side. Against all the odds England produced a wonderful performance to win the first Test at Sabina Park, Jamaica, and had the rain not fallen to wash out their hopes of victory in the third Test in Trinidad, they would have taken a 2–0 lead and earned at least a share of the series. In fact, victory at Port of Spain might have been decisive. Several of the players who had made West Indies such a great force in international cricket over the previous decade were coming towards the end of their careers. Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall were under particular pressure. And in certain quarters it was even being suggested that Richards would also have to make way for younger blood.
Had England won in Trinidad it is almost certain that big changes would have been made and I doubt whether West Indies would then have been able to turn things round in the way that they did, winning the last two Test matches at Barbados and Antigua to take the series. Even then England were only denied a share of the spoils by a magnificent spell of bowling from Curtly Ambrose in the fourth Test at Bridgetown.
England also had success in the 1990 summer series against India and New Zealand, winning both series against reasonable opposition by a single Test. Our 2–2 draw with the West Indies at home in 1991 which I had the pleasure of securing with the winning hit in the final Test at The Oval, the 2–0 victory over New Zealand on the winter tour of 1991–92 in New Zealand, and the second place we achieved in the 1992 World Cup were all positive results.
There was plenty to admire in the way Gooch went about things on a personal level. His ability to lead from the front was unquestioned. And his hundreds in the 1991 series against the West Indies may well have proved the difference between a successful and unsuccessful summer. I also marvelled at the fact that Gooch’s batting seemed to get better with age. He had made the positive decision to try and prolong his career by getting himself as physically fit as he possibly could, and his intensive training routines worked well for him. No one could doubt his determination and commitment, not to mention his skill with the bat.
The problem as I saw it was that he didn’t understand that one man’s meat was another man’s poison. And this led to a tension in the relationship between him and David Gower that was not only contrary to the best interests of the side, but which I believe ultimately cost him the respect of the cricketing public as well as the England captaincy.
Gooch’s methods encapsulated a more scientific approach to preparation for tours, namely, rigorous fitness assessments at the Football Association’s National Human Performance Centre at Lilleshall and programmes devised by the assessor John Brewer, designed to make England’s players as fit at the end of a day’s play as they would be at the start.
Gooch felt that these programmes would not only make the players physically stronger, they would also encourage them to be mentally tougher. But the issue was confused by the re-entry to Test cricket of David Gower during that summer of 1990 and later, by my return to the side at the end of the summer of 1991 prior to the World Cup trip.
When Gower was recalled for the first Test against India in 1990 after an absence of seven Test matches, he was very much on trial for his place on the 1990–91 tour to Australia. He did nothing out of the ordinary in the first two matches at Lord’s and Old Trafford but he lit up the third match at The Oval with a sublime 157 not out in the second innings, and prepared to pack his bags.
Gooch and Gower were England’s top run-makers on that unsuccessful 1990–91 Australia tour, but that apart they had very little in common throughout.
Having achieved a measure of success in the West Indies a year previously with his new fitness methods, Gooch was understandably keen to implement them for this particular trip as well. And when Gower turned up at Lilleshall for the pre-tour fitness assessments he came face to face for the first time with Gooch’s fitness guru, a certain Colin Tomlin.
Tomlin had worked with Kent and Essex on an unofficial basis, and had a reputation for pushing players to their physical limits. He certainly did in Gower’s case on this first occasion. For the workload he imposed on Gower left the laid-back one laid-out.
To my mind, having picked Gower for that winter tour to Australia, Gooch should have left it up to him to decide how he was going to go about things. Instead of relying on Gower to make sure he didn’t let his immense talent down, Gooch tried to mould him into his idea of a ‘team man’. But he totally misread the situation. One of David’s terrific strengths is that he has always been an individualist. There is no way you could harness him and his talent by trying to boss him about. But that is exactly what Gooch and Stewart tried to do on that Australian tour. And on occasions they ended up treating Gower like a naughty schoolboy.
It had all been so different from the approach taken by Mike Gatting, Gooch’s predecessor, on the 1986–87 tour to Australia. Then Gatt had allowed the senior players a certain amount of latitude. He wasn’t concerned with what we got up to off the field and he certainly wasn’t interested in having the whole team run around the outfield incessantly or spend hours and hours in meaningless fielding practice. Gower knew what was right for him. He didn’t need Gatting, and certainly not Gooch, telling him how to run his life, or prepare for his cricket. What you saw is what you got with David and trying to alter his basic approach to the game was bound to end in disaster. In fact, Gower outbatted everyone on that tour with the possible exception of Gooch himself; his hundred in the second Test at Melbourne enabled England to make 352 and take a first innings lead. But the second innings collapse from 103 for one to 150 all out meant England got what they deserved, a beating by eight wickets. And his wonderful 123 at Sydney followed by some excellent bowling from Phil Tufnell and Eddie Hemmings put England in with a chance of actually winning that third Test.
Gower was doing the business at that stage but Gooch just couldn’t leave well alone. Gower’s refusal to turn himself into a robot for Gooch’s pleasure and convenience left Gooch bewildered and angry. Backed up by Stewart, whose ambivalence toward Gower had turned into open and mutual animosity during the 1989 summer, Gooch made his displeasure at Gower’s lack of co-operation quite obvious to public and players alike. And when Gower tried to lighten the mood in the now infamous ‘Tiger Moth’ incident at Carrara during the match between England and Queensland, Gooch and Stewart quite rightly saw it as a massive two fingered salute to them.
Gower and his England colleague John Morris, who had made 132 in England’s first innings, hired a pair of 1938 Tiger Moths and to greet a century by Robin Smith they persuaded the pilots to buzz the ground at low altitude. They were both fined £1,000. According to Wisden, ‘For all their dereliction of duty in leaving without permission a game in which they were playing, it was a harsh penalty for an essentially light hearted prank, reflecting all too accurately the joyless nature of the tour.’ Sadly Gooch, Stewart and tour manager Peter Lush suffered a collective sense of humour failure and it cannot be coincidence that Morris never played for England again.
The fact that Biggles and his mate had returned to the airfield after close of play and happily posed for photographs had not helped their cause, nor was Lush best pleased to realise that he had unwittingly lent Gower the money to hire the Tiger Moth in the first place. But such heavy-handedness was always only going to exacerbate the problem, raising Gower’s resistance to what he saw as a far too regimented approach to the tour.
When the series ended in defeat at Perth, Gooch made no attempt to hide his dissatisfaction at Gower’s contribution. He indicated that he was far from happy with the performances of some of his colleagues, and that many of them had a lot to reproach themselves for in terms of attitude, commitment and effort. In his book Captaincy, Gooch reflected: ‘David Gower represents my biggest failure of man management since I’ve been England captain. I struggled to get through to him. I must bear a lot of responsibility for that, because I’ve always wanted us to be on the same wavelength ever since I became England captain. We are, after all, in the entertainment business and David Gower has been a fabulous entertainer since he first played for England. When you consider the free way he bats, his record at Test level is marvellous – all those beautiful centuries … an average way over 40 (and a good deal better than mine). Who wouldn’t want a guy like that in the side? Yet on that Australian tour, I had more meetings with the management about David than anyone else and I’m sad to say that I felt more at ease