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Copyright © Mannez Promotions Ltd 1997

First published in hardback in 1997 by CollinsWillow

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DEDICATION

To my long-suffering family: Kathy, Liam, Sarah, Becky, and the equally long-suffering supporters of English cricket

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

A Game in Crisis

Ten Years of Hurt 1987–1997

Introduction

1 From Heroes to Zeroes

2 Ted Lord and his Brave New World

3 ‘One Man’s Meat …’

4 The Demise of Dexter

5 Illy’s Change of Plan

6 The Final Say

7 A Dirty Business

8 Dad’s Army

9 Illy Takes Charge

10 Disarming Devon

11 End of the World

12 The Graveney Fiasco

13 Murder in Bulawayo

1997 Ashes to Ashes

14 The New Order

15 Atherton’s Dream

16 Still Dreaming

17 ‘Good morning, Michael’

18 Make That Eleven Years

How Not to Run English Cricket

19 Marking Time: The Nicholas Affair

20 Trouble with Patrick

21 Liam’s Choice

22 Pills and Ills: The Burn Out Factor

Botham’s Blueprint

23 The Questions

24 The Answers

Picture Section

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

A GAME IN CRISIS

‘English cricket is in crisis, of that there is no doubt’

On Saturday 28 December 1996, the third day of England’s second Test against Zimbabwe in Harare, English cricket celebrated a bittersweet tenth anniversary.

It was ten years to the day when, on the 1986–87 tour of Australia, under captain Mike Gatting, England last won the Ashes; ten years to the day when England’s descent to the bottom rung of international cricket began.

I remember the moment we achieved what Englishmen regard as the ultimate cricketing goal as though it was yesterday. One-nil up in the series with two matches to play, we arrived at Melbourne for the Christmas Test, confident that we would achieve the result that would give us the series. Our confidence was not misplaced. We won in three days and we were that good. Gladstone Small and I both took five wickets to dismiss the Australians for fewer than 150, then Chris Broad hit a century to set up victory by an innings. How sweet a moment it was when Merv Hughes swung a delivery from Phil Edmonds, our left-arm spinner, into Gladstone’s hands on the square leg boundary to bring the match to an end and signal the start of our celebrations.

Ten years later, on that fateful day in Harare, England were being bowled out by a team representing a country that wasn’t even playing Test cricket when we last won the Ashes, dismissed for 156 in less than a full day’s play. It was one of the most pathetic batting performances I’ve seen from an England team, but the fact that the overwhelming public reaction to it was one of resignation rather than shock underlined just how far English cricket had fallen during a decade in the doldrums.

Then Zimbabwe’s young fighters completed England’s indignity by winning the two final one-day games of the three-match series to secure a 3–0 whitewash.

David Lloyd, the England coach, on his first senior overseas tour, had already suffered ridicule back home for his comments after the tied first Test in Bulawayo, when, after a fracas with an official of the Zimbabwean Cricket Union he claimed, ‘We murdered them. We hammered them. They know it, and we know it.’ The team had also earned a reputation, unfair or not, for surliness.

For the armchair critics back home, England’s final one-day defeat by 131 runs was meat and drink. Conservative MP Terry Dicks tucked in with the greatest relish. He said, ‘I think the tour should be abandoned now. They should not be allowed to go out to the sun in New Zealand. They should be brought home in disgrace.’ Now really gorging himself, he carried on, ‘I would sack the management and half the team. I have never been so ashamed to be English.’ Another Tory MP, Bill Cash, said English cricket had reached a new low. ‘We have got to shake the whole thing up and produce some new talent,’ he said. It wasn’t just the rent-a-quote politicians who climbed into England. The former England captain Brian Close, my mentor as a young player at Somerset and a man whose opinions on cricket are usually direct and to the point said simply, ‘The players want their arses kicking.’

Despite occasional upturns in form and the undoubted enthusiasm of new coach Lloyd, the underlying theme running through England’s performances during 1996 was that as a cricketing nation we were going nowhere fast. The statistics said it all: nine Test matches were played in the twelve-month period, one against South Africa, three against India, three against Pakistan and two against Zimbabwe. England managed one solitary victory, the first Test of the summer against India at Edgbaston. They lost three, the first against South Africa to surrender the five-Test series, two to Pakistan in the 2–0 defeat in the second half of the summer, and drew the other five matches – two against India, one against Pakistan and, most unforgivably in the eyes of politicians, players and punters alike, two Test matches in Zimbabwe.

In one-day international cricket, they did reach the quarter-finals of the 1996 World Cup – but after losing to every Test playing nation, and only because they managed to defeat Holland and the United Arab Emirates. In total, of the twenty-one matches completed, England won just six, losing fifteen. In all international cricket they played thirty-one matches, won seven, and lost eighteen. Whichever way you care to look at it, that record simply wasn’t good enough. Certainly the sponsors of England’s Test team, Tetley Bitter, thought so as well.

