IT was tough in 2004. Arguably, we had a stronger squad than the one that had won the Championship with Ian Ward and Mo Akram now in our ranks. Wardy passed 1,000 first-class runs and Akram took 46 wickets but they struggled to fit in. Through no fault of their own they didn’t have that Sussex DNA. It wasn’t long before Wardy was starting to think about his broadcasting career after cricket and at the end of the year Mo asked to be released from his contract and headed to Surrey because he wanted to be based in London all the time.
Halfway through the season we had won one Championship game, had made an early exit in the T20 Cup and only had Scotland below us in the one-day league and Akram had been reported by the umpires, Peter Willey and Barrie Leadbeater, for allegedly tampering with the seam when we were trying to prise Ian Bell out at Horsham when he made a double hundred on an absolute road.
Even Mushy had been relatively subdued but as the wickets dried out in the second half of the summer he rediscovered his form. We won three out of four in the Championship from July onwards and five out of six in the one-day league and went into our game with leaders Warwickshire at Edgbaston in late August knowing that victory would really open up the title race. During my entire Sussex career I never won a Championship game in Birmingham. We tried everything to end the hoodoo, which had stretched back to 1982 – swapping our normal hotel and changing our pre-match routine – to no avail. Even a draw there was considered a decent result and on this occasion we had them seven down just before tea on the final day but could not bowl them out and complete what would have been the formality of a small run chase. We finished fifth which was about right but I chalked off another personal milestone when I made 200 against Northamptonshire at Hove to have made a century against all 18 first-class counties. My own personal target had become to finish my career with 50 first-class hundreds.
The following year was my eighth as captain but I was still enthusiastic about leading the side. We still had the bulk of the team which had won the title in 2003 and we were also starting to see the emergence of some younger players like Mike Yardy and Luke Wright, whom we’d signed from Leicestershire in 2004. The dynamic of the team was still good and we improved to third place although we should have won the Championship, having gone top in August after beating Middlesex in two days at Lord’s. We suffered a couple of bad defeats against Hampshire and Warwickshire (surprise, surprise) and with some better weather we would have won three games against Glamorgan, Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire that finished as draws. We had a stronger bowling attack after signing Rana Naved, a previously unheralded Pakistan seamer who was Pete’s parting gift to Sussex before he left at the end of 2005 to replace Rod Marsh as the ECB’s academy director at Loughborough, coming in as our overseas player because Murray was now a Kolpak registration. Pete had, as always, done his homework. He’d watched hours of video and live footage of Rana playing for Pakistan in Australia and South Africa and felt his skill with the new ball and the old one, which he could get to reverse swing almost at will it seemed, would benefit us, especially at Hove. Because of the respect he had for Mushy he was a dream to captain and the other guys loved him, especially Jason Lewry. Rana taught Jason about reverse swing and it gave Jason a new lease of life.
The news that Peter was leaving was announced early in the season and left us in a state of flux. We didn’t fulfil our potential and his impending departure definitely unsettled us. After the news broke David Green asked whether he thought I could combine the role of coach and captain. I said I’d give it a crack but in the end the committee opted for continuity by promoting Mark Robinson from the second team. At least we were able to give Pete a good send-off by winning the Second Division of the one-day league with victory over Yorkshire at Hove on the final day of the season.
I wasn’t sure how my relationship with Robbo was going to pan out at first. We hadn’t worked together much and we didn’t get off to the best of starts. Pete and I had always had total transparency with each other on every decision. I’d never laid any ground rules down with Robbo and when he started to plan the pre-season for 2006 without consulting me we had a big argument. It was my fault as much as his of course for not communicating. He’d come in feeling he had to start making his mark straight away but at least it cleared the air and, looking back, my relationship with Robbo was probably stronger than the one I had with Pete. I enjoyed both eras, but I had a more productive relationship with Mark.
Pete had been more of a dominating presence in the changing room when we discussed tactics with the players. If someone had made a concession on something it would normally be me. When Robbo replaced him he was quite happy for me to become the principal decision-maker but he was very clear about goal-setting for the squad. For instance, he had identified that we had become notoriously poor starters to the season and was very clear about what he wanted from the squad at the beginning of 2006 to change that. Whereas Pete was, and still is, a brilliant coach in a one-to-one situation Robbo instigated a process whereby small groups of senior players, led by me and often including Mushy, Jason Lewry and James Kirtley, would get together to chew over a variety of issues. If individuals made powerful statements in those forums he challenged them to back them up where it mattered – on the field. I’m convinced it helped several senior players and others find a bit in terms of their own performances.
