactical perspective, I obviously wasn’t as astute as Brears but, as I told reporters after the appointment, if I made tactical mistakes at least they’d be bold ones.
‘Australia helped because I had a lot of players to look after out there. We were not the best side in the competition, but we were up there and ended up winning the club championship because the 2nd and 3rd XI won their leagues. It meant a lot to everyone at the club and to me. We punched above our weight because we worked hard and pulled together. It was that kind of club ethos that Brears had first introduced me to, where everybody was important and should be treated with the same respect. If you can get that going down the levels, treating everyone by the same standards and treating them fairly, that goes a long way. I wouldn’t ask people to do what I wasn’t prepared to do myself and everyone knew where they stood. I tried to be honest all the time, even if it meant being hard.’
Gatting led a talented Middlesex side to the Gillette Cup in 1984 and the County Championship in 1985, carving out a reputation for being a tough and adventurous leader, who, like Brearley, knew how to handle the lively Middlesex dressing-room. The England captaincy came his way in 1986 after David Gower was dismissed in the middle of the Test series against India. Gower, who just a year earlier had put Australia to the sword to regain the Ashes in emphatic style, had been hammered 5–0 by the West Indies in the Caribbean and lost the opening Test to Kapil Dev’s side.
Gatting’s reign started with an inauspicious 279-run loss at Headingley, but in the next Test at Edgbaston he showed that the extra responsibility of captaincy would sit comfortably on his broad shoulders by scoring 183 not out in the first innings. The match was drawn, but England’s wretched summer saw no sign of abating, as Richard Hadlee inspired New Zealand to a 1–0 series win with victory at Trent Bridge. Gatting must have wondered what he had got himself into. As captain, he’d been used to winning. His captaincy style bristled with the aggressive intent of a man who liked to boss the game. He could accept losing, but what worried him more was the mood in the England camp.
‘I said to David Gower on the balcony that there was no sparkle,’ Gatting said. ‘When you thought back just a year earlier to 1985 and the Ashes victory, it was a memory of how everyone was buzzing. So how had it turned round so quickly? It was the first time I’d been in charge where things weren’t going so well. I had been successful with Middlesex and done well in Australia with Balmain, but now the England side I’d inherited, which was full of good players, just wasn’t firing.
‘I spoke to David about it because he’d been through it all. It’s what you do as England captain. He basically said things would improve as soon as Beefy [who had been banned for admitting to taking cannabis in his youth] came back. Sure enough, he came back at the Oval, for the third and final Test, and the whole atmosphere changed. Someone was changing in his corner, so he told them, “F*** off, I’ve been changing there for years!” and all of a sudden everyone sat up: “Wow, Beefy’s back!” He then ran in to bowl and, first ball, Bruce Edgar nicked it to slip.’
Botham’s scriptwriters had always had vivid imaginations and he didn’t disappoint in the last Test before the Ashes. Gatting and Gower got hundreds and Botham was enjoying seeing how far he could strike the second new ball with an explosive 59 from 36 balls when rain came to New Zealand’s rescue. ‘We were 100 past them, and only five wickets down and in control of the game, when it rained for two whole days,’ Gatting said. ‘It was a huge shame, but it showed me a thing or two about how to handle certain people and told me that we had to pick strong characters for the Ashes tour.’
While a refreshed and energised Botham was the biggest plus heading into the Ashes, the appointment of Micky Stewart as cricket manager was an unexpected bonus for Gatting. Stewart knew the game and was cut from the same straightforward cloth as England’s new captain. ‘I’d never met Micky before, but we got on immediately,’ Gatting said. ‘I said to him you pick your team and I’ll pick mine and we were one and a half players different, which was unbelievably close. I’d always fancied Chris Broad against quick bowling. He stood up and played well off the back foot. I remembered seeing him play Wayne Daniel well. I picked James Whitaker for similar reasons: good player of pace, liked to pull and cut on bouncy wickets. I knew what Bill Athey was all about: his fielding, his catching, and what he’d give you with the bat. He wouldn’t give two hoots about their reputations and he’d been out to Australia enough times. He was a fighter. Then you had the little threesome of Lamb, Gower and Botham in the middle, who had been there before.