When in the autumn of 1996 Tetley announced that their sponsorship would finish at the end of the 1997 Ashes series, they insisted it was because of ‘changes in the brewing industry and changes in marketing strategy’. Those changes may well have had something to do with it. But it was the lack of change in the fortunes of the England team which persuaded them to make their decision.

Tetley had been sponsoring England’s Test cricketers for four years. In September 1994 they announced a renewal of the sponsorship, which was intended to last until the end of the summer of 1999, during which they had intended to try and capitalise on the global exposure created by the Cricket World Cup being played in England.

But when Tetley informed the Test and County Cricket Board they would be exercising their contractual right to opt out of the deal two years early, it was a wake-up call that could be heard the length and breadth of the country. For the key element in their decision was their dissatisfaction with the continued lack of success at the top level. They simply didn’t want to be associated with a losing team anymore.

When Tetley took up the sponsorship in 1992, they struck gold. Immediately after putting the Tetley logo on their shirts, England won their first Test series for eighteen months. Their 2–0 success on the 1992 tour to New Zealand was their first Test series victory away from home since England retained the Ashes in 1986–87. Following that, Graham Gooch’s side finished runners-up to Pakistan in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Tetley were rubbing their hands together in satisfaction at the success of their marketing ploy.

From that high point, however, England’s record went from bad to worse. They lost eight of their next twelve series, beating only India and New Zealand and when that sequence culminated in 2–0 defeat by Pakistan in the summer of 1996, not surprisingly Tetley decided the time had come to stop backing a losing horse. It wasn’t just the way the team played that persuaded Tetley to turn off the tap; the sponsors were also unhappy with the way England looked and the way they behaved. Market research had told them that although brand awareness had increased during the sponsorship with more people learning about their product, they were not necessarily drinking it – not even when England’s latest abject performance drove them screaming to the bar.

By the time England played the final two one-day internationals in Zimbabwe in 1996, they had been joined by Lord MacLaurin, the new chairman of the English Cricket Board, and Tim Lamb, the chief executive. Perhaps for the future benefit of English cricket, it was as well they were there to watch England’s surrender.

Tim Lamb spoke for himself and his boss when, on England’s return from the second leg of the tour to New Zealand, at the annual general meeting of The Council of Cricket Societies, he said: ‘The England team’s performances over recent years have been extremely disappointing, and I think the way in which the England team have conducted themselves recently is also disappointing.

‘Ian MacLaurin and I were absolutely horrified by what we saw in Zimbabwe. We were very very disturbed by some of the things we came across.

‘We thought David Lloyd’s comments in Bulawayo were completely inappropriate. We were not happy with the way the England team presented themselves. We understand their demeanour was fairly negative and not particularly attractive.

‘I think the way they presented themselves in terms of their dress left a lot to be desired. That was a factor in Tetley Bitter not renewing their sponsorship. Things improved in New Zealand, but there is a long way to go.’ A long way to go? Tim Lamb can say that again.

England did improve in New Zealand. It was almost impossible for them not to do so. But no one was getting carried away by the 2–0 score in the Test series, nor the 2–2 draw in the one-day international matches against New Zealand, who were, without doubt, one of the poorest international sides I’ve ever seen.

Mike Atherton’s team could and should have won the series 3–0. The fact is, however, that the resilience of Danny Morrison and Nathan Astle in the first Test in Auckland and New Zealand’s improved bowling in the third Test in Christchurch meant that without the captain’s batting in that final Test, England may well have finished the Test series having drawn 1 –1. Against a team comfortably the worst-rated in world cricket, that would have been a disaster. As Atherton explained after the series was over, had England not won that three-Test series in New Zealand, he would have resigned, and rightly so.

I say that not because I think Atherton was a poor captain or an unworthy leader. He’s an exceptional player and his batting performances have dug England out of holes of their own creation more often than he, or they, would care to recall. No one who witnessed his magnificent 185 not out to save the second Test against South Africa at the Wanderers Ground in Johannesburg will ever have reason to doubt Atherton’s commitment, determination, professionalism and sheer batting skill, nor his courage. But there comes a time in the career of a captain when no matter what he does, what plan he puts into operation, what words he imparts to his team, nothing works.

Having said that, Atherton has been on a hiding to nothing ever since he took over the captaincy from Graham Gooch in 1993. So was Gooch before him, so was David Gower before him, so was Mike Gatting before him. The reason? – the lack of world class talent produced by a domestic system that belongs in ancient history.

And I believe that fact was borne out by events during the summer of 1997. After starting in such breathtaking style, winning the Texaco Trophy series and the first Ashes Test England were finally exposed and outclassed against the unofficial world champions. Their efforts were laudable and brave and all the rest, but in the end they were just not good enough to win. By the time the Ashes were surrendered Atherton was looking and playing as though he had had a gutful.