Our second Championship success in 2006 was never going to be as good as the first but we were definitely a better team that year. We should have won the treble in fact, disappointingly losing our final one-day league game at Trent Bridge after we had been bowled out cheaply. Robbo’s insistence that we started the season strongly was borne out and we got on a roll quickly, winning six of our first eight games.
Halfway through the season I couldn’t see anyone stopping us. We also won three of the last four and although it would have been nice to have wrapped things up at Hove we still enjoyed the celebrations after Mushy had gone past 100 wickets for the second time in the title-clinching win at Trent Bridge which we achieved just before it started to rain. As usual Mushy took most of the headlines and rightly so but 11 members of our squad that season had come through Sussex’s junior ranks. Rana and Yasir Arafat, who shared the second overseas player duties, dovetailed superbly while Mike Yardy’s consistent performances in one-day cricket earned him England selection.
We also won a thrilling Lord’s final against our old rivals Lancashire and, if I’m honest, that success probably gave me more satisfaction than the Championship. A lot of Sussex people were still scarred by the memories of their last appearance at Lord’s in 1993 when they failed to defend a score of more than 300 against Warwickshire. The competition was based on a group format initially but we beat Shane Warne’s Hampshire at Hove and booked our place with a game to spare.
That was a special victory, as most were back then when we came up against Warne and his team. I loved playing against him. He was a ferocious competitor who was always looking to push the boundaries in terms of what was acceptable on-the-field behaviour. His reputation definitely got him a few wickets but he was still a magnificent bowler and going up against him, whatever the format, was always an occasion I looked forward to.
He was probably past his prime but he could still bowl magnificent spells, although he used to get frustrated at Hove because the wickets tended to be too slow and he didn’t have the stamina to bowl the number of overs that Mushy sent down. As a fellow-leg spinner he had enormous respect for Mushy, certainly more than he had for the rest of us!
In 2005, he started calling Matt Prior ‘Watermelons’ after taking offence at Matt’s confident strut to the wicket when he went out to bat. Warne stopped the whole game as he mimicked Matt’s walk to the wicket by striding up and down the pitch with his arms out as if he was carrying a watermelon under each arm. It undermined Matt’s normal confidence and angered me. After the game I told the press that I’d lost respect for Shane, a heat of the moment comment which I regretted as soon as I’d said it, especially when I was woken in the early hours of the following morning by the former Australian fast bowler Rod Hogg asking me to go on his radio show to explain my comments!
After that, every time we played them there was an incident of some kind and umpires must have hated standing in those matches. Mike Yardy got so wound up by a comment Simon Katich made to Mushy that he followed him off the field for about 40 yards, giving him an earful of abuse, after Mushy had got him out. Hampshire made an official complaint about James Kirtley’s bowling action during a game at the Rose Bowl in 2005 and as a consequence James had to remodel his action again.
The following year in the decisive C&G Trophy game at Hove, James waved to Jim May after bowling Warne and Warne started to walk off that way as well. Then Warne had a pop at me in the press because the number one I had on the back of my shirt was wider than those worn by the rest of the team. It got so bad that both counties were warned by the ECB to calm things down.
Before we were due to play them at Arundel in 2007 I was chatting to Pete Moores about the situation and he came up with a good suggestion, ‘Look, he will be expecting you to be aggressive again so why not do exactly the opposite and kill him with kindness? Make him feel like he’s the best person on the planet.’
I was willing to try anything to win this battle of wills so when I got to the ground the day before the Championship fixture I told our dressing room attendant Mervyn Stevens to make sure everything Shane wanted he got, no questions asked. I then asked Brian Smith, who used to open and close the gate on to the field at all our home games, to greet Shane like a long-lost cousin when their bus arrived the following morning. Brian was a lovely guy who would always offer a consoling hug or pat on the shoulder if you’d got out cheaply but on this occasion he surpassed himself. When Shane got off the coach I was sure Brian was going to French kiss him! Shane was speechless but I had one more plan to execute. The walls at Arundel are thin so you can always hear what’s going on in the opposition’s dressing room. As soon as Shane started his team talk I barged in without knocking, apologised for interrupting and asked Shane to sign a couple of scorecards for my girls ‘because you are their favourite cricketer’. As Shane signed and his team struggled to contain their giggles I knew our charm offensive had worked. Shane didn’t leave the dressing room for the next four days unless he was going to bat or field and we won the game easily. Matches against Hampshire were never the same after that.
