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 with him out of the England team in 1991. I was very keen to have him in Australian because of his class and experience and no one was happier than I was when his big hundred at the Oval against the Indians justified his inclusion … I still have total respect for him as a player. Yet we don’t see eye to eye on what I expect from a senior player. I need a lot more from him than just seeing his immense talent flower on occasions in a Test match … To me his lethargic attitude can rub off on some of the others, those who admired and respected him.’
Gower put his side of things in his autobiography: ‘There were elements of truth in my feeling uncomfortable with the way the team was now being run, but in broad terms I was willing to fit in with almost anything to carry on playing Test cricket. I certainly felt under pressure when the tour party gathered at the initial fitness training, partly because I had not managed to drag myself onto the roads five times a day, and would not quite be up to the sort of gruelling routines I knew they had in mind, and partly because I felt that the hierarchy would be fascinated to see how I performed there. I didn’t do too badly, without looking the picture of happiness throughout it all, and the gentleman appointed to put us through our paces did manage to get a certain amount of vomit from me on the football field. I blew up at him more than once, although this again could have been perceived wrongly in that I’ve always needed a certain amount of anger to drive me on through hard physical exercise. The mission down under did not get off to the best of starts, either in terms of performance or team morale. You can defend the work ethic in terms of what you put in, you tend to get out, and Graham is the best example I’ve ever played with who would leave nothing to chance, either physically or technically. It does not suit everyone, however, and there was a lot of early niggling about the way we were preparing. Days off appeared to be out of the question, and a non-playing day seemed to follow a regimented pattern; down to the training ground, a longish session of physical fitness training, followed by nets, middle practice, and back to the hotel some time in mid-afternoon. Where the build-up was going wrong was the management’s attitude of telling everyone what to do. The more you relieve people of individual responsibility, the more master-slave the relationship becomes and the more resentment creeps in. The thing was being run like a puppet show. No one expects to be handed a questionnaire to fill in every morning. What would you like to do today? How do you want your eggs done? What time would you like a net, sir? I’m not saying that at all. There has to be a basic team discipline, and indeed conformity. But each touring side develops an atmosphere. Get the emphasis right, and it will be a good one; get it wrong, and it won’t.’
There had to be some common ground, and Gower was worth making the extra effort for, but I simply don’t believe Gooch did enough. Instead, he hid behind the parade-ground mentality that he and Micky Stewart had developed, and battered away at Gower until even after it became obvious it was a pointless and futile exercise.
What also did not help team morale was Gooch’s insistence on referring back to the team spirit that he had engendered in the West Indies the previous winter. More than one player told me how much those who had not been in the Caribbean resented being told by those who had, how much better things had been there. This was the ‘in my day’ syndrome being taken to a ridiculous degree. After all the ‘in my day’ in question was less than 365 days previously. I believe Gooch became obsessed with the Gower situation and he allowed it to cloud his judgement in many issues. To him, there seemed to be a right way of