In the end, after having reached a decision to quit, Atherton was persuaded to carry on by the selectors against his better judgement. Victory in the final Test at The Oval and the prospect of better things in the Caribbean would have been his motivation – fear over the alternative choices would have been in the minds of the selectors. And when he returned from the 1998 winter tour attached to a scoreline that read West Indies 3 England 1, the man who established a record for the highest number of Tests as captain – 52 – had finally decided enough was enough. And this time the selectors left it at that.

The new enthusiasm originally injected into proceedings by MacLaurin and Lamb at the start of the summer of 1997 had had an immediate affect. Glory be, England thrashed Australia in the Texaco Trophy series and then won handsomely in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston. ‘Crisis, what crisis?’ came the cry from the counties once more.

As England slumped to yet another Test series defeat at the hands of Brian Lara’s eminently beatable Windies, then the sense of well-being surrounding Adam Holliaoke’s one-day wonder in the Champions Cup in Sharjah was unceremoniously burst by their defeat in the one-day series thereafter. The crisis was still there staring in the face of blind men.

There are those who will react to the question ‘What’s wrong with English cricket’ by saying ‘nothing’. They will claim that fortunes in Test cricket are cyclical, and things will come right if we just wait long enough and leave them well enough alone. That is dangerous nonsense. I am not the only one who believes that either. Just ask MacLaurin.

MacLaurin, to whom the counties turned at the end of 1996 as Chairman of the TCCB, soon to become the England and Wales Cricket Board, is the man who turned Tesco from a family-run business making £12 million worth of profits in 1976 into Britain’s premier food retailer with a profit of £750 million for the financial year to April 1997. In 1976, by now managing director of the company he’d joined as a trainee in 1959, he took on and won a boardroom battle that changed the course of British retailing history. His principal opponent was no Tom, Dick or Harry, but Sir Jack Cohen, the chairman of Tesco, the business he had co-founded in 1926. And the bone of contention just happened to be the brainchild of Cohen and the cornerstone of Tesco’s success for many years, Green Shield Stamps.

MacLaurin had done his homework and discovered that the stamps had become an unwanted anachronism. As he said, ‘Stamps had been an integral part of Tesco’s success, but it was very apparent to me visiting the stores, that the customers didn’t want them anymore. They were costing us, Tesco’s, £20 million per year to produce, and the customers were handing them back.’ Certain that he was right and that the company needed to shed its ‘pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap’ image and be repositioned upmarket, MacLaurin would not be shaken off. It took five bitter recounts for him to win the boardroom vote 5–4 and earn the right to pursue his plans to transform the company.

He said, ‘Before I attempted to turn Tesco around and into a world class act, people told me I was crazy. They said it simply couldn’t be done. I heard the same things about taking on English cricket. But there is an awful lot to be done.

‘I don’t want to criticise what has gone on in the past, but we cannot shy away from the fact that England’s Test team have not been in the top echelon of international cricket for some time.

‘There are those who persist in claiming that success in cricket is cyclical, that if you wait long enough it’ll all come right of its own accord. I simply don’t believe that is true.

‘You wouldn’t last very long in my business if you just said “everything is cyclical”. Just imagine if you went to the shareholders and told them, ‘I’m terribly sorry that we’ve lost all this money this year, but I’m sure if you hang on and keep investing your cash, perhaps in a few years time we might make a profit.’ We have to be realistic. If nothing is done to turn things round, the most pessimistic scenario is that the game will wither on the vine.’ MacLaurin has a clear view of the alternative to decisive action. It goes like this: ‘If we continue to do badly at international level and end up getting beaten by the Isle of Dogs, people will simply not pay to come and watch, and neither will the television companies whose money along with Test match receipts subsidises the first-class game. Then the counties will be in dire financial straits and the kids will ask, ‘what was cricket?’

When MacLaurin and Lamb set about preparing their blueprint for the future structure of English cricket the illusion of progress created by England’s victory in the 1997 Texaco Trophy series against Australia then the win in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston enabled the more reactionary county chairmen to stick their heads back in the sand and say: “I told you so.”

Mindful of this MacLaurin and Lamb knew they had little or no chance of pushing through their preferred option for change – two divisions and promotion and relegation. Instead they fudged the issue, concocted a totally baffling alternative known as the three conference system and when that was laughed out of court, the barely-believable compromise of the radical status quo. Do me a very large favour.

Under this scheme the top eight sides in the 1998 county championship will go forward to play a one-day tournament known as the Super Cup in 1999. Quite what relevance such a competition will have to the business of making England better at Test cricket is anybody’s guess.

There are moves afoot to blow this out of the water. The Professional Cricketers Association came out heavily in favour of two divisions towards the end of the 1997 season. At their meeting on May 11, 1998 they warned that should their voice be ignored again steps might be taken to coerce certain clubs into seeing the error of their ways. Whisper them, but the words ‘strike action’ have been heard. To those who fear for the future of their own clubs should this scheme be implemented I say: shouldn’t the players be allowed to decide?

