EIGHT
GRAHAM GOOCH
‘You can’t get runs every game.’
Graham Gooch, Essex and England’s moustachioed run-machine, remains one of the most important figures in England’s recent past. As a batsman, he’s unequalled. No one scored more runs in first-class cricket anywhere in the world during the 1980s and he is by some distance England’s leading run-scorer in Test cricket, with 8,900 runs, including 20 hundreds.
Standing erect as a Grenadier Guardsman, bat aloft, chin nudging the front shoulder, he combined uncomplicated defence with the ability to give the ball a mighty thump off front and back foot. At his best he was both textbook and destructive and was rarely anything short of prolific. A fine player of spin, especially for an opener (he pioneered the ‘forward press’ technique of which Duncan Fletcher, the England coach, became a more dedicated advocate), Gooch’s real forte was against the quick men. He rebuffed everything the West Indies in their pomp could throw at him and for over a decade his was the scalp most prized by the opposition.
If Allan Border and Steve Waugh personified Aussie gum-chewing, baggy-green-wearing toughness, then Gooch was the England equivalent. Geoff Boycott might be the man you’d want to bat for your life, but if you wanted to hit back with interest, Gooch, brave and uncompromising, was your man. Never one for taking a shortcut or a backward step, his drive to improve himself bordered on the masochistic. While some of his colleagues seemed to prefer easy-paced pitches and an opposition attack shorn of their star bowlers, Gooch wanted to test himself at every turn. ‘I always used to want a challenge and always wanted to face the best,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t one of those players who would want Curtly Ambrose or Wasim Akram not to play.’
Gooch’s first Ashes experience was on debut in 1975. He bagged a ‘pair’ and finished on the losing side but later enjoyed success against the old enemy under Mike Brearley in 1978–79 and 1981, and – after serving a three-year international ban for leading the rebel tour to South Africa in 1982 – under David Gower in 1985.
He ascended to the England captaincy in 1988 against the West Indies. He was the last of four captains in that fateful summer, as England searched for a formula that might attain a degree of respectability against what was the best side in the world and arguably the greatest of all time. Gooch’s England lost at the Oval but showed more fight than under previous captains, and he enjoyed success in the one-off Test versus Sri Lanka at the end of the summer. Just as he was mapping out a plan for England’s future, the captaincy was taken away from him. ‘We did OK at the Oval despite losing and then beat Sri Lanka, but the tour of India, which I would have captained, was cancelled because of the South African connections of some of our squad,’ Gooch said. ‘The following year Ted Dexter put David back in charge for the Ashes and we had a disaster.’
That Ashes series is covered more fully in David Gower’s chapter, but England were smashed by an Australian side that had metamorphosed into a tough, uncompromising unit that set out to win rather than make friends. The laissez-faire style of Gower, which had flourished in 1985, was seen as a contributory factor in the outcome of 1989. The subsequent appointments of Gooch as captain, and Micky Stewart as the new coach, demonstrated the selectors’ desire to start afresh with a regime that was always likely to be in stark contrast to Gower’s. ‘I was given a steer by the selectors that they didn’t want David or Ian Botham,’ said Gooch. ‘David did brilliantly in 1985 but [subsequently] struggled in 1989. Micky and I started to take the team in a new direction. It was the beginning of a new era.’
A lot of things shape a captain’s style, but the context in which he inherits the job should not be underestimated. I took over at Kent, for instance, with the blessing and at the instigation of my predecessor Matthew Fleming, with whom I shared a lot of cricketing values. The regimes were never going to differ greatly, although I was keen to distinguish my style from his. Gooch, by contrast, took over an England side that had just been annihilated by Australia. He had been frustrated by Gower’s lack of activity and general modus operandi and wanted to do things very differently. As characters they were polar opposites and most of the time styles of captaincy reflect personality.
Gooch’s drive to succeed by pushing himself to the limit was now going to be applied to the England team. He had not sought the captaincy – it had found him – so it would fit with his way of doing things. Where Gower had been a liberal, encouraging players to do their own thing because they knew themselves best, Gooch believed that a good dose of hard work and a new professionalism would best serve England. Essentially, Gower treated people how he liked to be treated and Gooch expected them to work as hard as he worked. It was no wonder Gower the Cavalier never gelled playing under Gooch the Roundhead, but more of that later.