We were desperate to win the C&G Trophy but the problem was that it was nearly two months after we’d reached the final before we headed up to Lord’s and I was concerned we had lost the momentum we had built up. James Kirtley hadn’t been a regular in the side at the start of the season but he was still an outstanding one-day bowler and I knew he would relish the big occasion and the opportunity to stick a metaphorical two fingers up at his critics who had doubted that he had the mental strength to bounce back again having remodelled his action for the second time earlier that year.
A few weeks before the final we played Lancashire in a one-day game at Hove. We were anxious to put down a marker against them and successfully chased a target of 277. I got 132 not out from 101 balls and batted as well as I’d ever done in one-day cricket for Sussex. Mushy missed the game, which disappointed Lancashire because they were keen to get after him and unsettle him ahead of the final, and afterwards he was full of praise for my performance. He called for hush in the dressing room and said: ‘Skipper, I’ve only got two words to say. We love you!’ We were still laughing about that the day we got to Lord’s.
It will go down as one of the best Lord’s finals ever. The pitch wasn’t the best and the occasion got to us early on, as a succession of our batsmen succumbed to nervous shots. Thanks to Yardy and Yasir Arafat, who both made 37, we cobbled together 172. Yards was never the most aesthetically pleasing of players but he was a fighter. Lancashire’s players gave him some real abuse that day and when we regrouped at the break he was as fired up as I’d ever seen him. After a few words from me I left the team talk to Yards. His emotional and passionate address was all we needed.
James Kirtley bowled superbly with the new ball to leave Lancashire 27/3 and Mushy and the other bowlers kept things tight in the middle overs. We fielded superbly and every time Lancashire tried to lift the tempo they lost a wicket. I kept three overs back for James and he delivered two more wickets to become only the third bowler to take five in a one-day match all lbw. When his appeal against Murali Kartik was answered in the affirmative and we’d won the match I made a beeline for the stumps because I knew James would be buried under a sea of bodies. As we walked off the field I handed one to him. I knew how special those souvenirs were from my own Lord’s experience with Derbyshire 13 years earlier. Mike Atherton was doing the post-match presentation and looked gutted that his old county had lost. When I walked on to the dais I gave him a big kiss on the cheek to cheer him up. I’m not sure it helped but it must have given the Sky Sports viewers a laugh.
When we won the Championship a few weeks later there were eight survivors from the team that won in 2003. By then we were just happy to crawl over the finishing line, or be dragged over it by our inspirational leg-spinner. We were knackered, mentally and physically. It had been a long season. Fortunately Mushy had one more big performance left in him at Trent Bridge and it was an unforgettable moment when he took his 100th wicket of the season, dropped to his knees and offered a silent prayer as the rest of us respectfully gave him some space before engulfing him. Thirty minutes later he had completed a career-best 9-48 and it was all over, so quickly in fact that the ECB officials had still not arrived with the trophy.
Winning the title in front of 1,500 at a big ground like Trent Bridge could not compare to a sunny September afternoon at Hove three years earlier, but most of the crowd had come up from Sussex and we made the most of it. We filled the trophy with champagne and went into the pavilion where most of our supporters were celebrating. We passed the cup around and everyone took a sip which was a nice moment and Pete Moores, who was there working for Sky Sports, joined us which was fitting considering all he’d done to make those moments possible. I was so tired I must have got drunk pretty quickly back at the team hotel, where a lot of supporters had joined us. I woke on Saturday morning with a stinking hangover, further proof that at my age your powers of recovery are not those of a 21-year-old. I suppose I must have tried keeping up with some of the youngsters in the squad and failed miserably.
A few days later we did another open-top bus ride around Brighton and Hove. It was a cloudy Monday afternoon and as we drove along Western Road there were more bemused shoppers than flag-waving supporters chanting Mushy’s name. It looked like the people of Sussex had come to expect their cricket team to win at least one trophy a year.
The Professional Cricketers’ Association dinner in London is always one of the best nights of the year, whether you have won a trophy or not. Everyone attends and it’s a fantastic occasion to catch up and gossip with other players and do a bit of detective work on who is out of contract and available. It was where we first got wind that Tony Cottey was unhappy and interested in leaving Glamorgan to join us in 1999. Now it was my turn.
After we’d been presented with our trophies I was approached by Stewart Regan, Yorkshire’s chief executive, a man I’d never met before. He told me that he’d spoken to Yorkshire’s coach David Byas and that my name had come up as someone who might head up the planned restructuring of their cricket operation. He asked if I’d be interested and I gave him my mobile number. The conversation cannot have lasted more than a minute.