For those among the county chairmen who don’t believe things are as black as they are being painted, just consider these facts. Since retaining the Ashes in 1986–87 and prior to the start of the summer series of 1998 against South Africa and Sri Lanka, England had not won a full five-or six-Test series against anyone. Between the start of the 1987 home series against Pakistan and the final Test of the 1998 winter tour to West Indies, England played 113 Tests and won 23 of them. Out of eighteen series against the top-rated cricketing nations, Australia, Pakistan, West Indies and South Africa, they failed to win one, drew four (two versus West Indies in 1991 and 1995, one against South Africa in 1994 and a drawn one-off Test against Australia in 1988) and lost fifteen (five out of six versus Australia, four out of four against Pakistan, four out of six against West Indies and one out of two against South Africa).

They did win eight series, four against New Zealand, two each against India and Sri Lanka. In the period concerned they failed to win a Test series against Pakistan, Australia, South Africa, West Indies and later Zimbabwe, and both single Test match victories against the Aussies had come after the Ashes had already been decided in their favour. That record put them near the bottom of the unofficial ratings of world cricket, an assessment underlined when Benson & Hedges, the sponsors of the 50-over domestic one day competition, brought out their annual yearbook at the end of the 1997 season, and named their Benson & Hedges Cricket Year World XI. For the second year in succession not one place was filled by an Englishman. Their XI for 1997 was Saeed Anwar, Pakistan; Sanath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka; Brian Lara, West Indies; Sachin Tendulkar, India; Aravinda de Silva, Sri Lanka; Steve Waugh, Australia; Ian Healy, Australia; Shane Warne, Australia; Curtly Ambrose, West Indies; Allan Donald, South Africa and Glenn McGrath, Australia. In that team there was no place for Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Mohammed Azharuddin, Anil Kumble, Courtney Walsh or Aamir Sohail.

Nor was there a place for any of the England side that played against Australia in the final Test of that summer series of 1997: Mike Atherton, Mark Butcher, Alec Stewart, Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe, Mark Ramprakash, Adam Hollioake, Andy Caddick, Peter Martin, Phil Tufnell and Devon Malcolm.

And nor, if the XI had been selected at the end of England’s series in West Indies would have the selectors been unduly taxed by the claims of Dean Headley, Jack Russell, and despite his excellent series, Angus Fraser. In other words, not one of the best eleven players that England could produce to contest a Test match in 1996 or 1997 was considered good enough to represent a World XI.

In fact, throughout the 1990s so far, only four England players have been picked for the Benson & Hedges teams.

Further evidence that, in terms of international standing England players are just not good enough came with the publication of the 1997 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. One of the most keenly-awaited features included in the cricketers’ bible is the annual nomination of their ‘Five Cricketers of the Year’. Their selection for 1996 was Sanath Jayasuriya, the man who turned ‘pinch-hitting’ into a new cricketing art form during Sri Lanka’s astonishing World Cup victory; Saeed Anwar, the Pakistan Test opener; Phil Simmons, the West Indies Test all-rounder who inspired his adopted county Leicestershire to the Championship; Mushtaq Ahmed, the Pakistan and Somerset leg-spinner; and Sachin Tendulkar, the Indian master. Sadly, England players were conspicuous by their absence.

According to Matthew Engel, the editor of Wisden: ‘The 1996 cricket season in England was in some respects the most depressing in memory.

‘The consistent failure of the England team is the biggest single cause of the crisis, but it is not the crisis itself. The blunt fact is that cricket in the UK has become unattractive to the overwhelming majority of the population.’

The statistics do not lie. England’s ten-year record shows that we cannot compete against the best Test playing nations in the world. When we win, we win against New Zealand and India. But we’re quite capable of losing to anyone.

English cricket is in crisis, of that there is no doubt. Not only are England’s performances on the field in international and Test cricket simply not good enough, but the county clubs are living in a fool’s paradise if they believe that they can exist through county cricket alone. During 1996, of the eighteen county cricket clubs, eleven received more than half their income from the Test and County Cricket Board from Test match receipts and television revenue. In the case of Derbyshire and Glamorgan, the figure they received was seventy per cent.

The counties depend for their survival on the England team performing properly, performing well and winning. If they continue to languish near the foot of the table of international cricket rankings, then it’s not only sponsors like Tetley who will switch off.

The new England and Wales Cricket Board was able to broker a deal with Vodafone, to fill the gap caused by Tetley’s withdrawal, but no one inside the Board was in any doubt that it was only the presence of MacLaurin at the head of the game that encouraged Vodafone, of which he was a non-executive director, that English cricket was worth the gamble. Nor should they be under any illusions that unless things change substantially for the better, this may be the last big-money payday of its kind.

By the start of the 1998 summer season no sponsors had been announced not only for the new national league and Super Cup tournaments in 1999, but also for the experimental triangular one-day tournament with South Africa and Sri Lanka for that very season. And perhaps most damagingly no sponsor to replace Texaco, the company who had poured vast sums into one-day internationals since 1984.

If the results of England’s national team do not start to improve hugely and quickly, it is not merely the sponsors who will start to switch off.

