TOM Maynard’s death was the beginning of the end for me at Surrey. Reflecting on events now, it was only a matter of time before the powers that be made their move.
I had a conversation along those lines at the start of 2013 with Richard Thompson, the chairman. He was very candid, which I appreciated, and told me he didn’t see me being at the county beyond 2015. I knew that every coach, whatever the sport, only has a finite shelf life. In a strange way I admire those who could continually reinvent themselves and be sufficiently motivated to stay in their roles for years and years. Personally, I’m not sure it does either them or their club any good.
When the two Richards – Thompson and Gould – came in they made it abundantly clear that their long-term planning involved Alec Stewart being involved in a full-time role at some stage. That future was now. Alec had already been around, but in more of an advisory role. Of course he was a massive figure in Surrey cricket whose views were sought at all levels of the club’s management, both on what was happening on the field and in other areas of its operation. But he was in the same situation as I find myself now. He had no central full-time cricketing role. He did media work and was an ambassador for Clydesdale Bank, who sponsored the 40-over competition. I found him to be a great sounding board. He came in occasionally to work with the team and it was very helpful to have a different viewpoint on things. As players we’d always got on well and he was around for two of the biggest moments of my career. He was in the Surrey team when I made my Championship debut for Derbyshire in 1988 and, of course, we’d been England team-mates in South Africa in 1999. We then worked together at Sussex when Mark Robinson brought him in to mentor Matt Prior, who idolised Alec. I always felt I had Alec’s backing, right up until the day I was sacked.
Another big figure at the club was Mark Ramprakash, who’d been the rock of Surrey’s batting for more than a decade. When I arrived he was still a really fantastic player and, in my mind, the best technical batsman of my generation. When I played you only saw him at close quarters two or three times a season and during my Sussex days he always seemed to get runs against us, often big scores as well. But it was only when I worked with him closely that I began to appreciate just what a wonderful player he was, the way he worked out bowlers’ strengths and weaknesses and adapted his game to different match situations. At the end of his Surrey career he played with some very good players but also some average ones as well, who he made look better than they actually were because when he was in full flow no one was bothered too much about who was batting at the other end. For a while his runs covered up a lot of the fault lines in our batting.
I loved the challenge of coaching him. Actually, coaching is probably the wrong word. I guess advising him is a better description of our relationship. My job was to create the environment where he could excel and after I arrived I felt I did that. I found it interesting that when he retired he admitted that batting was much more fun than being in the dressing room. The junior batsmen in our squad often felt intimidated by him. I’d had an interesting conversation with someone close to the team just after I arrived when we talked about Mark. ‘You’ll never win anything with Ramps in the side,’ I was told. I argued strongly that he was wrong and I wanted to prove him so but they turned out to be prophetic words.
In November 2010 Mark suffered a bad knee injury playing football. He was going to miss the start of the 2011 season and, at 42, I thought it was better for the longevity of his own career that when he returned he should concentrate on four-day cricket. So when we won the Lord’s final that warning I’d been given turned out to be spot on. We had played brave, high-risk cricket and, at that stage of his career, Mark was doing anything but. He’d battled all throughout 2011 after returning to the team but he couldn’t recapture the consistent form he’d had for virtually all his career. To my eyes he looked laboured at the crease and was leaving hundreds of balls outside off stump that he would normally have put away to the boundary. It was clear to everyone that after the injury time was finally catching up with Mark.
I’d been in exactly the same situation at the end of my career. The signs are there when you can’t do things on a cricket field or with a bat in hand that were once second nature. Mark continued to struggle at the start of 2012. By then he was playing on reputation alone, which was no good for us in terms of our development as a team but also a bonus for the opposition because Mark was no longer the dominating presence of old at the crease.
After Tom died I felt deep down we would lose Rory too so in effect we had lost our numbers four and five. At a pivotal board meeting, I put forward the view that we needed to recruit and the first place to look was to find out if guys like Rory Burns, Zafar Ansari and Arun Harinath could make the step up from the second team. I argued again that we had to give them a run in the side perhaps until the end of the season. At the end of it, we would know just how much – or how little – recruitment we would need to do for our batting unit. Mark’s future then came up for discussion. During the first half of the season he was again struggling and averaging barely into double figures and it was decided unanimously that he would not be offered a new contract. Yours truly was given the task of passing on the news to Mark.