Gooch was 37 when he took over the captaincy and so he knew the game inside and out. He served a captaincy apprenticeship under one of the best on the county circuit in Keith Fletcher at Essex, himself a former England captain, and also had the benefit of playing his early international career under Mike Brearley. ‘Keith Fletcher was brilliant tactically so I had a good grounding there, while Brears was an excellent man-manager, very popular with his players and got the best out of them. You learnt part of the art of captaincy through playing under those guys.’
Whether Gooch was ever going to hit their heights as a captain would remain to be seen but what was never in doubt was his ability as a batsman. He was England’s best player and whereas some captains get embroiled in everyone else’s problems, Gooch was able to compartmentalise the dual roles of leadership and scoring runs. ‘You don’t take up cricket to become a captain. You’re a player and you have to perform,’ he said. ‘Playing well is still the prime job for anyone who is made captain, as you’re one-eleventh of that team. By scoring runs you set not only the example but also the tone and the direction of the team and it makes it easier for you as captain.
‘I was fortunate that the captaincy came along when it did. At the end of the 1980s my game had fallen into disrepair, which culminated in Terry Alderman getting me out lbw the whole time. I worked hard with Geoff Boycott to get myself right and learnt a lot about my game at this time. It drove me forward in terms of the way I prepared for batting and the way I approached my cricket.
‘I inherited the England captaincy having already come through this bad patch. I was playing well and I think the extra responsibility helped. I didn’t give my wicket away as easily and I avoided making silly errors. I was suddenly capitalising on every opportunity and going on to score big runs, match-winning runs. As captain, I used to get to the ground early to get my practice out of the way. You must never quit on your practice and with all the distractions, like the media and what the other guys were doing, I made more time and prepared better.’
Gooch’s batting was a real feature of his time at the helm with England. In contrast to most of the other captains in this book, whose statistics took a downward turn when they assumed the mantle of leader, Gooch’s soared. Of the 8,900 Test runs he scored across his career, 3,582 of them came as captain at an average of 58.72. As just a player, he scored 5,318 at 35.93.
Fletcher and Brearley might have been his early mentors, but Gooch had his own vision of where he wanted to take the England team. His drive, dedication and attitude to preparation had yielded results for him personally and now he saw it as the way forward for the England team. ‘We had well-organised training camps at Leeds, and fitness testing for the first time, and there was some resistance against that,’ said Gooch. ‘We were chastised by some for a draconian regime but in essence all we were really doing was making people train. On the first few tours I had been on, any of the players could have walked straight on the plane having not picked up a cricket bat since the end of our summer and no one would have said anything. It hadn’t struck me as being very professional.’
‘I think there are a number of ways to captain a side,’ he added. ‘One is to set an example to the rest of team in everything you do, from the time you walk through the doors to the way you carry yourself to the way you treat and interact with people. The old saying about not asking anyone to do what you’re not prepared to do yourself is absolutely true. You treat people with respect. That’s the way you gain respect. People might not particularly like you as a person or want to mix with you socially but to follow you and respond to what you say they have to respect you. If you don’t have respect in the first place, you can’t do the job. If you lose the respect of your players along the way, it’s time to step down.’
Gooch’s side travelled to Australia on the tour of 1990–91 with cause for optimism. They had returned from the West Indies earlier in the year bruised and battered but with their pride intact, having given a good account of themselves against a strong West Indies team. Gooch had led from the front in typically unflinching fashion. But for the West Indies’ go-slow tactics in Trinidad, and Ezra Moseley breaking Gooch’s finger, which ended the England captain’s series and altered the momentum of the whole contest, England might have come away with the most inspiring of wins.
Series wins against India and New Zealand followed in the summer, with the captain very much to the fore. His 333 against India at Lord’s was the highlight and England’s captain and chief run-getter was relishing the prospect of taking on Australia. ‘Australia and the West Indies were the two big series through most of my career,’ he said. ‘The West Indies because they were the best side in the world by some distance throughout that time, but the Ashes always had that extra spice because of the history of the contest. You always wanted to get one over on Australia; they were the old enemy.
‘Going into the Ashes of 1990–91, we were in good nick. We hadn’t let ourselves down in the West Indies and we’d beaten New Zealand and India in our summer, so we were coming off the back of quite a few wins. We had some good players emerging at that time: Nasser Hussain, who unfortunately broke his wrist in the West Indies and didn’t play again for a while; Alec Stewart; Mike Atherton, who had made his debut in the 1989 series.
‘But we had one or two players who, while they were good cricketers, were probably not mentally tough enough: Phil Tufnell was talented but a character who was found wanting a few times, Devon Malcolm, Eddie Hemmings. I don’t want to criticise them, but that’s how I saw it.’