‘Emburey and Edmonds were the best spin combination in the world at the time. Dilley was probably our best seamer and then we took a bit of a punt on DeFreitas, having spoken to a few umpires, who said he was lively and talented. I knew what I’d get from Neil Foster and Gladstone Small, and then there were the keepers: Bruce French who was in situ and Jack Richards because he was a pretty decent batter with a good ticker.’
On paper, and with the huge advantage of hindsight, Gatting’s team looks solid, but the prevailing mood amongst the media at the time was that this team was the worst ever to leave England’s shores. England had lost eight out of their last eleven Tests, with three draws. This view was further compounded when England took a hammering in the first warm-up game in Brisbane, where they were bundled out for 135. They won unconvincingly against South Australia and clung on against Western Australia, having been dismissed cheaply in the first innings again, this time for 152. ‘Nobody got any runs in the main warm-up matches,’ Gatting said. ‘Too many mistakes were being made and we weren’t in great shape. Crikey, when you think they only play two warm-up matches these days; I was desperate for another match before the first Test in Brisbane to get us right.’
It was not an easy time for England’s captain. He had a diverse group of players, both in terms of character and experience. Some were on their first tour, while others such as Gower, Botham and Lamb – especially the first two – never much liked practice matches, so it was difficult to get a feel for how well or badly the team was really faring. ‘The first three or four weeks we were playing against Western Australian farmers and the crop-sprayers of Queensland. I found it pretty hard to get motivated, and as a consequence we got hammered,’ said Botham.
‘I soon realised that the senior players didn’t take these games too seriously,’ agreed Chris Broad. ‘They were acclimatising to the wine and socialising.’
Gatting knew that if he was going to turn things around he would have to get everyone to play their part. In contrast to the regime of Gooch and Stewart four years later, Gatting adopted an inclusive style and took on board lots of advice from lots of different sources. ‘The selectors, the three senior guys and the two spinners, who had been there before, all had input,’ Gatting said. ‘It was my first tour to Australia, so I wasn’t too proud to tell them I needed some help about certain players, certain grounds and what we should look to be doing.
‘I asked Beefy to look after the bowlers. I asked him not to take them out and hoped by giving him some responsibility it would help them and him. I put DeFreitas in a room with him, as he was probably a bit in awe of Beefy and I wanted him to feel more relaxed in his company. Again things like that came from playing under Brearley. It definitely put him at ease.
‘Beefy was great. Working with the bowlers took his mind off things, while he was happy that his opinions were being valued. Of course he still wanted to go out in the evenings, so I cut him a deal. I said he could do what he liked but for the first six weeks – which included the warm-up games and the first Test – I wanted him to set a great example and be seen to be working hard, as everyone was going to be watching him closely at practice. After the first Test, he could then do what he wanted, as he’d be fit and the series would be underway.
‘I asked him to do me a favour and he agreed, so a deal was struck up. It was sensible because he was a bowling all-rounder with a big workload and a talisman who the young guys needed to see practising so they couldn’t turn round and say, “Well, he’s not practising, so why should we?” Because he was involved with the bowlers he did a little bit more.’
Gatting recognised the need to treat individuals differently. There was no point in trying to get Botham and Gower to do things against their will. They would have become disgruntled and been a focus of opposition within the group. By the same token, you can’t have players doing exactly as they please, so Gatting’s brokering was a masterstroke. ‘I like to think I treated them as I would like to be treated, as a human being,’ Gatting said. ‘Sometimes people treated Beefy differently, as they were in awe of him, and let him get away with too much, while others tried to rein him in, which was probably worse. We were trying to reach a nice balance of giving him some responsibility and allowing him some leniency as a senior player to enjoy himself, all of which seemed like common sense and probably stemmed from the way I saw Brears treat him.
‘Beefy and Lamby would go out, but I said not to take the youngsters and then it was up to me and Micky to look after the rest and make sure there were no cliques developing and that everyone felt included. We worked especially hard at that in the first six weeks and the other senior guys took the youngsters out, which was important. We had a good team room.’