That was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward to, but I was honest. His first response was, ‘What does Alec Stewart think about this?’ Alec, of course, had been part of the decision-making process and it might have been easier for Mark to accept that his career was drawing to an end if Alec had told him instead of me. Anyway, all I wanted was for Mark to leave the game on his terms. If that meant one more Championship or even one-day appearance, which we could publicise in advance as his final game before retirement, then I promised him I would make it happen. A few days later, in July 2012, Mark called a press conference and announced his retirement there and then.
Of course, in certain corridors I was portrayed as the villain of the piece because I’d been the person to give him the news. All the usual suspects – former Surrey players, committee members – lined up to have a pop at me without fully knowing the facts. I would have loved Mark to bow out with one last big flourish at The Oval in front of an appreciative crowd. It was his decision to retire in the way he did and when. Sad though it was he left many memories for a great number of people. He had an exceptional talent and I hope he will look back with immense pride on his wonderful career.
Moving forward to 2013, Mark’s retirement would leave us short of experience so Alec’s suggestion to bring in Graeme Smith as captain did make sense. He was still one of the best players in the world and his experience and presence would bring some stability to the dressing room, which we needed after the traumatic events of 2012. When he arrived he had a very positive effect on the team. He kept things simple and was quite autocratic but because of his stature in the game the players couldn’t help but respect him. When it was time to go to work Graeme switched into cricket mode but he was quite a relaxed, almost playful character away from the game. We spoke quite a bit about leadership. Having assessed the set-up at Surrey for a couple of weeks he told me that, in his opinion, he thought the coaching structure needed to be streamlined rather than expanded, which by the start of 2013 was the case with Alec now having more and more of an influence on decision-making. It was an interesting suggestion but one, if I’m being honest, I knew we had little chance of being able to implement.
There were others. At the end of 2012, when Rory Burns, Zafar Ansari and Arun Harinath were coming through and we knew we were signing Graeme I argued we didn’t need another senior batsman and that we had to keep investing in the younger players at the club. We signed 37-year-old Vikram Solanki, a player I had always admired. However, I argued that this was a backward step but the powers-that-be felt we needed a more experienced feel to the squad. The decision to bring in Graeme meant the overseas slot was filled. I’d always contended that our first-choice overseas player should be the best available spin bowler and we should build the team around him and the captain. With that option unavailable now we ended up bringing in Gary Keedy, who was 39.
Like Vikram, Gary had a lot of experience and both were great guys in their own right but I wasn’t convinced they were going to make the difference everyone was hoping for. And, of course, we went from being a young, dynamic side to suddenly one that was full of thirty-somethings. My brave new era for Surrey was starting to now look like a distant dream. I guess for me, looking back, Graeme represented the final throw of the dice if there was to be a successful end to my time at Surrey.
Graeme was desperate to make an early statement of intent with the bat but in his first game against Somerset in the Championship at The Oval he scored just two. We then played Sussex and after making three in the first innings he scored 67 as we batted through the last day to save the game. We then met Middlesex at Lord’s where he got a duck and 48 not out. I felt he was batting with his familiar authority in the second innings, a belief reinforced the following day when he scored an unbeaten 74 against Hampshire in our opening Pro40 match. But he came off the field complaining of soreness in his left ankle, a problem that had dogged him before. He went to see the physio and later that night I was told that a scan had revealed some pretty serious damage. There was no time to formulate a plan for his rehabilitation. At the request of Cricket South Africa he returned home that night, his Surrey career over before it had really begun.
We then swapped one legend of the game for another when Ricky Ponting joined us for a two-month spell. Ricky was absolutely brilliant. He could still play and produced a masterclass on his debut at Derby when he scored 192 not out. As a team, though, we had yet to win a Championship game when we arrived at Arundel to face Sussex in mid-June, although I did feel we had started to turn the corner.