Gooch’s standards both in terms of performance and preparation made him a hard taskmaster. As Stewart says: ‘He’d let it be known that if you didn’t reach the levels that he expected then he’d come down on you.’ There is nothing wrong with this as captain, in my view, but you also need to understand what your players are going through and see things through their eyes. Gooch found it difficult to relate to players who were mentally fragile because he had never suffered with self-doubt. Hussain, a very different character to Gooch but who played a lot alongside him at Essex, gives an interesting example. ‘I remember asking Goochie while it was raining at Cheltenham in a county game what he did about nerves before going into bat. He replied that he never really got nervous,’ revealed Hussain.
Gooch had an invincible aura about him. He was incredibly down-to-earth as a person yet he never took a backward step against the best attacks in the world, and I would imagine for lesser mortals in the team this could appear mighty intimidating if they were riddled with anxiety. Just as he found it difficult to understand players who couldn’t hack it mentally, some of these same players would have found him unsympathetic and unapproachable. Graeme Hick, for instance, was another incredibly talented performer who might not have always seen where Gooch was coming from. ‘I told Hick on his debut – and I can’t remember exactly how I said it – that he would have three Tests. I was trying to convey to him that we were backing him to put his mind at ease. Years later in his book he said that he suddenly thought he was under pressure, as he only had three Tests. He took it completely the other way from what I intended. I wish he had spoken to me about it then, but it obviously didn’t help.’
Malcolm, Tufnell and Hemmings might not have been as mentally tough as he would have liked, but they were talented cricketers who might have responded well to a more conciliatory captaincy style. Taking the time to find out what makes players tick, what they might be apprehensive about and what their emotional state is forges a degree of trust from which a tougher mental approach might emerge. Malcolm, for one, was a bowler the Australians disliked facing. ‘We punched the air whenever Devon Malcolm wasn’t picked,’ Steve Waugh said.
The other problem with a leader who is such a dominating force within the team is that if he’s not around for some reason it affects the stability of the group. Gooch had seen England eventually succumb in the Caribbean against the sustained onslaught of the West Indies while he nursed a broken finger. The Ashes campaign of 1990–91 was to get off to the worst possible start for similar reasons. ‘Robin Smith drilled one back at me during a practice match at Melville Cricket Club and I put my hand up to protect myself and it ripped a cut across the bottom of the fingers,’ Gooch said.
‘It got infected and in the space of the match versus South Australia at Adelaide I knew something was up. My hand was getting sore and I started to feel a bit queasy and dizzy, as I had poison in my system. The doctor gave me some antibiotics, but I felt worse through the day so they took me to hospital and cut it open to let all the pus and rubbish out, otherwise I could have lost the finger.
‘I missed six weeks. Allan Lamb captained the first Test and then we had a lot of one-day internationals, so I was able to get back for the second Test. Losing your leader can derail you because you can suddenly lose direction and it’s always a difficult situation when the captain is in the dressing-room but isn’t playing. It’s awkward because you’re not in charge. Captains call the shots on the field so you have to let the bloke who’s standing in for you do his stuff. It makes it all a bit muddled.’
There have been many examples of how the loss of a leader can destabilise a team. Shane Warne was one of the finest captains I’ve played against but he was also a control freak when in charge of Hampshire. I always feared for them when he retired. He ran the show so completely that at times his players could get away with not having to think for themselves.
Border won the first toss of the series and inserted England on a Brisbane wicket that looked likely to assist the seamers. Gooch’s replacement, Wayne Larkins, and Atherton were sent packing by Merv Hughes and Bruce Reid before England reached fifty, but Gower and Lamb fought back by adding 73 for the third wicket. Greg Matthews, the off-spinner, accounted for Lamb and when Gower went just six runs later for 61 England subsided to 194 all out. Australia fared little better as Fraser, Small and Lewis each took three wickets in a total of 152. Matthews demonstrated his all-round abilities by top-scoring with 35 from number seven.
How England’s injured captain would have loved to have confronted the Australian new ball bowlers in this situation. With England 42 runs to the good and with an opportunity to shape the series, Gooch would have been champing at the bit to be in the thick of the action. Instead he had to watch as his batsmen were dismantled in the second innings by some classical seam bowling from Alderman. The Western Australian, who had been Gooch’s nemesis in 1989, bowled full and straight and with plenty of guile to take 6 for 47 as England collapsed to 114 all out. Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh made light work of the 157 required as Australia took the first Test by ten wickets inside three days.
