to convince him that the match was going to turn out to be a rain-shortened three and a half day contest. In the event, of course, not a drop fell. England won the toss, put Australia in and on a belting batting track watched them score 601 for seven declared on their way to victory by 210 runs.
The tone was set for the series. And by the end of the third day of the second Test at Lord’s the Ashes were as good as in Australia’s hands. At that point, England, with Gooch, Broad and Barnett gone, needed another 184 runs to avoid an innings defeat. At the press conference afterwards Gower snapped when, after a question from former England colleague Phil Edmonds who suggested that Gower had put every single one of his bowlers on from the wrong end, the England captain stood up and hurriedly announced he had a taxi waiting. Gower got a flea in his ear from Ted, followed by the notorious chairman’s vote of confidence, but although he went out and scored a quite brilliant hundred on the Monday it was not enough to save the day. The series was only a third of the way through, but Gower realised the game was more or less up.
By the time I returned to the side after injury for the third Test at Edgbaston I could see there were problems inside the camp. Gower and Stewart were clearly rubbing each other up the wrong way, when, that is, they were bothering to speak to each other at all, Ted seemed to be in a world of his own and too many of the players appeared to have the upcoming announcement of the South African rebel tour on their minds to concentrate on the job in hand. While the Australians were all pulling in one direction, we were pulling ourselves apart.
Speculation had been rife all summer. And throughout that Old Trafford Test the dressing room resembled the headquarters of MI5. Whispered discussions over who had signed up and who hadn’t and sudden silences dropping like a guillotine whenever a player not party to the skullduggery happened to enter the room – looking back on all the goings-on, the situation was absurd. I found it sad that England players did not have enough on their plate concerning themselves with events on the pitch. I’ve never known an atmosphere like it and if anyone needed any proof that some of the England players cared less about playing for their country than their Australian counterparts, this was it.
On the final morning of the fourth Test at Old Trafford the tension lifted when the party of sixteen players who had signed up on the rebel tour to South Africa that winter was finally announced, but I believe all the uncertainty created by the recruiting could easily have been avoided had Dexter and Stewart taken hold of events from the start.
What was inexcusable was that, as well as Gatting, who had already told Micky Stewart he would not be available for the winter tour to West Indies, presumably because he was going to be playing cricket elsewhere, the identities of several of those being targeted by the South Africans had been known to Stewart and Dexter for some time. Gower was convinced that they had an awful lot of information which they did not pass on to him. He could have done with it, if only to decide in his own mind who he was going to persevere with during the summer series. There was little point him playing some of the guys who were not going to be around for much longer and three of the players named in the South African squad were involved in that fourth Test – Tim Robinson, John Emburey and Neil Foster. A fourth, Graham Dilley, had been selected to play but was unfit on the first morning, and five of the others in that sixteen-man party – Gatting, Chris Broad, Paul Jarvis, Phil DeFreitas, and Kim Barnett – had already played in the earlier Tests of 1989. The TCCB had been aware of what was going on and had asked players who were in line for selection for the winter tour to West Indies to indicate whether they would be available or not. Dexter and Stewart had known for some time the names of many of those who had signed up, yet they never uttered a word to the captain or even attempted to keep him in the picture.
Indeed, when Dexter handed Gower a sheet of paper with the names of the rebels on the first morning of the Old Trafford match, the captain was more flabbergasted by the fact that his chairman already knew the names in advance of their release by the South African organisers than at their identities. How long had Dexter known? And why didn’t he let Gower know as soon as he found out?
When Gower found out just how much had been kept from him he was understandably bitter that the two men had not deemed it necessary to take him into their confidence. He pointed out that had he known everything that the chairman and manager had known there is no way he would have agreed to certain aspects of team selection, particularly the recall of Robinson, who was included for his first Test of the series in the full knowledge of Dexter and Stewart that it would be his last match for England.
Dexter himself later claimed that he had wanted to take decisive action, that he had wanted to put the players on long-term winter contracts to reduce the likelihood that they would make themselves available for the South African expedition. And after this bitter lesson the TCCB allowed him to go ahead with that plan. But there is no doubt in my mind that he should have let Gower know what was going on. Keeping quiet was unfair on Gower as he was always going to be the one who carried the can for England’s poor performances on the field (as he later did, when Dexter and Stewart shoved it in his hands).
Perhaps Gower should have made more strenuous efforts to find out himself. But most of the time he probably had other things on his mind – most obviously trying to get England to play like an international cricket side.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the end of the affair was that it overshadowed totally the contribution made by Jack Russell in that Test match, displaying fighting qualities sadly lacking in others and managing to concentrate on the task in hand of giving his all for the team when all around was a confused shambles.
Russell batted for 5 hours 51 minutes to make his maiden Test hundred of 128 not out, and in any other circumstances his example would have been an inspiration to his team-mates. Selected for the first Test at Headingley, he was given a torrid time by the Australian fast bowlers Merv Hughes and Geoff Lawson; so much so, in fact, that many commentators suggested he did not have the technique or the guts to play against short fast-pitched bowling. He noted the criticisms and, prior to the second Test at Lord’s, decided to do something about it. The day before the match he spent hours in the nets sharpening his reflexes against groundstaff bowlers chucking orange practice balls at him, and the hard work paid off when he made 64 in England’s first innings there.
Very much in the mould of my old mentor Ken Barrington, Russell had red white and blue coursing through his veins. It meant absolutely everything to him to play for England. As it did for the Middlesex bowler Angus Fraser, who made his debut at Edgbaston, and while Robin Smith was not born in England, the native South African showed more pluck for the fight than many of his English colleagues. Yet all their efforts were obscured by the controversy surrounding players who decided to turn their back on England. Smith made another 100 in the fifth Test at Trent Bridge but it was to no avail as Australia won by an innings and 180 runs and although England improved to draw the last Test at The Oval, it was widely expected Gower would resign the captaincy.
All through the series the mood had fluctuated between despair and disbelief. Injury after injury meant that England were never able to pick their side from the squad originally selected. And the farce reached a spectacular climax at The Oval when England went into the final Test with a seam bowler, Alan Igglesden of Kent, who Stewart helpfully described as ‘England’s 17th choice’.
According to Gower, ‘We replaced Moxon and Curtis with Hussain and Stevenson, but no sooner was the team released, than the usual business of people dropping out started up all over again. Malcolm’s back went, Fraser did his knee, and DeFreitas, called in as a replacement having reversed his original decision to go to South Africa, pulled a hamstring. We replaced DeFreitas with Greg Thomas, who said, “Sorry, I’m DeFreitas’s replacement for South Africa”. Norman Cowans and Riccardo Ellcock were both contacted at Middlesex and both reported unfit, and Glamorgan’s Steve Watkin was described as too jiggered to stand up for five days. I’m not sure whether I laughed or cried. We eventually ended up with two bowling places still to be filled the day before the game, and to add to the confusion, Ted, Micky and myself