Indeed whether or not the ECB succeeds in its bid to have Test cricket de-listed and put on the open market, when the Sky TV contract worth £60m is up for renewal, unless English cricket proves that it is serious about wanting to take the professional support seriously and take it forward with real and innovative change, I can imagine the following conversation taking place between the man chosen to replace MacLaurin after he has walked out in despair at the intransigence of the counties.

***

ECB man to Sky negotiator: ‘Would you mind awfully if we had that £60 million again, please?’

Sky negotiator to ECB man: ‘Sixty million for that? You must be joking. Come back when you’ve got something to sell.’

And then the game will be bankrupt.

I intend to trace how England’s fortunes have dipped over the past ten years since that excellent victory under Mike Gatting’s captaincy was achieved in 1986–87. I will highlight the mistakes, the arrogance, and the misjudgements that have plagued English cricket over the past ten years. I will discuss how counties have done a great disservice to the English national game by putting their needs ahead of the requirements of the Test side at most, if not all times. I will discuss the short-sightedness of those in charge of the English game in the past ten years of hurt. And I will suggest measures which I believe can be put in place immediately so that the job of rebuilding English cricket can start in earnest.

TEN YEARS OF HURT 1987–1997

INTRODUCTION

‘From the moment when England secured the Ashes back in 1987, it took ten years to persuade the men in charge of our game that change had to come. Ten years of complacency. Ten years of waste. Ten years of hurt.’

Winning the 1986–87 series against Australia down under should have created a platform from which England could seek to dominate world cricket for a decade.

Instead it might just have been the worst thing I and my colleagues could have done for the game in this country because the successes we achieved under Mike Gatting’s captaincy merely served to paper over the cracks.

The feeling created by our performances down under, that everything in the English garden was rosy, turned out to be an illusion. Complacency was allowed to set in and complacency is death.

Australia reacted to their defeat by setting out long-term, clearly-defined goals to revive their fortunes at international level. They had lost to the Poms just once too often for comfort, realised a plan needed to be devised and stuck to it. Their rise to the status of unofficial world champions demonstrates just how well they put their strategy into practice.

We, on the other, hand proceeded as usual merely to look from one Test match and one Test series to the next.

Indeed, it was not until Mike Atherton was appointed captain to succeed Graham Gooch in 1993 that any kind of long-term selection strategy came into play. Atherton was appointed with a mandate for change, carte blanche to pick young players for the 1993–94 tour to West Indies and let them develop individually and as a team, no matter what short-term setbacks they might suffer. How long did the plan last? Three Test matches. In came Raymond Illingworth as Chairman of Selectors and, over the next two seasons, back came Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting and John Emburey as players. There’s long-term strategy for you.

From the moment England secured the Ashes back in 1987, it took ten years to persuade the men in charge of our game that change had to come. Ten years of complacency. Ten years of waste. Ten years of hurt.

When I review the performances of the England team during the decade in question one thing is immediately obvious, namely the apparently huge difference in the level of the talent available to England as opposed to that emerging elsewhere.

To the naked eye, the difference in quality is startling. While a steady stream of competent batsmen and the occasional high-class act like Mike Atherton have emerged, England have failed to produce one consistent world-class Test bowler, pace, swing, seam or spin, for a decade. When you look around world cricket the difference between the top cricketing nations and England in this respect tells it own story.

Just ponder this list of world-class Test match winners operating during the period in question – Shane Warne, Merv Hughes, Terry Alderman, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Mushtaq Ahmed, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Allan Donald and Anil Kumble – and compare them with the best England have had to offer.

But great players are made as well as born. It is clear that, for too long, England players have reached Test level in spite of our domestic system rather than because of it. Thank goodness Lord MacLaurin understands that success is not merely cyclical and that change is absolutely fundamental for the future well-being of cricket in this country. In Raising the Standard, his plan to take English cricket back to the world summit, all those measures he is seeking to implement below first-class level demonstrate his clear sightedness and vision and, given a late change of mood among the most reactionary clubs, at the time of writing the possibility existed that he might even be given a mandate for real change.

But my reflections on England’s struggles in the period 1987–1997 also concern the mistakes, the short-sightedness, the selfishness and the plain incompetence of those individuals who, despite all the constraints placed on them by the shortcomings of the county game, could and should have made a difference.

ONE
FROM HEROES TO ZEROES

‘It was all a total fiasco. From Ashes winners eighteen months earlier England ended the summer of 1988 as the laughing stock of world cricket.’

It had started so brightly. Mike Gatting’s success in leading England to victory on the 1986–87 tour down under represented a tremendous personal achievement. Written off as ‘can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field’ no-hopers during the warm-up matches, we stuffed those words down the throats of our critics once the serious business started and won the Test series 2–1. There is no doubt that Gatting’s captaincy was a major factor in the transformation.