Gooch had tried to keep a low profile during the Test so as not to confuse the leadership situation, but his frustrations are still evident when he talks about that time. Lamb, who was captain of Northants, possessed a very sharp cricket brain and was close to Gooch, but he was also part of the old school of Botham and Gower. It’s also never easy filling in for one Test, as Adam Gilchrist was to find out at Headingley in 2001, but Gooch had hoped his vice-captain would set similar examples to himself. ‘Allan was my vice-captain. He was very good. We’re good mates but, to my mind, he made a big error in that first match. He went all the way to the Gold Coast on the second night to have dinner with Kerry Packer when he was batting the next morning. It’s only an hour away, but he got out early the next day. All the press got wind of the fact he’d been out with Kerry Packer and they crucified him. He didn’t actually do anything wrong but you’ve got to be aware as captain of England that these kind of things can happen.’
Lamb was never a player to be tucked up by nine o’clock the night before an innings and, as Gooch says, ‘He didn’t actually do anything wrong,’ but suddenly England’s stand-in captain was hung out to dry by the media. As a captain you come to realise that people watch your every move and that your actions are constantly being judged. The higher the level the sharper the spotlight, of course, but this illustration from Gooch reminded me of the reaction I provoked when I chose to commentate on a televised Twenty20 Cup match rather than travel as a non-playing captain with my own team.
As Gooch mentions, there is nothing worse than a captain lurking in the dressing-room when he is not part of the team, so having dropped myself from the team after discussions with my coaches at the outset of the competition I decided to make myself scarce from our campaign. If Kent had won the Twenty20 Cup that year, my handling of the situation would have been heralded as a stroke of selfless genius. As it turned out, Kent lost and I was under attack from many of our supporters who thought I preferred earning a quick buck from Sky to supporting my teammates.
Gooch returned as captain for the second Test at the MCG, promptly won the toss and elected to bat. With Lamb injured, a re-jigged order saw Larkins at three, Robin Smith promoted to four and Gower occupying the number five slot, which had worked so well on the previous tour under Gatting. All three contributed: Gower with a hundred, while Alec Stewart weighed in at number six with 79 of the last 100 runs to steer England to 352.
Fraser kept England’s noses in front with 6 for 82 in bowling the hosts out for 306, but once again England’s second innings was to cost them. Fifties from Gooch and Larkins had put England in a strong position, 149 in front with just the one wicket down, but when Gooch went with the score on 103 the rest of the batting wilted under the pressure exerted by Bruce Reid. The tall left-arm quick bowler, whom Gooch describes as ‘the second best left-armer I’ve ever faced after Wasim Akram’, took 7 for 51 as no other batsmen reached double figures.
Australia had taken nine wickets for 47 runs on an extraordinary fourth afternoon, which left them just 197 to win. Malcolm and Fraser quickly reduced Border’s team to 10 for 2 to leave the game in the balance overnight. The final day saw little drama, however, as Marsh (74 not out) repeated his first Test heroics, this time in alliance with Boon (94 not out), as Australia won by eight wickets to take a 2–0 lead in the series.
Gooch blames England’s lack of mental toughness for the two consecutive second innings capitulations and the lack of ruthlessness when they had the Aussies on the run. It is a theme that runs throughout his confrontations with Australia. Whereas Hussain talks about skill levels and rubbishes the idea that the Australians were mentally tougher than England, Gooch is convinced of the difference in mindset and character. ‘The major difference between England and Australia in the two series I captained was in the way they were able to wriggle out of a tough situation when we were in the ascendancy,’ Gooch said. ‘Call it mental strength, character, backs against the wall, whatever you like, they were just able to get out of trouble. When we were struggling – I call it egg shell mentality – we looked hard on the outside but when the outer shell was punctured we just went flat.’
England’s lack of killer instinct was also exposed in the third Test at Sydney. Having replied to Australia’s 518 with 469, courtesy of another Gower hundred and 91 from Stewart, England’s spinners went to work. Tufnell and Hemmings took eight wickets between them, bowling Australia out for 205, but it took an age to get through their lower order. ‘We couldn’t get Carl Rackemann out in the second innings,’ Gooch said. ‘He batted for nearly two hours and faced 102 balls for nine runs. Had we got him out early we would have had an easy chase. The series might have been a different story if we had won that one, but we were always just falling short.’