Gatting was acutely aware of making sure everyone felt they were a big part of the England team. His early experiences of playing for England had not all been good. Even as a respected captain of Middlesex in 1983, he still found the England dressing-room a lonely place to be. ‘I didn’t have the confidence of the senior players, so I didn’t have the confidence in myself,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel people were behind me like they were at Middlesex. I was still going it alone. At Middlesex they’d made me welcome and wanted me as part of the side, and simple people like myself tended to respond to that. Playing for England was very nice, but I didn’t feel settled or accepted.’
Part of the reason it took Gatting so long to settle in to the England side was that he took so long to bring up his first hundred. It was his 54th Test innings when he scored 136 in a losing cause in Bombay in 1984–85. It was a significant breakthrough, as three Tests later he scored 207 in Madras. Gatting attributes much of his success on that tour to having been made to feel like an integral part of the team by captain Gower. ‘David had not only insisted I be on this tour but that I be his vice-captain as well,’ Gatting said. ‘No one could have asked for a better boost to his flagging confidence than that, and it was to alter my whole outlook as a cricketer. You see, apart from those first few Tests when Brears had been in charge, it was the first time in the whole of my England career that I had ever felt somebody genuinely wanted me in the team.’
Captains who can recall their own struggles find it easier to empathise with their players. Gatting’s great ability in Australia was to understand where different players were coming from and adjust accordingly. Botham, Gower and Lamb had earned the right to make some of their own decisions, but Gatting was acutely aware that he had to make time for the younger members so they felt no less important than the big guns. Different rules for different players does not work if it creates resentment, but Gatting’s awareness of their needs did not let this happen. ‘The trickiest problem that Gatting and Micky had was how to work with the various factions within the squad,’ Gower said. ‘That is the art of leadership. They managed pretty well and approached people differently and got the best from them.’
The team spirit was good and the players were happy, but with the poor results in the warm-up games it was time for the big players to step up and perform. ‘Just before the first Test match we had gone through their team,’ Gatting said. ‘Micky was very thorough about where we should look to bowl to which player. I asked for discipline with the ball and whoever got in with the bat had to go on and get big runs. “Remember you’re playing against Australia, remember what was being said in the papers, remember how bad it feels to lose to these guys out here and what they’ll say, so let’s keep our discipline.” We had a good fielding side and we were well drilled – Micky made sure of that – and we caught really well. I think we hardly dropped a catch all series either in the slips or in the outfield.
‘And then Beefy got up and said, “What we’ve just done is what any side does, practise. It’s just practise. Tomorrow is about the real thing. There’s 11 of us and 11 of them. Tomorrow’s a new game and we go out and we play. If we play well, we’ve got a chance of winning. This is where it starts. You know what you’ve got to do, now go out there and do it. Enjoy it and do it.” And that’s all he said, but it was just what was needed, as it was simple and honest. Then in the first game he went out and fulfilled what he said. He played. Really played.’
Botham grabbed the headlines with an exhilarating 138 in England’s first innings, but Gatting played a huge part in laying the foundations. Not only had his off-the-field man-management got England all pulling together, but his decision to push himself up to number three to shield an out-of-form Gower worked brilliantly. As captain, you need to know when to take the bull by the horns and pitch yourself into battle and when to step back and allow others to express themselves. Gatting had often batted below Gower in his Test career and might have expected to bat five with Gower at three. When his team needed him, England’s captain was prepared to do the hard yards and bat early in the innings when the ball was still nipping about. ‘I was still a little bit nervous about our batting,’ Gatting said. ‘Gower hadn’t got many runs so I decided to do three and he went in five. That decision was made after the toss.’
It was a toss that Border had won and the Australian captain had no hesitation in asking England to bat first on a Gabba pitch, which traditionally assists the seam bowlers early in the match. Broad departed with the score on 15, caught behind off Bruce Reid, but Athey and Gatting added 101 for the second wicket before Lamb helped Athey get England to the close at 198 for 2. Gatting’s contribution was 61. It had helped steady the ship and kept Gower away from the new ball. The following morning Gower added 118 for the fifth wicket in alliance with Botham before falling to left-arm seamer Chris Matthews for 51. It was not Gower’s finest knock in England colours – he had been horribly dropped at third slip early on – but it augured well for the rest of the series. ‘It helps every now and then to have a bit of luck, whatever people say,’ said Gower. ‘I started to rediscover what it was all about. It was my most important innings of the tour – even though I was to get a hundred in Perth. By battling away to get fifty at the Gabba, I actually rediscovered some confidence.’