Emphatically a player’s captain, Gatt understood right from the start that if you treat cricketers like adults, giving them enough leeway when appropriate and a few hard words when necessary, you are far more likely to gain their confidence and get the best out of them rather than by simply attempting to impose your will on them. Even when early results tended to suggest otherwise, he knew that there was no cause for alarm and certainly no need to panic, and he was comfortable with the knowledge that, in terms of preparation, most senior Test players know what is best for them and don’t need telling. Our results, winning the Ashes and the World Series competition, spoke for themselves.

Yet within little over a year after we returned from that wonderful tour, Gatting had been sacked and the England team thrown into turmoil. A year and a bit later he made the decision to turn his back on the England team by signing up for the 1989–90 ‘rebel’ tour to South Africa. The story of how Gatt fell from grace underlines the confusion and lack of leadership from the top that dogged our national summer game for the best part of a decade.

Ever since Ted Dexter led the first England party to tour Pakistan in 1961–62, there had been rumblings of discontent over the standards and motives of the home umpires. England won the first Test ever played between the two countries in Pakistan, but from that initial success until the present day, we have never won there again. Prior to England’s 1987 tour, no player or official had ever spoken out publicly on the subject, but a succession of England touring parties had considered this more than mere coincidence.

The build-up to the eruption that occurred at Faisalabad in the second Test of that 1987 tour had started during Pakistan’s visit to England to play five Tests during the previous summer.

The trouble began even before a ball was bowled, when the Pakistan team, through their manager Haseeb Ahsan, officially objected to the TCCB over the presence on the Test umpiring panel of Ken Palmer and David Constant. Constant had been in the bad books of the Pakistan captain Imran Khan ever since their previous visit to England in 1982, when Imran believed he made a poor decision in the deciding Test of a three-match series at Headingley that he was convinced cost his side the match.

I happened to be batting at the time the incident occurred. After having bowled Pakistan out for 275, we were heavily in the mire at 77 for four with Imran himself bowling beautifully in conjunction with their leg-spin wizard Abdul Qadir. I decided that the best form of defence was attack and took on Qadir and my approach paid off as I made 57 out of a stand of 69 with David Gower in just over an hour. My efforts to break free of the Pakistan stranglehold were frustrating for Imran and his players, and their mood was not helped when Qadir felt certain he had found the edge of Gower’s bat for a catch behind when he had made only seven. Had Gower gone then, Pakistan might well have seen off the tail and gone on to force victory. But Constant turned down huge appeals, Gower survived to make 74 and drag us to 256. I then took five wickets in their second innings of 199 and, set 219 to win, we got there by the narrow margin of three wickets, thanks in no small measure to the forty-two extras contributed by the Pakistan attack.

From where I was standing I honestly was not certain whether Gower had hit the ball or not, and neither, I am sure, could Constant have been. If he made a mistake, it was a genuine error, the kind that all umpires make because they are human. Imran saw it differently, as evidence, in effect, that he and his side were cheated by biased umpiring. Afterwards Imran hit out at Constant, claiming the decision had cost his side the match, and he carried those thoughts with him for the next five years.

What really riled Imran in 1987 was that although the TCCB had agreed to a request by the Indians, in that same summer of 1982, to have Constant taken off the list for their three-Test series with England, when the Pakistan management made the same request now they flatly refused on the grounds of prejudice. To a certain extent I can understand Imran’s feelings. Although it may have been feeble of the Board to bow to India’s wishes in 1982, not to comply with the Pakistan request was at best inconsistent and illogical and at worst bound to inflame any perceived sense of injustice they may have harboured.

The news of what had happened was leaked during the second Test at Lord’s, in which Constant was standing and he stood again in the final match at The Oval. Both times Haseeb Ahsan publicly criticised Constant over his umpiring and at one stage described him as ‘a disgraceful person’.

But this was by no means the only spark of controversy in a series that left everyone with a nasty taste in the mouth. Off the field there was trouble at Edgbaston during the third one-day international when some idiots, fuelled by booze and racial prejudice, fought with Pakistani youths on the terraces. Then in the first Test at Old Trafford, a rain-ruined match going nowhere, Pakistan managed to bowl 11 overs in an hour after tea on the second day. When Micky Stewart, the manager, commented on this, Imran reacted by saying: ‘We get slagged off and called cheats and I object to that.’ Then came the incidents at Headingley that some might say seemed to support the description Imran objected to. Both involved the Pakistan wicket-keeper Salim Yousuf.