Gooch made a swashbuckling 54 in a valiant attempt to chase 255 in 25 overs against the turning ball, but at the fall of the fourth wicket England gave up the ghost and accepted the Ashes would be Australia’s once more. Gooch’s response was to hammer 87 and 117 at Adelaide in the fourth Test, but England were always playing catch-up after Mark Waugh’s 138 on debut in Australia’s first innings total of 386, and had to settle for a draw.
Australia wrapped up the series 3–0, as normal service resumed in the last Test in Perth. Craig McDermott took 11 wickets in the match, including 8 for 97 in the first innings to bowl England out for 244. Australia replied with 307, but once again it was the third innings of the match that proved England’s Achilles heel, as they struggled to 182 all out. Marsh did what he had done so well all summer and saw Australia through to a small total, finishing 63 not out in a win by nine wickets. In their three defeats England had scored 114, 150 and 182 at the second time of asking, having been right in the game at the halfway stage. McDermott took the man-of-the-match award in Perth, but it was Reid who was man of the series. Gooch concedes England came unstuck against an outstanding Aussie pace attack. ‘Alderman was a fine bowler, although not quite as effective as in 1989; Hughes I rated highly – he bowled a heavy ball just short of a length and would never stop coming. McDermott was a very talented bowler who could bowl some quick spells and was technically very good, while Reid at 6 ft 8 in. had good pace and bounce going across you and was a really awkward proposition.
‘By contrast, our bowling attack was less consistent and wasn’t helped by losing our best bowler, Angus Fraser, after Melbourne. Together with Gladstone Small, Gus gave us control and allowed Devon Malcolm to make things happen. If it was one of Devon’s off days, though, you needed [other] guys who could be relied upon to keep it tight.’
So often in a modern Ashes series the Aussies would stay fit while the England bowlers broke down. Losing Fraser was damaging but something Gooch could do nothing about. His deteriorating relationship with Gower, however, was an unnecessary situation that didn’t reflect well on either man, or indeed on Gooch’s man-management skills. ‘I had issues captaining David Gower. We played our Test careers together. We were very good friends. We got on. I had a number of dinners and meetings with him on that tour to explain that I wanted a little bit more from him in terms of setting an example to the rest of the team, particularly the younger players. I wanted him to practise, to get there on time and not be talking to the press when we’re all gathering to do our training. I didn’t think it was much to ask, but we never saw eye to eye. He was never disruptive and when he turned up to do the job he really performed, but he never conformed to the team policy. How far do you let the star player go? Do you let him do his own thing?’
This is a question that captains ask themselves time and time again at all levels. At Kent we tried to do the same thing with Carl Hooper, who had carried us with bat and ball for a number of years in the 1990s. Hooper was an outstanding player for Kent between 1992 and 1998 but on a few rare occasions he bent the rules too far and still got away with it. Once he turned up late for a one-day game at Ilford against Essex. We were half an hour from the start of the game, and with no sign of our great overseas player I fully anticipated graduating from twelfth man to the starting XI. Imagine my disappointment when the lads – at the instigation of the coach – voted on the matter, eventually deciding to wait for the recalcitrant Hooper rather than give me a rare start. Incidentally, my hand was the only one raised for my inclusion! Kent batted first and Hoops arrived, coloured pads tucked casually under one arm, twenty minutes after the start of the game. He came in at number five, smashed 70 and bowled his overs for next to nothing as we won a close game. The result and his performance in it seemed to vindicate the decision to play him, but we had started down a slippery slope, which did us no long-term favours.
Gower possessed an anti-establishment streak that didn’t always help his own cause, most notably when he and John Morris famously decided to fly a Tiger Moth over the ground when England were playing Queensland between the third and fourth Tests. ‘I went through a great long chat with Micky Stewart [coach], Goochie and Peter Lush [team manager] in Queensland after the Tiger Moth affair and it took them an hour and a half to talk total bollocks about motivation, team spirit, conforming to what they wanted, etc.,’ Gower said. ‘There was no answer to the question I posed about the three Test matches up to that point: “I know we are losing, but who has got the runs? Top score twice in Brisbane, a hundred in Melbourne, a hundred in Sydney – as far as I’m concerned I am actually doing quite well here and you are worried about my motivation. But what about the other guys who have averaged 10, maybe they need your help more than I do?” The long heart-to-heart was time wasted.’
Mike Brearley, who understood the need to manage players differently, was dismayed that two of his former charges couldn’t figure out their differences. ‘I couldn’t believe that a compromise wasn’t reached. Maybe Graham could have cut David a deal about what he was expected to do. A bit more give and take, if you like.’
