LITMIR.BIZ

       1 THE END OF THE ROAD

      I knew it was all over the morning it took me five minutes to get out of bed.

      It was two days after I had played for Durham against Glamorgan in the second round of the NatWest Trophy at Cardiff in the mid-summer of 1993. My left hip had been playing up all season, and my left knee and shoulder ached as well, but to be honest it was difficult to distinguish one pain from another. I was worn out from head to toe. Sitting on the edge of the bed that morning, I suddenly realized that my body was sending me a message that I just couldn’t ignore any longer. To borrow Tony Greig’s well-worn phrase, it was ‘Goodnight Beefy’.

      For many sportsmen, coming face to face with irrefutable evidence of their mortality is the moment they dread above all others. How many times have you read of people in all walks of sport going on one season or one match too long? And how many times have you read of the bitter price they have paid for doing so? I had always said that one day I would wake up and just know that this was the end, and that when that day came I would accept it without making the decision any more difficult for myself and those around me than it inevitably is.

      From the moment I was given an opportunity to extend my career by undergoing back surgery in 1988, I knew I was playing on borrowed time. In grabbing that time and making the most of it, I will always be grateful for the patience and skill of surgeon John Davies. However, I didn’t want to be one of those sad figures who doesn’t know when to call it a day and who is consequently ridiculed by his enemies and pitied by his friends. Moreover, it became obvious to me that although my body might be able to take a little more punishment in the short term, the long term effects could be extremely damaging; and the one thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t fancy spending my retirement years in a wheelchair.

      The bottom line, however, was that after twenty years in the professional game my love affair with playing cricket was over. Not only was I physically wrecked, but the events of the 1993 season meant that I was totally disillusioned with the game. Without the drive, I simply didn’t want to go out on the pitch any more. Under those circumstances it would not have been fair on me, my team-mates or the public to carry on.

      I had always intended that the summer of 1993 would be my last as a professional cricketer, but I had been determined to go out at the top. So when I said in April that I was aiming to win back my place in the England side and play in the Ashes series against the Australians, it was not just the normal pre-season optimism: I meant it. I was convinced I had plenty to offer, especially after suffering with everyone else the woeful excuse for a performance that England had served up on the winter tour to India and Sri Lanka, as a result of which they had not only been beaten in all four Tests but thoroughly thrashed and totally humiliated.

      Frankly, I had been disgusted by what had gone on out there. Graham Gooch played the best cricket of his career when leading from the front as captain, during which period he passed David Gower’s record as England’s highest run scorer in Test cricket. I have nothing but admiration for the way he made up his mind to play at the highest level for as long as possible and kept himself fit enough to do so. But I have always found that as England captain what he couldn’t come to terms with was that the right way for him was not necessarily the best way for everyone.

      When it came to the Indian fiasco, I think his biggest mistake was allowing himself to be persuaded to go in the first place. I would never criticize anyone for missing a winter tour. I’ve done so myself in the past and I understand completely why other cricketers have as well. As players get older the amount of international cricket played and the pressure involved, as well as the business of leaving your family at home for months at a time, mean that if you don’t take an occasional winter break you are vulnerable to burn out. It’s not a matter of picking and choosing when it suits you to play for England, it’s just that players need time to recharge their batteries and rediscover an appetite that can easily become jaded.

      If Gooch wasn’t keen enough to take on the job of captaining his country on an overseas tour without having to have his arm twisted, then he really shouldn’t have gone at all. Once he had made the decision, he then had the bright idea of surrounding himself with his old mates John Emburey and Mike Gatting, and discarding David Gower for some unknown reason. The omission of Gower was nothing short of a scandal and England paid for it dearly. For my money there were people on that tour who looked and played as though they didn’t want to be there. They lacked desire and, what is infinitely worse, they lacked pride; once things started to go wrong they simply gave up. Nothing was ever their fault, and there was always an excuse for their abject failures: if it wasn’t the smog in Calcutta, it was the prawns in Madras. And by sending out a ‘pastoral counsellor’, the Reverend Andrew Wingfield Digby, instead of a team doctor the Test and County Cricket Board proved once again that the lunatics had taken over the asylum. I didn’t go along with much of what Ray Illingworth said during his tenure of the job as chairman of selectors, but even he had the sense to see that ‘Wingers Diggers’ was surplus to requirements.

      Even though the Indian tour had been a disaster from beginning to end, I was under no illusions about how hard it would be for me to regain my place. I got the impression after the 1992 World Cup in Australia, where in controversial circumstances which I will expand on later I ended up a two-time loser in the final against Pakistan, that my critics would have been quite happy for me to have disappeared from international cricket there and then. There are people in the game who would have thrown me out years ago after the troubles I went through in the mid-1980s, people who were jealous of my success and who simply could not live with the fact that, through no fault of my own, I was perceived to be bigger than the game. In fact, I really don’t believe that the selectors had wanted to pick me for the tournament in the first place, but they were forced to because they couldn’t find anyone capable of replacing me as a genuine international-class all-rounder.

      Despite losing my place during the following summer against Pakistan, I was still enthusiastic about the possibility of a comeback against Allan Border’s 1993 Australians. On the evidence of what had happened in India, I was even more convinced that I could do a job at Test level. I certainly hadn’t seen any performance to make me think that the players being picked were so good that there was no way back. If the team had been playing well that would have been fair enough, I would have said ‘Thank you very much’ and looked back on happy memories. But to see an England team floundering with

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