rabbit caught in headlights. England’s all-seam attack looked inadequate and their fielding became ragged. Not only did Australia win by six wickets, they overhauled England large total with two and a half overs to spare.
Gooch found some batting form in the first Test at Manchester making 65 in the first innings and 133 in the second before being given out handled the ball, but defeat there made up Gooch’s mind that as soon as the Ashes were gone he was going too. Perversely however, this was the moment when Dexter decided to accede to Gooch’s original request, and offered to appoint him for the remainder of the series.
Just prior to the second Test at Lord’s, Dexter had a meeting with Gooch and put the proposition to him. Gooch, against his better judgement, agreed, but offered this rider to Dexter: ‘I’ll do it as long as I can begin to motivate the side to be more competitive.’ What happened instead was that, after Australia had won the toss, Taylor and Michael Slater put on 260 for the first wicket. By a quarter to twelve on the third morning of the match Allan Border was able to declare at 632 for four.
England capitulated meekly, bowled out for 205 and 365 with only Mike Atherton who made 80 in the first innings and was run out for 99 in the second, producing a blameless performance, which was to stand him in good stead later when the captaincy issue was finally resolved in his favour.
The Test was lost, by an innings, before tea on the final day – before, indeed, the Queen had arrived for the traditional presentation of the teams. Gooch, who before the second Test at Lord’s had criticised his players for not showing the correct ‘mental fibre’ and had taken on the responsibility of captaining England for the remainder of the series on condition that they perform better than they had done at Old Trafford, searched his soul again and found no reason to continue. Once again, however, he was persuaded out of making that decision by Dexter and Fletcher. And it was at this point that Dexter once again demonstrated that he was clearly out of touch with the public mood. At the press conference after the match Dexter sought to introduce a note of levity into the proceedings. In the circumstances it was exactly what was not was required. The reporters wanted answers to the questions cricket supporters all over the country were asking themselves.
There was a certain amount of residual anger over the Gower saga; he was still out of the frame for selection and yet those who had been picked were proving themselves clearly not up to the job. Mike Gatting, in particular, who many saw as the villain of the piece for being selected ahead of Gower for India, had managed just 4 and 23 in the first Test at Old Trafford and five in the first innings at Lord’s. Although he made 59 in the second, some blamed him for running out Atherton when on 99, and many were now fed up with what they saw as Gooch’s obsession of keeping Gower out of the side.
Dexter’s first offering was feeble enough. When asked how much blame he himself took for all the bad selections Dexter replied, ‘How long is a piece of string?’ The mood inside the room where the press conference was held became more hostile but the longer it went on the more Dexter appeared blithely unconcerned. When asked for some serious observations about why England were underperforming Dexter responded with his idea of a joke. He said, ‘We may be in the wrong sign … Venus may be in the wrong juxtaposition with somewhere else.’
Dexter said afterwards that he had been harpooned and lampooned by the press. It seemed to me that he had given them a target that even they could not miss.
Dexter’s supporters point out, quite rightly, that their man’s heart was in the right place. He was a great batsman for England, and, on occasions an inspirational figure as captain. And he had a theory for every occasion. Some of them may have been quite unintelligible to the majority of his fellow cricketers, but many players who represented England during his tenure at the job of Chairman of Selectors had been grateful to him for a spot of technical advice from time to time. When he took over the job in 1989 he stated that everything in his life had prepared him for that moment. Certainly he saw himself as a crusader and his mission to improve the fortunes of English cricket. He was, by all accounts, tireless in his efforts to improve the game at domestic level. And it is largely down to him that the counties agreed to change from three-day championship cricket to a four-day competition. By the time Dexter set his plan in motion, playing conditions were loaded so much in favour of batsmen, what with flat batting tracks and lowseamed balls for the bowlers to use, that it was almost impossible to achieve a result in a three-day match, assuming good weather throughout, without contrivance. That is not how the game should be played, but it was certainly how the game was being played for a period during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ted also made a conscious decision throughout his time as chairman to put some distance between himself and the players. Often this had hilarious results. On seeing a young player he didn’t quite recognise bringing his cricket case into the England dressing room at Trent Bridge before a Test match, he paused, looked up and offered his best wishes to the player concerned for the match ahead. Unfortunately for Ted, the young cricketer in question was a member of the Nottinghamshire ground staff.
The whimsical side of his nature became graphically clear to me when on the eve of the third Test against Australia in 1989, he handed out his version of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to the England players and invited them to sing it in the bath at the top of their voices that evening. It read ‘Onward Gower’s cricketers, striving for a score. With our bats uplifted, We want more and more …’ You get the picture.
But this detachment had negative results. He certainly should have let Gower into his confidence over the identity of those who had signed up for the rebel tour to South Africa in 1989, and if only he had come forward with a credible reason for Gower’s omission from the winter tour party to India in 1992–93, even his sternest critics might have laid off when things went so badly wrong in the subcontinent.
Furthermore, it seemed to me that his grasp over selection had become more and more tenuous. Once it became clear that the team that had lost so narrowly in the World Cup final to Pakistan had needed to be dismantled, it was imperative that Dexter came up with a solid, consistent and forward-thinking selection policy. Instead for the next year or so, England teams were picked along the traditional lines of lottery, hunches and guesswork, characterised mainly by Gooch’s personal preference. Why else would Gatting have returned ahead of Gower for that India series, or John Emburey been included in the first place at the age of 40, or why would Neil Foster, Gooch’s county team-mate at Essex for so long, have been selected for that second Test of the Ashes series in 1993 at Lord’s?
It would amaze me if Dexter, even though in overall charge as Chairman of Selectors, ever selected a player off his own bat for England during his period in charge.
Apart from decreeing that myself and Gower should not be considered for the 1989 West Indies tour, which was a negative deselection rather than a positive selection, I got the impression that he was happy to leave everything in the hands of Gooch and Micky Stewart thereafter.
But what frustrated most observers towards the end of Dexter’s reign was that detachment had turned into aloofness, even arrogance. And that manifested itself strongly in the events that surrounded the end of Gooch’s captaincy.
The story of Gooch’s final days in charge revealed what was, to my mind, Dexter’s greatest failings, an inability to communicate, and poor man management.
Gooch had made it quite clear to Dexter and all concerned that once the Ashes were gone he would resign. Although the third Test at Trent Bridge had produced an improved performance by England, who managed a draw and might even have won had the bowlers managed to capitalise on the work of Graham Thorpe, who made an excellent debut century, and Gooch himself who made 120 in England’s second innings, when the teams moved on to Leeds it was back to the same old story. Australia won the fourth Test by an innings and 148 runs. Now was the time for Gooch to be as good as his word. But Dexter managed to make what was a difficult experience for Gooch a bitter one.
The outcome of the fourth Test at Leeds became clear from very early on. Gooch had gone into the match believing it would be played on a traditional Headingley strip whose lateral movement encouraged the English type of seam bowling. Sadly, for him at least, following bad reports from umpires Ken Palmer and Mervyn Kitchen the year before, Yorkshire, fearful that