Interestingly, Gooch shared with me an example of how – as a coach – he applied a more flexible management strategy to help a present-day star player at Essex. ‘Danish Kaneria [Essex’s overseas leg-spinner] asked if his wife could travel with us on the bus, as she didn’t drive and didn’t want to stay home alone while he was away playing,’ Gooch said. ‘At first we said no, but we put it to the rest of the boys, who thought it was fair enough for Mrs Kaneria to come with us. Their reasoning was that he bowled so many overs for us that they wanted him happy. They understood that the same rules wouldn’t apply to their wives and girlfriends.’
If Gooch had applied similar problem-solving techniques to his England captaincy, he might not have incurred many of the problems that did beset his regime. As a captain Gooch was guilty of expecting people to behave in the same way. Hussain called it the ‘one size fits all’ approach. ‘Perhaps we were a bit harsh in some things but however you do things it’s the results that count,’ Gooch said. ‘If we had won, everyone would have been saying fantastic, great regime. If you lose, it’s seen as rubbish. It’s not for me to cast aspersions on the 1986–87 tour because I wasn’t there, but you hear stories about some players’ behaviour and there’s no doubt that questions could have been raised. But ultimately they won and that’s all that matters, so everyone turns a blind eye.’
While I agree that winning helps, Gooch’s assessment is perhaps a little simplistic. In many ways his approach to preparation and the fitness of the squad was ahead of its time. Nowadays specialist fitness trainers have become commonplace not just at international level but at every county, too. Physiotherapists insist on ice baths at the end of play to aid recovery and prevent injury, while nutritional advice is not just available but also readily sought by players looking to get an extra edge. So Gooch’s vision was a good one. It was simply his inability to convince key players that it was the right way to go and his inability to tailor those ideas for the individuals that counted against him. As he now concedes, he would have been better taking a different approach with Gower.
‘I expected my players to do things similarly to me and give the same level of commitment off the field in terms of training and preparation,’ Gooch said. ‘It was something I was big on and I expected people to buy in to it and I got frustrated and irritated if people didn’t do it – which was a failing on my part, looking back. It takes all sorts. I think if I had my time again as England captain I’d let David have a free rein and let him get on with his batting. What David gave you was when he took guard. Later I left him out of the tour to India and that was a mistake. I wish I could have handled that situation differently because he was one of the greatest players that England has produced and I have the utmost respect for his cricket.’
Gooch remains his own biggest critic and one has to admire his honesty. Alec Stewart, who was cut from similar cloth to Gooch, gives an alternative perspective. ‘He led by example but struggled with some senior players who didn’t buy in to his work ethic, his outlook on the game and how you should be preparing,’ Stewart said. ‘I could see his frustrations there and I could also see his frustrations at him being a world-class player and others being either young and starting out or simply not being up to the task. He wanted to mould us into a Graham Gooch side and he didn’t want David Gower telling young players that the way to do it was to have a glass of wine and a bottle of champagne and show them a different way.’
Communication with your team when you’re looking to forge new paths can be tricky. Players like the familiar and like to feel comfortable, but as a captain with a powerful vision and strong convictions you’ll invariably want them to explore other ways of doing things. It is generally preferable to take your team with you on a course of action rather than drag them kicking and screaming. If they can come along with open minds then all well and good. At the very worst – and even if they strongly disagree – you have to persuade them to keep their counsel and be seen to support the chosen course of action once it has been decided upon. To some extent this is easier at international level because disgruntled players have to lump it to some extent. With county or club sides, such disillusioned players can find another team to play for.
For an example of this, I can go back to the two summers I enjoyed playing grade cricket in Sydney for Petersham-Marrickville Cricket Club. We were a poor side despite having some talented performers, the best of whom was a notorious drinker. Most of the Aussie grade players looked after themselves on a Friday night, as their cricket meant so much to them, but this chap would regularly turn up on the Saturday the worse for wear from the previous night. After a couple of substandard performances due to his hangovers, he received the inevitable rollicking, the result of which saw him jump ship to another club, who he felt would appreciate his talents more fully.