England were handily placed at 351 for 7 when DeFreitas added the icing to the cake with an undefeated 40, most of them coming in a partnership of 92 with Botham. It was another little victory for England’s captain. ‘Looking back at the rooming arrangements on the first night, and the way DeFreitas now felt comfortable with Botham out in the middle, we got that right,’ Gatting said. ‘Beefy was talking to him all the time, while he got Beefy running. The tail wagged a little bit and we put 456 on the board.’ Buoyed by his batting, DeFreitas removed David Boon shortly before the close on the second evening. The following morning Graham Dilley swung the ball at good pace to take 5 for 68 and Gatting had the pleasure of asking Border to follow on. ‘All that stuff that was written about us being the worst team to leave England’s shores was a load of nonsense really,’ Gatting said. ‘We had the best pair of spinners in the world, one of the best all-rounders in the world, we had David Gower. It wasn’t that bad a side. Emburey bowled brilliantly. Edmonds did as well. They gave me control as captain as they both went for just two per over. Although Geoff Marsh played well, Australia’s 282 left us with just 75 to chase.’
Emburey had returned figures of 5 for 80 from 42.5 overs, while Edmonds applied the brakes at the other end, conceding just 46 runs from his 24 overs. Edmonds had been left out of the previous Ashes tour under Bob Willis because he was a difficult character to handle. Willis had grown frustrated with his eccentricity and perceived arrogance and went into Tests with three off-spinners when his attack was crying out for Edmonds’ class and left-arm variation. Gatting, who knew Edmonds well, having played all his career alongside him at Middlesex, never considered leaving him out. He backed his man-management skills to get the best out of him. Besides, double spin was all part of the Gatting master plan. ‘We played two spinners because of the calibre of the two of them and because during my time spent as a grade captain over there I watched Tests on television and saw how some of the wickets took spin and how certain teams played,’ Gatting said. ‘I knew it would turn on day four in Brisbane. It can also get very hot, so you need to use your quicker bowlers sparingly.
‘It was a huge bonus having captained the pair of them at county level. Having that kind of familiarity with two guys was great. I knew Emburey would be mean and really want to do well. I knew Edmonds might be difficult at times. He was a big competitor and would always try to push you that little bit further. He and Brearley used to fight like cat and dog, but I wasn’t as educated as Brears so a lot of it went over my head. He could be an idiot, but on that tour he was tremendous and, like everyone else, he was focused on beating the Australians, as we all thought we had a good chance.’
Most captains like to have a balanced attack. If you can play three or four seamers and a couple of spinners, you feel like you’ve got all bases covered. For this to happen, however, you need one or two of them to be genuine all-rounders so as not to weaken the batting. A fit and firing Botham was the key to enabling Edmonds and Emburey to play successfully in the same side.
Gatting’s team went to Perth for the second Test in buoyant mood and promptly racked up 592 on a belting wicket at the WACA. Broad, Gower and Richards all scored fine hundreds, allowing England’s captain to declare late on day two. Border responded with a hundred to help save the follow-on, but Gatting and Gower played fluently to enable Gatting to declare for the second time in the match. ‘I got 70 not out in the second innings and people said I should have declared earlier,’ Gatting said. ‘But I argued that we shouldn’t give them a chance of winning. OK, we might have had a better chance of going 2–0 up, but you’re still giving them a sniff. Anyway, there were still huge cracks in the wicket and no one was quite sure how it was going to play, so perhaps we could still bowl them out in a day; 97 overs is enough time to win a game bowling last and the cracks were huge. But they dug in.
‘We lost Botham to a side strain in the second innings. That’s always the nightmare about playing two spinners. If you lose one of your frontline seamers, you can be in trouble. At least it was late in the game. It happened to me at the Oval against Pakistan in 1987 when Neil Foster broke down. We still had the two spinners and Dilley, Botham and myself, but the first four got hundreds or double-hundreds and they got 700. But you can’t pick a side thinking a bowler might break down.’