After bowling us out for 136 in our first innings, Pakistan made 353 in reply. Chris Broad, whose batting in Australia the previous winter was a huge feature in our success, played at Imran’s second delivery and the ball brushed his left hand after he had removed it from the bat handle. The laws state that the hand has to be in contact with the bat for a catch to be given. Without the benefit of television replays the appeal from the bowler was probably made in good faith, but what made the dismissal so unsatisfactory from England’s point of view was that replays of the catch itself clearly showed that the ball bounced fractionally before arriving in Yousuf’s gloves. Still, no one was too put out at this stage. Sometimes keepers and slip fielders genuinely do not know whether or not the ball has arrived on the bounce and, when considering whether a guy has attempted to deliberately pull a fast one, most players will give the fielder or keeper the benefit of the doubt. There was no doubt at all, however, over Yousuf’s actions some time later. I edged a short delivery and instantly and instinctively looked around to follow the flight of the ball. I could see quite clearly that Yousuf dropped the ball, scooped it up again after it had hit the ground, then claimed the catch. I’m not proud of what I said to him, but it was a knee-jerk reaction in the heat of the moment. I called him, to his face, a cheat, although there might also have been a couple of adjectives thrown in for good measure. The umpire Ken Palmer intervened and had his say and I fully expected Imran to admonish his player for such a blatant offence which, after all, reflected no credit on him as captain. Nothing was forthcoming from Imran, although he did claim later that he would have reprimanded Yousuf had I not sworn at him!

All in all we were more than happy when the series was brought to a close, though disappointed with the 1–0 defeat, and in hindsight it would have been better all around had there been a cooling-off period of a few seasons before we met up again.

That was not to be, as almost immediately after the 1987 World Cup, in which we finished runners-up to Australia, Gatting led his men to Pakistan for a three-Test series, to be followed after Christmas by the Bicentennial Test with Australia and then a further three Tests in New Zealand.

And here is where Gatting and England were badly let down by the Test and County Cricket Board and most particularly by its chairman Raman Subba Row and chief executive A C Smith. It didn’t take a genius to work out that there were likely to be repercussions over what had happened that summer. To me, the fact that the Board did not see fit to try and prevent trouble before it started smacks of complacency.

Instead they dispatched the players with little more than a cheery wave and let them walk into a political minefield unprepared and unprotected, and when the explosions began they made a ridiculous hash of clearing up the mess. It was obvious that Pakistan were desperate to win, more so than usual because of their third successive defeat in a World Cup semi-final, this time to Australia and most importantly this time in Lahore, and by the time Gatting and company arrived rumours were rife that Haseeb Ahsan, by now a Board member and the chairman of the selectors, was intent on orchestrating revenge for having his request to remove Constant and Palmer ignored by the TCCB.

Tit for tat ensued when the Pakistan board ignored England’s protests over the appointment of the controversial umpire Shakeel Khan to stand in the first Test in Lahore and it did not take long for their dissatisfaction to boil over. England were convinced that several decisions had gone against them in the first innings; then at the start of the second Chris Broad decided to take matters into his own hands. Given out caught at the wicket by Shakeel Khan, Broad simply refused to walk and told all and sundry why. ‘I didn’t hit it,’ he said. ‘You can like it or lump it, I’m not going. I didn’t hit it and I’m not out.’ In fact, more than a minute elapsed before Broad was eventually persuaded by his batting partner Graham Gooch that no matter how unfair he thought the decision, it wasn’t going to be overturned.

That was bad enough, but after the game things really got out of hand. Quite clearly Broad’s actions were unpardonable and worth at least a heavy fine. But Peter Lush, the tour manager, driven no doubt by a sense of loyalty to his players, totally misread the situation. Instead of fining Broad he issued what he called a stern reprimand, then appeared tacitly to support the player’s actions by criticising the umpiring and calling for neutral officials. All of which gave Gatting the green light to stir things up even more after the match had ended in an Abdul Qadir-inspired defeat. ‘We knew what to expect,’ said Gatt, ‘but never imagined it would be so blatant. They were desperate to win, but if I was them I wouldn’t be very happy about the way they did it.’

When the players arrived at the Montgomery Biscuit Factory at Sahiwal to play a three-day match against the Punjab Chief Minister’s XI the mood darkened. Several of the players had nights they will never forget, however hard they try – wrapped from head to toe in clothes in order to keep the bat-sized mosquitoes at bay, they sweated and sweltered and never got a moment’s kip. And by the end of the experience the entire party were convinced that they were the victims of plain sabotage. Instead of laughing at their situation, they got more and more stroppy, to such a point that the slightest provocation was bound to lead to an explosion.

It came three deliveries from the end of play on the second day of the second Test in Faisalabad and involved Gatting and the umpire Shakoor Rana – a man whose reputation for upsetting visiting teams was established when Jeremy Coney, the New Zealand captain led his team from the field during the Karachi Test in 1984–85 in protest at his decisions – and the fall-out eventually led to Gatting’s removal from the position of England captain.

Gatting was first accused by Shakoor of moving a fielder without letting the batsman know, an allegation flatly denied by Gatting himself. According to Gatting and several fielders close to the incident, Shakoor then called the England captain a cheat and swore at him repeatedly. Gatting, fuelled by all the real and perceived injustices that he felt he and his side had had to put up with, swore back. While this made for gripping television, the behaviour of both men was wholly out of order.

By the following morning, the seriousness of the row became obvious when Shakoor refused to take the field unless and until he received a full apology from Gatting. Gatting, I understand, would have been happy to do so as long as Shakoor also apologised and plans were underway for a joint statement to be issued, until, wound up, it is believed, by the Pakistan captain Javed Miandad, who had taken over following Imran’s first official retirement, Shakoor changed his mind. Gatting would not apologise unilaterally so, with the two sides stuck in stalemate, a whole day’s play was lost.