I was both flattered and intrigued, particularly about the management element the job would entail. I was starting to think seriously about life after playing and earlier in the year I’d applied for the chief executive vacancy at Sussex, which was eventually filled by Gus Mackay, and I was taking my level four coaching qualification. When I told Sam she seemed pleased that my efforts at Sussex had been recognised and urged me to at least meet them to see what they had to offer. If she had any reservations about the upheaval it would cause to our domestic life in Sussex she kept them well hidden.
I spoke to Regan the next day and arranged to meet 48 hours later in London with him and Yorkshire chairman Colin Graves. Things were moving quickly and for the next couple of days I could think of little else. I also knew at some stage I would have to front up with Sussex. My relationship with David Green, the chairman, was excellent and if the county had offered me some security beyond the remaining year on my contract I would have signed there and then. Sussex had paid me well of course, but I hadn’t had a salary increase for six years during which time I’d helped deliver two Championships and a first win at Lord’s in a one-day final for 20 years. I felt that if it had been up to David alone he would have given me the security I wanted but it was going to be a committee decision and I accepted that, at 36 and with my best years now behind me, others might not be so willing.
I lost count of the number of times I went to call David and bottled it. Eventually I spoke to him outside a fish and chip shop in Hassocks, somewhere he’d recommended to me funnily enough. I told him about the offer from Yorkshire and that it interested me, particularly the managerial element. He was shocked, as I knew he would be, but he graciously gave me permission to speak to Yorkshire. I should have been pleased but somehow I got it into my head that it was a sign Sussex were happy for me to leave when, as I was to discover, it was nothing of the sort.
Like Stewart Regan, I didn’t know Colin Graves from Adam but he obviously knew Adams as he bounded across the hotel room to introduce himself as if we were long-lost pals. He outlined that the club’s management were unhappy with the cricket structure at Yorkshire and that Geoff Boycott, who had been co-opted on to their board, had recommended a scenario where the captain called the shots on and off the field. Captaining Yorkshire on its own was not going to swing it for me, but the director of cricket role definitely appealed. I would be controlling a sizeable budget at one of the biggest clubs in the country. Yorkshire had endured some lean times since winning the Championship in 2001 but they were a much bigger county than Sussex. My father was from Yorkshire and when I left Derbyshire I’d hoped they might be one of the counties interested in signing me, but they weren’t.
I gave my own ideas on how I envisaged things working and outlined how bringing in key personnel would be key to making it work. The more we spoke the more I warmed to the idea. Colin Graves and I got along fine and I formed the impression that anything I wanted they would agree to. The financial package was mind-blowing. I would be captain for 2007 and 2008 before becoming director of cricket full-time. After a meeting lasting nearly two hours we shook hands and I promised to make a decision in the next couple of days. My big mistake that day was not making sure everything we’d agreed in principle was subsequently put in writing.
The following morning I met David Green. When I told him the financial offer he was staggered. ‘How can you turn it down?’ I was to get similar responses over the next few days from other people I spoke to. I reiterated that if Sussex put a new three-year contract on the table on the same terms I was on I would sign in there and then. David was in an impossible situation. The best Sussex could offer was a year’s extension with the option of another year after that. A few days later I met Pete and Ian Salisbury while I was doing more level four coaching modules at Loughborough and dropped my little bombshell. I respected their views and both told me to accept. No one could make a convincing case for me to stay. Sam and I and our family loved Sussex and we had put down some strong roots. It would be a massive wrench to leave but she remained very supportive and by the end of the week my mind was made up.
By now the story had got out in the press and I happily fronted up. I’d hoped that the adverse reaction it created from Sussex supporters might persuade the club to improve their terms but when I met with David he reiterated that their existing offer could not be changed. It was a very emotional moment and David could sense my unease. I e-mailed him just to make sure everything was in writing and he signed off his reply with, ‘Everything that glistens isn’t necessarily gold.’ They proved to be prophetic words. A few minutes later, and an anxious fortnight after we’d first met, I rang Colin Graves to tell him I was accepting his offer. I went to see Robbo but could hardly speak, I was that upset. He just asked me to be sure I was going for the right reasons. When I told him the director of cricket role appealed more than pulling on a Yorkshire shirt he gave me his blessing. It meant a lot.
