of course, in his 100th Test and on the day the nation was celebrating the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday, than Alec Stewart? And what else could he possibly do other than score a century?
He batted exquisitely from start to finish, and still found time to help me concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing as well. We had both reached fifty and had taken England into the lead without losing any more wickets and we weren’t far away from ending the day with a healthy advantage when I noticed how close Alec was getting to three figures. What I didn’t notice, and, again my lack of experience of playing with these guys meant I had no idea about, was Alec’s growing twitchiness as he approached the magic figure. Up in the dressing-room, they knew. Atherton and Hussain and Thorpe and Caddick and Gough and Cork and White, all of whom had played with Alec for all of their careers, they knew. Whenever Alec got into the 90s you had to be ready to run, sometimes at very short notice indeed and occasionally without any at all.
Alec disputes it to this day, but had Jimmy Adams, their skipper and one of the quickest fielders in the world, picked up the ball cleanly and hit the stumps with his throw, as you would have backed him to do eight times out of ten, I would have been gone, run out by a yard at least. Alec wouldn’t have known anything about it, of course, so intent was he in charging down the other end for the single to bring up his hundred, but there was utter chaos going on behind him. There I was scrambling and diving to make my ground. And there was Jimmy, taking his eye off the ball, letting it clang off his hands and dribble out in front of him. No pick-up, no throw, no run out. Instead the most extraordinary and prolonged ovation anyone there could ever recall, as the capacity crowd rose to applaud and cheer Alec’s win-double of 100 runs in his 100th Test, and applaud and cheer some more. The innings took three hours and the applause and the cheering about the same.
For me, a complete cricket fanatic, it was really something to be out there with Alec, sharing in his and the crowd’s joy, but there was one drawback. Every time the commotion died down long enough for me to take my mark and prepare to face the next delivery, someone would start up the applause and cheering again. This happened four times before we finally got the match resumed. In all probability there are people still standing there now, still clapping and cheering, eight years on.
Eventually the noise abated long enough for us to restart and we made it through to the close but were both out quickly the following morning. Though we finished with a lead of 148, Lara then took control with an impeccable hundred, punctuated by a net session during the lunchtime break on day four, and that, along with the damp weather, secured the draw.
My second innings 38 not out encouraged me to tell Caddy afterwards that I was thinking of quitting Test cricket straight away.
‘What the f**k for?’ he asked me.
‘Because I’m averaging 104, and that’s better than Don Brad-man.’
With ten days off before the fourth Test at Headingley, the first real break since I came into the squad, I took some time to reflect on events thus far. My overriding impression was this: at the time I arrived some of the senior players were undoubtedly feeling the pressure. I felt, particularly among the batsmen, guys like Hick, Ramprakash, Thorpe, Hussain, Stewart and Atherton, that they had become conditioned by years of inconsistency to a somewhat negative mindset. Losing to New Zealand the summer before and the absolute mauling they got in the media had obviously hurt them and by now they were so used to being hammered in print if things didn’t go their way that maybe they were not prepared to be bold and take too many risks when risk-taking might have turned out to be the best policy. In short, fear of failure was preventing them from truly expressing their talent and I think they were glad to see someone like me, and other young players like Vaughan and Fred, come in from outside and perhaps take some of the focus and the pressure away from them for a while.
And then we went and absolutely smashed West Indies in the last two Tests. The fourth was crazy, over within two days, and it might have been over even quicker if I had remembered to tell Nasser Hussain something quite important a little earlier than I did.
Batting was hard work from the start. From the Rugby Stand End, the bowlers were making the ball bounce alarmingly and there was plenty of swing and seam movement as well. In West Indies’ first innings, Craig White, who was now able to bowl at 90 mph regularly and was already a master of reverse swing, bowled brilliantly in tandem with Darren Gough and his swing from round the wicket into Lara made the best batsman in the world look like a novice. Craig finished with five for 57 as they struggled to 172, then Michael Vaughan made an excellent 76, and Hick, down the order at eight because Caddick had gone in as nightwatchman, a brave 59 to help us to 272 and a lead of exactly 100. When their second innings started we were determined to keep things tight because we knew chasing anything over 150 to win might be extremely tricky. But in the end we never did have to bat again. Gough got amongst them again, adding four wickets to the three he took in the first dig, then, for a while nothing much seemed to be happening. Something had been bugging me all match and suddenly I remembered what it was. ‘Why don’t you give Caddy a go from the Rugby Stand End?’ I suggested to Nasser. ‘He was unplayable from that end last time Somerset were here.’
And so he did, for the first time in the match, after tea on day two, and Caddy proceeded to bowl the over of his life. When it started West Indies were in deep trouble at 52 for five. When it ended, they were almost gone at 53 for nine. He took four wickets in six balls, one lbw and three clean bowled and, by the time he finished the innings eight balls later, he had taken five for 14 and they were all out for 61, the lowest Test score at Headingley. ‘Thanks for that tip about Caddy,’ Nasser said as we ran off in celebration of going 2–1 up. ‘But why didn’t you let me know earlier?’ I’m pretty sure this was the first time he had actually said anything to me at all. And I thought: ‘Isn’t this great?’
* * *
We were playing golf at Sunningdale in a sponsor’s event prior to the fifth Test at The Oval when I received the phone call telling me that Eddie was dead.
One of my greatest regrets in life is that I didn’t wear a black armband in that final Test match. Had Eddie Gregg died later in my career I would have done so without thinking twice, but, at the time, as the new kid in the dressing-room I felt a little embarrassed about the idea of making such a public show of my feelings. I also reasoned that if I did make this gesture I would then have to explain why and it all just seemed not quite right to me. I spoke to his dad, Alan, and told him that if I ever did manage to make a Test hundred I would dedicate it to Eddie, and, while it would not be true to say that was uppermost in my thoughts when the match began with Atherton first, then me, walking out to bat after winning the toss, it was in there somewhere.
Batting with Atherton always did help me keep focused. If ever I felt tempted to revert to instinct and try and bash the ball everywhere, one look at the bloke at the other end blocking the crap out of it soon put me back on the straight and narrow, and anyone could see how determined he was to make a big contribution here. There had already been rumours that, because of his dodgy back, he would probably retire after the following summer’s Ashes series, and Athers might even have been thinking this could be his last Test here. And he had another reason to do well. It wasn’t just that England hadn’t beaten West Indies in a Test series for 31 years, it was also that Ath had harrowing memories of one of those defeats in particular, when, in his first series as skipper, back in 1994, he had gone in to bat in the second innings of the Trinidad Test with his side needing 194 to win, got out for nought and watched from the dressing-room as Ambrose blew them away for 46 all out. Batting with him in this mood, relaxed but utterly determined, helped calm me down as well and we put on 159 for the first wicket, which, the way our bowlers were bowling and they were currently batting, should have gone a long way to securing a winning position. A measure of how fragile a side we still were, however, was that it took a second innings ton from him to make sure, because apart from us two, no one else managed to make fifty.
After lining up to pay tribute to Walsh and Ambrose, playing their final Tests before retirement, Caddick finished them off and we doused the place in champagne.
I was tired, but still looking forward to finishing off the season with Somerset, when Duncan told me he wanted me to stop right