The pitch was typically slow, but that was our most complete performance of the season to date and I’m convinced we would have won the game had we not lost the first day to rain. On the second day Richard turned up at the ground with Alec Stewart. I didn’t think too much about it, there was a former players’ reunion going on organised by the Professional Cricketers’ Association which they were attending but I took the chance to do a couple of circuits of the ground, first with Richard and then Alec. I asked them both the same question. ‘Look, is my job under threat?’ Both said categorically that it was not. I told them that I was quite bullish about our prospects for the rest of the season. I knew we wouldn’t win the Championship that season but we had spent a month planning the T20 campaign and I was very confident we would do well in that competition. We certainly had the players who would relish the format.
A couple of days later Ian Salisbury and I were sacked.
Richard phoned me and requested a meeting at The Oval. ‘We need to have a conversation about your employment,’ were his words. I don’t know what surprised me more, losing my job or losing it a year to the day since Tom had died. To his credit, when I pointed the anniversary out to him Richard was very apologetic. Within 25 minutes of our conversation it was all over the media. That’s how Sam found out. Richard said that he and the decision-makers, whom I assumed to include Alec, felt that the pressure both Ian and I had been under had become intolerable and was being felt by the players too. As I expected, Alec was to take more of a hands-on role with support from Stuart Barnes, the bowling coach who had been brought in at the start of 2012. To a man, every player in the squad rang me that day. They could have been doing it because it might have made them feel better but I sensed from the conversations I had that they were genuinely disappointed that Ian and I had gone.
I still contend two years later that Surrey acted irresponsibly and in haste. For the first time that season we had a week without any cricket coming up where we could take stock and move forward. During the Arundel game I genuinely felt for the first time since Tom died and Graeme Smith had left that we were moving forward. Surrey’s argument was that the break gave them time to shuffle the pack. I knew they were going to get rid of me eventually so what difference would three months have made? If they had told me that I’d run my race and would be replaced at the end of the season I would have been fine with that. It would give me time to start thinking about my own future and also incentivise me to make sure Surrey finished the season strongly, not least because if I left them in a good position it would not do any arm to my own employment prospects.
Later that week I finally managed to have a conversation with Alec. He explained that when we had spoken at Arundel he wasn’t aware that he would subsequently be part of a conversation where my future would be up for discussion. He told me that the decision to release Ian and myself from our contracts had been unanimous. So what had happened in the hours between our chat on the boundary, when he assured me my job was not under threat, and the subsequent meeting? Did I feel betrayed? Yes, absolutely. That said, this was professional sport and there is always an element of dog eat dog.
I remain on very good terms with Alec and both Richards. While it was an intense and very difficult challenge I undertook I will always consider my time at Surrey as a privilege. I think ‘accelerated learning’ is the best phrase to describe my experience. I’m proud of my achievements. When I left, Surrey were sixth in the First Division, a position many other counties would have been content with and in my time the club had more representation across all England squads than at any other time.
Our good friends Ray and Kerry Fine took us off on holiday, the first proper break I’d had during the cricket season for more than 25 years. I will forever be grateful to them for their kind friendship and words of wisdom at that very difficult time. When I got back I went to The Oval for the last time. I saw Richard but found it very tough to speak to him, I was still hurting deeply. I reiterated that I thought that we would have a good run in the T20, because of the preparations we’d already made, but that we would get relegated in the Championship. Sure enough, we reached the final of the T20 but went back down to the Second Division.
Look, as I’ve already mentioned I know every coach has a shelf life. In hindsight, I should have followed my instincts and left on a high after the success at the end of 2011. But I have never backed away from any challenge during my career, it’s just not in my nature. I always feel there is a solution and a workable way forward.
I guess I did well to last at Surrey for as long as I did considering the hostility in some quarters to my appointment in the first place. There were some wonderful times too, don’t get me wrong, and I worked with many good people and had terrific support from a lot of Surrey members. The Lord’s final win was one of the highlights of my career and to see some of the young players who I signed and brought through during my time as coach develop into good Surrey cricketers who are taking the club forward now under Graham Ford gives me a great deal of satisfaction two years on.