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 was to stay in and get a partnership going with someone. Who else, 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,