Australia held out comfortably for a draw, while Botham’s injury left England with a selection dilemma for the third Test. Adelaide was a notoriously flat pitch, which offered some assistance to the spinners, but picking two seamers in a batting paradise is fraught with danger if you lose the toss and find yourself in the field. Aware he was 1–0 up in an Ashes series, however, Gatting opted to replace Botham with James Whitaker to shore up the batting. Sure enough, he lost the toss and Emburey and Edmonds were bowling on the first morning. ‘Obviously you lose Botham and it upsets the balance of your team, but it looked like a typical Adelaide pitch, where the spinners would do a lot of bowling,’ Gatting said. ‘Even if you lost the toss, you still had two guys who could control the game and therefore you could rotate the seamers from the other end in between the spinner as well as bowling them in tandem. Sure, there’d be a bit of work to be done, but the bowlers were quite happy to do it.’
Australia scored 517, but another hundred for Broad and one from Gatting ensured England were never in danger as the game headed towards the inevitable draw. Thankfully for England, Ashes Tests were spread out in those days, allowing Botham valuable recuperation time. England were able to give the likes of Foster and Small useful workouts in the state games between the Tests, while several of the frontline batters were able to keep in form, spending plenty of time in the middle.
Many of the senior players regarded these games as a nuisance, sandwiched in to an already gruelling tour, but the match in Hobart proved particularly useful for England. Rain washed out the first day and Gatting, who played but dropped to eight in the batting order, was happy to bowl first. His seamers then routed the home side for 79 and 167 as England won by an innings and 76 runs. It was a match that maintained England’s momentum, but more importantly it afforded Gatting a close look at his back-up bowlers on a helpful surface. Gatting would be thankful for that first-hand experience sooner than he had imagined. ‘There were some big decisions for the Melbourne Test,’ Gatting said. ‘Dilley told me 30 minutes before the toss that he wasn’t fit. It was fair enough, as I’d rather know then than have him pull up once the game has started. He’d bowled a lot of overs on hard unforgiving pitches for us. So then it was a toss-up between Foster and Small, both of whom had bowled well against Tasmania.
‘I had a quick chat with Beefy and Micky, who basically said it was a close call that I had to make. Neither bowler would let you down, but I plumped for Small, as he might swing it a bit more and had good consistency. Beefy had only had three weeks to get back from his intercostal injury and he wasn’t quite right. “I can bowl 80 per cent,” he said. “Will you get through the game?” I asked. “I’ll get through.” So I played him. The Aussies hated playing against him, so you picked him because of it. He won’t mind me saying he bowled the biggest load of pies I’ve ever seen and got five first innings wickets. He was helped out by two spectacular catches from Richards behind the stumps.
‘It looked a poor pitch that would do plenty throughout the game, but as there was a bit of damp in it I had a bowl, stressing to the batsmen that we’d probably have to do the bulk of our run-scoring in the first innings. It was not a wicket we would want to chase many on. Small started with three wides in his first over and I was thinking, “What have I done? I’ve picked the wrong bowler,” but he settled down and found his line and length and bowled well to take the other five wickets.’
Dean Jones managed 59, but he was the only batsman to reach 20 as Botham and Small worked their magic to dismiss the hosts for 141. There was still plenty in the pitch, but Broad, who was in the form of his life, had the technique and the mental fortitude to compile his third and most important century of the series. Emburey, Edmonds and Small all made valuable contributions down the order as England scrambled to 349 and an important psychological lead of over 200. Everything Gatting touched was turning to gold at this stage, something that was epitomised by Border’s second innings dismissal. ‘We had a stroke of good fortune when I opted for three slips to Border in the second innings,’ Gatting said. ‘Border had said in the press he was going to come out aggressively to win the Test so I was thinking about two slips and a gully, but I went with my gut instinct and three balls later he holed out at third slip with Emburey taking a brilliant catch high to his left.’
It proved the key moment, as Australia lost their last seven wickets for 41 runs to be bowled out for 194. England had won by an innings and 14 runs. More importantly, the Ashes were theirs once more. Sir Elton John, who was a good friend of Botham and Gower, joined the team in the dressing-room for the celebrations as England partied hard into the night. It was the zenith of Gatting’s career. ‘Gatting was my kind of captain,’ said Broad. ‘Get up and go, loved a challenge.’