Gooch’s decision to leave out Gower for the tour of India backfired, as lesser players of spin were exposed against the Indian slow bowlers Anil Kumble and Venkatapathy Raju. By the time England faced Australia again in 1993, Gooch, who had turned 40 ahead of this series, was under even more pressure as captain of England – most of it from himself. He had held England’s batting together – at times seemingly alone – and it was taking its toll. Had cricket’s ‘Holy Grail’ not been at stake he might have thrown in the captaincy towel ahead of the series. ‘I was winding down and looking for someone else to take over but coming into the summer of 1993 I was still at the top of my game,’ he said. ‘It was the Ashes, after all, and I was very much looking forward to the series.
‘At the outset we fancied our chances, but the same issues were still there. We didn’t have enough battle-hardened cricketers. We didn’t have enough consistency. England through the years have had the ability to beat the best on any given day if we get it right, but doing it match after match is something we have never been able to do. Looking at Australia’s personnel I didn’t think they were going to dominate us but that was before we knew what Warne was capable of. There were some great moments in that first Test at Old Trafford. It was a cracking match.’
Gooch brought Phil DeFreitas back into the side and bowled first because the track looked damp, but the ball hardly deviated off the straight for the quicker men. Taylor and the young dasher Michael Slater, who was making his Test debut, capitalised by adding 128 for the first wicket. But when Gooch introduced another debutant, Peter Such, the ball and the game turned sharply. Such took six wickets in Australia’s first innings, as they were bowled out for 289, but that was soon consigned to the dim and distant past as soon as Shane Warne bowled his first ball in Ashes cricket.
Border had thrown the young leg-spinner the ball with the game intriguingly poised. England were 80 for 1 with their two senior batsmen at the crease. What happened next will live forever in Ashes folklore. Warne’s first ball drifted viciously from off to leg, pitched almost a foot outside leg stump before ripping past the outside edge of Gatting’s forward defensive stroke to clip the top of the off stump. Labelled the ‘Ball of the Century’, it signalled the start of Warne’s mesmeric hold on England, which would last nearly 14 years.
‘It was a decent wicket to bowl spin on, but we knew right from the start that they’d uncovered a match-winner,’ Gooch said. ‘Warne had the ability to bowl wicket-taking balls and he didn’t bowl much rubbish for a leg-spinner. We were going along OK in the first innings and I also got out to him caught mid-on off a full toss for 65, but while everyone remembers that match for that ball it was Merv Hughes rather than Warne who played the key role in the match.’
Warne and Hughes each took four first-innings wickets as England were bowled out for 210. Boon consolidated Australia’s advantage with a solid 93 before the middle order upped the pace of scoring in preparation for a declaration. Border waited for Ian Healy to reach a fine century before calling time on the innings on the fourth afternoon. England had to bat for four and a half sessions to save the game and looked on course as their captain led from the front in typical style. At 133 for 1, with one day and one over to negotiate, England were being backed to hold on, but then Hughes yanked the momentum back Australia’s way by removing Gatting off the last ball of the day. ‘The two crucial moments in the match were Hughes getting Gatt with the last ball of the fourth evening and then me punching the ball when I was well past a hundred and playing well. It cost us the game. I can’t tell you why I did it. It was just instinctive, I guess.’
Gooch, having played a ball from Hughes into the ground only to see it bounce towards his stumps, opted to swipe it away with his hand. His dismissal triggered the obligatory England collapse, as England lost their last seven wickets for 109 to lose by 179 runs. The 23-year-old Warne, who shared 16 wickets with Hughes in the match, would terrorise England for the rest of the series. The ball to Gatting had given an already confident youngster incredible self-belief and it was clear he was enjoying himself against a top order, the majority of whom were completely bamboozled by his variations.
‘In those days it wasn’t just the spin he got but the drift that made him difficult,’ Gooch said. ‘He got more revolutions on the ball before his shoulder operations, which made the ball curve. He’d start it very straight and then it would drift to the leg side. That was the one that would turn like nothing else. It was very difficult to play him on the off side because he never bowled that line. He was always asking you to turn the face of the blade. He’d always have a 45-degree man for the sweep, which while defensive meant you were always conscious of getting a top edge off a sweep. It was a good tactic.
‘It was great facing him because he did ask different questions of your mind and your technique. In that match he bowled me two “googlies” and I hit both for six, which was a bit more luck than judgement because I saw them come out of the back of the hand and pitch outside off stump, so I just went for it and dragged them over long on. He never bowled me another one for as long as we played against each other after that. He didn’t bowl the best googly anyway, but he was unerringly accurate and had in those days the ‘flipper’, which was a great delivery. It was a class ball. He set up a lot of batsmen with it by bowling the short one first and following it up with the flipper. I remember Alec Stewart in Brisbane cutting one for four and then getting out next ball going back to the flipper. It was quick for a spinner and would come in at you from just short of a length.’