I wanted another meeting with Yorkshire, which was arranged for the end of October. The following day I would be unveiled at a press conference while Sam and the kids would be shown around houses by the club. We drove north on a thoroughly miserable day made worse by hold-ups on the M1. We finally got to Headingley after eight hours on the road and as we pulled into the ground I looked in the rear view mirror. The kids’ faces were as miserable as the weather. Sam was still very positive but I could tell Georgia and Sophie were deeply unhappy at the upheaval that lay ahead.
The meeting with Regan and Graves didn’t start too well. Regan told me that Michael Lumb was leaving to sign for Hampshire and Anthony McGrath was still insisting he wanted away as well. They told me there was no chance of Darren Lehmann returning as overseas player. I had asked for full control over the selection of his replacement but the next thing I knew Regan was telling everyone he had some great news – Younis Khan, the Pakistan batsman, had been signed for 2007.
I was stunned. What happened to the assurances I’d been given about overseas players at earlier meetings? Of all Pakistan’s batsmen he was probably best suited to English conditions but I was concerned how much he would play because of international commitments. At that stage I was really beginning to have serious doubts but it felt as if I was on a conveyor belt and couldn’t get off. We went through my proposals to overhaul the coaching structure but again Regan pulled the rug from under my feet. I wanted a first-team coach and physiologist with Steve Oldham taking over as senior bowling coach and Kevin Sharp looking after the second team. I also wanted David Byas’s new role as head of cricket development more clearly defined. All fairly basic stuff I felt, but Regan dismissed my plan to bring in two new people out of hand. I got the impression that if it wasn’t his idea he wasn’t interested.
People who watched the press conference the next day on TV subsequently told me they could sense my unease. Ten minutes earlier Yorkshire had poured scorn on my plans to restructure the cricket operation and now I was expected to say how proud I would be to pull on the white rose. I fronted up as best I could and even then I felt sure we could compromise and sort everything out.
I headed back to Headingley the following week for more meetings, one of which was with the players in the indoor school opposite the ground. Previously the club had put me up in a nice hotel ten minutes from the ground where Sussex had always stayed. This time I was in the Headingley Lodge, which was about as soulless a place as you could get. I remember thinking that was another sign things weren’t right. I ended up driving to the other hotel for a meal and a drink.
The meeting with the players went well. I’d already spoken to Michael Vaughan who was very positive about my appointment and I think I conveyed to the squad that this was the start of a great new adventure for them and me. The lads were quite quiet initially but eventually they fired off a few questions and I told them to call me during the winter if they had anything they wanted to get off their chest, good or bad. I think they left feeling positive. The same could not be said for me.
I think I slept about 30 minutes that night. I knew at the outset there would be some serious battles to be fought but now I was having some serious doubts about fulfilling all the roles I would be taking on – batsman, captain and manager. I’d done two well enough for nine seasons at Sussex but all three? What about my relationship with Regan and did I really feel, having met the players, that they could be my team? The doubts were crashing in. By 5am I was wide awake and feeling physically sick. All I wanted to do was be back with Sam and the kids and by 9.30am I was. As soon as I walked through the door Sam knew I couldn’t go through with it.
Within an hour I was knocking on David Green’s door. We’d kept in regular contact and he knew I was wobbling so my visit wasn’t a huge surprise. When he told me coming back was definitely an option I thanked him and drove straight to the ground to ask Robbo whether I could come back. His face broke into a massive smile; he hugged me and told me of course it was. You cannot imagine how relieved I was to hear those words.
By mid-afternoon I had agreed the club’s original contract offer, all I had to do now was phone Regan and give him the news. We spoke for no more than a couple of minutes and I hardly allowed him to get a word in edgeways. I explained that my change of heart was the best decision for my family and me and that I wanted to finish my career in a Sussex shirt. He was stunned and asked if a face-to-face meeting with Colin Graves might salvage the deal. I told him I would happily talk to Graves on the phone. Regan knew my reasons and I was sure he could easily convey those to his chairman. That phonecall never came. Fortunately, I had never signed a contract.
It was the hardest decision of my career, but now a decade later I have no regrets. It was the right move at the time and still is. I had underestimated just how big an undertaking it was that I had initially committed to. Would I have been too much for Regan? Probably. I would certainly have questioned his decision-making more than he was used to. Colin Graves was a grafter who worked 24-7 to improve Yorkshire cricket and his efforts have paid off in recent years with the success they have enjoyed. Unfortunately, when it came down to it, I could not offer him, or Yorkshire, the same level of commitment. There was only one shirt I wanted to be wearing when I finished my playing career.