‘He was red, white and blue through and through – so was I,’ said Stewart. ‘He loved playing the Australians; loved stuffing them.’
Australia, meanwhile, were left to reflect on where they were at. They had lost some key players to their own rebel tour to South Africa, but they started the series as firm favourites and had not delivered when it counted. Border, who had been in charge of the team since Kim Hughes’s emotional resignation in 1984, had seen precious little success as captain of Australia, but this was without doubt his nadir.
‘It was probably the lowest point for Australian cricket in my experience,’ Border said. ‘We’d had some pretty ordinary performances for a few years. I’ll never forget being in the sheds at the MCG when we were drowning our sorrows. The tennis player Pat Cash was winning the Davis Cup for Australia on the dressing-room TV. Speaking at the tennis, the Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke said, “It’s a pity there weren’t more Pat Cashes at the MCG today.” There was a stunned silence and I thought a few beer cans would fly at the screen. Even the Prime Minister was having a go. Later that evening, after a thousand beers, we promised ourselves that it had to stop there and we made a pact it wouldn’t ever be that bad again.’
Australia won a nail-biter in the last Test at Sydney. It was effectively a dead rubber, but anyone watching those end-of-series scenes at the SCG could never doubt how much the Test victory meant to Australia’s players. They’d made their pact at the end of the Melbourne Test, having lost the Ashes, and come out and won the Sydney match against the odds. To what extent Australia’s turnaround can be traced back to that win is debatable, but its recuperative powers should not be underestimated; Australia wouldn’t lose another Ashes Test until the Oval Test of 1993.
Chasing 320 for victory, Gatting had the game in the palm of his hand at 233 for 5, having added 131 with Jack Richards, but he gave a return catch to Steve Waugh and Peter Sleep took three of the last four wickets to fall as England subsided to 264 all out. It was a result that also possibly saved Border’s captaincy career.
Border went on to leave a lasting legacy as the man who turned Australia’s fortunes around. Gatting’s destiny was somewhat different. He would finish the Australia tour in style, with triumph in the World Series to add to the Perth Challenge (another one-day tournament) and the Ashes, but for captain Gatting the tour of 1986–87 was as good as it got. The following winter his picture was plastered over every newspaper in the land jabbing his finger aggressively in the face of Pakistan umpire Shakoor Rana during the now infamous second Test in Faisalabad. The tour of Pakistan had been marred by controversy, as poor practice facilities and dubious umpiring decisions had heaped frustration upon England’s fraught captain, who had seen his team lose the first Test in Lahore. Gatting was an upfront, heart-on-sleeve kind of captain who played the game hard but always in the right spirit. To be accused of cheating when he clearly was anything but a cheat tipped him over the edge. Rana delivered a torrent of abuse to go with his accusation and Gatting fired back. It didn’t look good.
It was the beginning of the end for Gatting, who limped through the rest of the 1987–88 winter, drawing the Bicentenary Test against Australia in Sydney and the Test series against New Zealand 0–0. There was an undercurrent of Gatting being on trial for his team’s indiscipline at the start of the 1988 season, for on the back of the Faisalabad farce Dilley was fined for shouting expletives at the top of his voice in Christchurch, while Broad had also been disciplined for knocking over his stumps on dismissal in Sydney.
The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was the newspaper headline that alleged Gatting had enjoyed shenanigans with a barmaid during the first Test against the West Indies at Trent Bridge in June 1988. Gatting strenuously denied anything untoward had occurred, but he was still dismissed as captain of England three days later. The TCCB, who had handed Gatting the captain’s reins with England in crisis, now plunged England into even deeper turmoil by sacking their captain for – in the eyes of the public – having a late night drink with a female. It would trigger a chain of events that would see the captaincy change hands four times, culminating in a cancelled winter tour of India and a humiliating Ashes defeat a year later.
Gatting’s record of two wins in twenty-three Tests might not make pretty reading, but he was an Ashes winner whom people respected and would play for. That he did not get a chance to defend the Ashes on home soil was to Australia’s benefit. A nastier Border-led Australian side would walk all over Gower’s England team in the summer of 1989, heralding a new era in cricket’s oldest contest. One suspects it might have been a different story if Gatting had been in charge, for when Gatting departed a bit of British bulldog spirit went with him.