Gooch’s natural enthusiasm for batting is palpable as he talks about the technical and mental proposition of facing Warne. Whereas some captains struggle to distinguish between themselves as leaders and players, Gooch was always a batsman first, captain second. He worked out his own methods of dealing with the new upstart, playing him better than most, but he was reluctant to tell others how to bat against him.
‘I did talk one to one with guys, but everyone has to find their own level and their own plans against someone like Warne,’ Gooch said. ‘Warne, [Muttiah] Muralitharan, even to some extent [Glenn] McGrath, are world-class metronomical bowlers who don’t bowl many bad balls, so you have to find a way of exerting pressure back on them. That might entail an element of risk, but you are not going to wear them down – especially the spinners. If you just look to survive, you’ll get a ball with your name on it. You need to find your scoring methods and ways to take the fight to them.
‘I’d try to slog-sweep Warne a few times. I probably wouldn’t come down the wicket. If he dropped it short, I’d look to capitalise. You’ve got to find a way of scoring whether you’re sweeping for one or using your feet, which isn’t easy. The Aussies put big scores on the board, which when you’ve got a bloke like Warne in your side means you’re a long way towards winning the game. They played Tim May, too, who was a very good, underrated bowler, and the pair of them in tandem got through a lot of overs and put us under pressure.’
Australia racked up 632 in the second Test at Lord’s, Slater belting 152, Taylor 111, Boon 164 and Mark Waugh narrowly missing out on being the fourth centurion of the innings when he was bowled through his legs by Tufnell for 99. Warne took another eight wickets and Tim May six as the pressure began to tell on England, who lost by an innings and 62 runs. Atherton was the second batsman in the match to be dismissed for 99. He was unfortunate to slip whilst coming back for a third run as the ball was returned by the boundary fielder.
With England under the cosh, Gooch and the selectors rang the changes. They never settled on their best side, using 24 players across the series. Gooch even moved down the order to accommodate the highly rated Mark Lathwell midway through the series, but in the days before central contracts the pressure to perform was often too much for the new boys. Lathwell, like Graeme Hick, found the combative Aussie style too much to handle and was sent back to the county game as quickly as he arrived.
Where Gower had let things drift in 1989, Gooch was at the other end of the scale in 1993 and was perhaps guilty of looking for a quick fix. ‘We were searching for answers because we weren’t playing very well. It’s all very well talking about continuity when you’re doing well but not so easy when you’re getting hammered. I’m not suggesting changing every game, but you’re more prone to being influenced on selection in those circumstances.’
A new look England had chances in the third Test at Trent Bridge. Graham Thorpe made a hundred on debut and Gooch also scored a century in the second innings, but Australia hung on comfortably enough on the final afternoon. The fourth Test saw Australia at their rampaging best, Border’s implacable blade ensuring he would once again hold the Ashes aloft as captain. Australia made 653 with hundreds from Boon and Steve Waugh, but it was Border’s 200 not out around which the innings was built. A demoralised England followed on after mustering just 200 and, despite faring better in the second innings, lost by an innings and 148 runs.
The contrast in the fortunes of the two captains could not have been more stark. As Border celebrated the retaining of the Ashes, his old adversary was preparing to resign. ‘I remember feeling the weight of expectation,’ Gooch said. ‘I felt I had to get runs every game otherwise we struggled. I might have been wrong to think that, but I remember feeling that pressure. And you can’t get runs every game. It can’t be your day every day. After a while it does get to you. We were chasing 600 every game. We were lacking a bit of firepower. We had chances in the Trent Bridge Test, but, like in Sydney, we couldn’t bowl them out. They just wriggled out of tough situations. They held on, where we would fold. Ultimately, losing at Headingley meant we lost the series. The Ashes were gone, so enough was enough.’
Gooch had given all he could give as captain of England, but Australia had proven too strong. His reign had started and ended with a series defeat, but, whereas England seemed to be closing the gap on the West Indies in 1990, Australia were pulling away in 1993 and it was time to move on. If he had led a more talented side in a more modern era, Gooch’s work ethic might have driven England to new heights. Instead we will have to look back at ‘Gooch the Gladiator’, willow in hand at the front of his men, slaying bowler after bowler before meeting the inevitable grisly end. In the final analysis, his biggest failing was that he couldn’t take enough of his men with him.