physio, if he would give me a head and neck massage to help me try to relax.
By the time the call came through that Alec Stewart, who was filling in as skipper for the injured Nasser, had won the toss and we were batting – or rather I was batting – I was trying everything I could to switch into cricket mode. But I was really cacking myself. Then, almost from the second I walked out of the dressing-room with Alec to open the innings, and the roar went up from the capacity crowd, everything felt just right.
‘God, isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself as we walked down the steps to the pitch, our studs crunching on the concrete beneath our boots. ‘Isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself, when we stepped onto the springy outfield for the walk to the middle and the crowd noise cranked up a notch. ‘Isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself when Alec asked me whether I wanted to take strike and I said, ‘Yes, if you like’. ‘Isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself when I asked the umpire Ray Julian for middle-and leg guard and, when I hit my first boundary and heard the crowd burst into cheers and applause I thought to myself: ‘Isn’t this fantastic?’
It was like a drug. That was it. There and then. That was where I wanted to be. That was what I wanted to do.
Through the tens, with Alec, to 20, to 30, to 40 along with Hick, who made 50 and looked very much like God from where I was standing but who also, super-fit, showed everyone inside the dressing-room just how much work I had to do in that respect by running me off my feet in a stand of 106. Past 50, helmet off, arms up, bat raised. Another boundary, another roar from the crowd. More of the drug, please. More, more, more, and, finally out at 79, more, every step of the way back to the dressing-room.
Wow. Bloody brilliant. Knackered. Run to a standstill, but 79, SEVENTY-NINE, for England! I loved that drug.
Sitting in the dressing-room afterwards, the overriding feeling among the players was huge disappointment that we lost, that after we had barely made it past 200, the Zims cruised home by five wickets and that was not good enough. And there I was, struggling badly to stop myself from racing round the room punching the air and all the locker doors, chanting ‘79, 79, 79!’
Next day, there I was, in all the papers, my face in the photos. Me, in all the papers! And up again and straight on to play the West Indies and Brian Lara … at Lord’s. More, 49 this time in the only innings of a rain-ruined match, then 29 against Zimbabwe at Old Trafford (won) and two wickets for seven runs in ten balls, and, at Chester-le-Street on 15 July, my best of the series, 87 not out with Alec Stewart 74 not out, in an unbeaten first-wicket stand of 171 to overhaul West Indies and win by ten wickets. I had made 244 runs in my first four innings and had my first close look at Lara batting. He was not at his best all summer and, later, fell to very good plans in the rest of the Test series, but what hands and what an eye. Isn’t this great?
I cannot exactly recall how long Eddie Gregg, my friend from childhood and team-mate in the St Anne’s kids’ football team, had been ill at this stage. He had been fighting leukaemia for some time and most reports had been relatively encouraging. I had phoned him from time to time and his spirits had always been pretty high. But when I rang him in between innings at Chester-le-Street, it was obvious things were not good. He was having trouble speaking and it was quite distressing to listen to him. I told Eddie I’d call again soon. It was the last time I spoke to him.
In the final against Zimbabwe on Saturday 22 July, I enjoyed my first England victory at Lord’s, by six wickets, Then, until about 2 a.m., my first skinful as an England player and, from around 6 a.m., my first belting hangover, when Hayley drove me up to Scarborough to play for Somerset in the National League 45-over match against Yorkshire the very next day. Snoring my head off in the passenger seat, we only stopped to stock up on cans of Red Bull and then my bastard team-mates took one look at me and made me bowl six overs (two for 16) as we skittled out Yorkshire for 141. How I was able to stand when it was our turn to bat, let alone score 12, is anyone’s guess. I’m told we won by two wickets.
Stewart batted out of his skin in that series, finishing with 408 runs with two hundreds and 97 in the final. But after the squad was announced for the third Test against West Indies at Old Trafford, due to start on 3 August, most of the talk was about the fact that he and Mike Atherton would both be winning their 100th cap. Some of it was about me winning my first.
Unusually, the selectors had gone public ten days in advance. They had reacted to the fact that, after the first two Tests against West Indies, one lost and the second, a see-saw affair won by two wickets in near-darkness at Lord’s thanks to the aforementioned exploits of Caddick, Gough and Cork and excellent second innings batting from the lattermost, England had not managed a Test fifty between them. Hicky had struggled to impose himself again as had Mark Ramprakash, who had been tried as an opener in the summer’s first Test action against Zimbabwe, but in his last match, at headquarters, he made just 0 and 2; and that, along with my performances in the NatWest series persuaded Duncan and Nasser to stick with me for the Tests as well, though the first I knew of it was when I saw the announcement of the squad on Teletext.
And now I was cooking with gas. The thrill of what I had done was still buzzing inside me and now, the thought of playing Test cricket … more, more, more … and when, the night before the start of the match, someone read out the team and my name was in it, it was all I could do to refrain from shouting out: ‘You f***in’ beauty!’
Atherton, Trescothick, Hussain (captain), Thorpe, Stewart, Vaughan, White, Cork, Croft, Caddick and Gough … The only thing still nagging at the back of my mind was when exactly Nasser was actually going to say hello.
After we bowled them out on the first day for 157, with Gough, Caddick, Cork and White never letting them get a moment’s peace, I was not merely ready for my turn, I was bursting for it.
In the event, my enthusiasm to get into the battle nearly got the better of me. My only previous memory of playing with Mike Atherton, my opening partner, was in my inglorious debut for Somerset against Lancashire in 1993. I’m sure he didn’t know me from a bar of soap and we never got around to discussing how our new partnership might work nor any matters of procedure, like calling, running between wickets etc.
So, when I bounded down the dressing-room steps, through the corridor out onto the pavilion concourse and down the steps towards the gate leading to the field of play, I was somewhat surprised when Athers came sprinting past me, bat first, like a bank robber running for his getaway car, nearly sending me flying into the laps of bewildered spectators.
‘Blimey, Ath,’ I said to him as we walked out to the middle. ‘What was all that about?’
‘Sorry, Tres,’ he replied, amid the tumultuous applause he was getting from his home supporters celebrating his great milestone. ‘I forgot to tell you. I’ve got this superstition. Whenever I go out to bat with someone at the start of an innings, I’ve got to be the first one on the pitch.’
It was somehow reassuring to think that M.A. Atherton, captain of Manchester Grammar School, Cambridge University, Lancashire and England (a record 54 times), winner of 100 Test caps, History graduate and real ale expert, was just as bonkers about the ‘dark arts’ of cricket as the next mug. My superstition? Never you mind.
When he was out for 1, at 1 for one, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But there was nothing remotely amusing about what happened next. Nasser (still no word, by the way) made just 10, six of which arrived courtesy of Courtney Walsh stepping on the boundary rope after catching him off Curtly Ambrose, which left us 17 for two; and then Thorpe, returning to the Test arena after easing his way back in the one-dayers, lost sight of a perfect slower ball from Walsh, coming out of the background of the hospitality boxes behind him, ducked and was plumb lbw for nought at 17 for three. And I looked up at the board and realized that I hadn’t scored a run.
It was not that I wasn’t trying to, but Ambrose and Walsh, while not as quick as in their terrifying pomp, just never gave me anything to hit. Forty-five minutes I had to wait to get off the mark in Test cricket, before I punched one down the ground for two off Franklyn Rose to a mixture of ironic cheers and appreciative applause. I wasn’t worried. The absolute priority