When it became clear that the umpire would not allow the game to continue the England management and those at Lord’s had two options. The first was to bend over backwards and bow to whatever demands Shakoor imposed on them, even to the point of forcing Gatting to apologise against his will.

Coincidentally, the next day, the rest day in the match, was also the occasion of the TCCB winter meeting at Lord’s. Finally, understanding that the efforts of Lush to talk with high ranking Pakistan Board officials had come to nought, they issued the following statement:

‘It was unanimously agreed that the current Test match in Faisalabad should restart today after the rest day. The Board manager in Pakistan, Peter Lush, was advised of this decision and asked to take whatever action was necessary to implement it. In reaching their decision the members of the Board recognised the extremely difficult circumstances of the tour and the inevitable frustration for the players arising from those circumstances, but they believe it to be in the long-term interests of the game as a whole for the match to be completed. The Board will be issuing a statement on the tour when it is finished, but in the meantime the chairman and chief executive will be going to Karachi for the final Test next week.’

Peter Lush read the following statement:

‘The Test and County Cricket Board has instructed me as manager of the England team to do everything possible to ensure that this Test match continues today and that we honour our obligations to complete this tour of Pakistan. We have tried to resolve amicably the differences between Mike Gatting and umpire Shakoor Rana following their heated exchange of words which took place on the second day. We all hoped this could have been achieved in private and with a handshake. Umpire Shakoor Rana has stated that he would continue to officiate in this match if he received a written apology from Mike Gatting. The umpire has made it clear he will not apologise for the remarks he made to the England captain. In the wider interests of the game Mike Gatting has been instructed by the Board to write an apology to Shakoor Rana and this he has now done.’

[viz:

Dear Shakoor Rana,

I apologise for the bad language used during the 2nd day of the Test match at Fisalabad [sic].

Mike Gatting 11 Dec 1987]

The players had agreed to refuse to carry on if Gatt was forced to apologise but in the end settled for a strong statement of their own, expressing full support for Gatt and their anger at the Board for forcing him to act against his will.

The second option, which the Board did not take but to my mind should have done, was to tell the players to pack their bags and prepare to come home, while informing the Pakistan Board that unless they put a stop to all this nonsense by instructing Shakoor to issue his apology, they would call off the remainder of the tour.

Once back in England the Board should quietly have reminded Gatting of his responsibilities and told him that any further breaches of discipline from him and his players would result in the ultimate sanction of suspension.

The fact that they chose the former rather than the latter option displayed fatal weakness from the men at the top. Their subsequent award of £1,000 to each player as a ‘hardship bonus’ was just a joke. In Australia and New Zealand the players’ behaviour failed to improve. Broad and Graham Dilley were both fined for on-field incidents; on-field dissent often led by Gatting and then later supported by team manager Micky Stewart gave the squad a reputation for surliness they surely deserved.

From that moment Gatting was dead in the water as captain. Had the selectors made a clean break then England would have been able to approach the 1988 summer series against the West Indies as a fresh start. Gatting himself would have been able to re-focus his thoughts on maintaining his position as the best batsman in the side and the players would have understood the price of poor discipline. Instead, although the Board issued a directive to the selectors to take into account a player’s behaviour as well as his form, Peter May, the chairman of selectors, re-appointed Gatting without a second thought. Such muddled thinking invited disaster.

And then came Rothley Court. Gatting’s critics had waited eagerly for the slightest opportunity to pile in and, while England were achieving a creditable draw against Viv Richards’ side in the first Test at Nottingham his behaviour at the team’s hotel gave it to them with knobs on.

The day after the Trent Bridge Test had ended two national tabloids ran stories of a ‘sex orgy’ at Rothley Court involving unnamed players. The next day Gatting was named as one of them and by the afternoon of 9 June he was sacked. Gatting admitted to the selectors that he had invited a woman to his room for a birthday drink but denied any impropriety. The selectors said they accepted Gatting’s version of events, then sacked him anyway. The saga then rumbled on when the Board fined Gatt £5,000 for publishing a chapter on the events of the Pakistan tour in his autobiography Leading From the Front because of the contractual obligation not to comment on recent tours.

In between times the captaincy issue took on the nature of a game of pass the parcel. John Emburey was appointed for the second and third Tests, although increasingly unsure of his place. Chris Cowdrey, on the strength of Kent’s performances in the Championship, was then given the job when in spite of the fact that while a lovely bloke he resembled a Test match cricketer in name only. Finally, after Cowdrey had been ruled out of the final Test through injury, the selectors turned to Graham Gooch. Twenty-three players were used during the summer series. England lost 4–0. It was all a total fiasco. From Ashes winners eighteen months earlier England ended the summer of 1988 as the laughing stock of world cricket.

There was more, much more, to come, starting with the cancellation of England’s 1988 winter tour to India.

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