miss home like mad and then, as soon as the cricket started, I would be able to put those feelings to one side and throw myself into playing or training. It was as though my sheer love of cricket, the simple thrill I never lost of hitting a ball with a bat and everything else that went with it, would conquer all ills. It also helped me no end that, in our opening warm-up match, against the Sind Governor’s XI in Karachi, I made my first century for England, and we were straight into a three-match one-day series which, though short, was crammed full of incident.
We won the opener, in Karachi, with Freddie batting magnificently for 84 to help us reach a stiff target of 304. In the second, at Lahore on 27 October, we were first befuddled by Shahid Afridi’s leg-spinners – he took five for 40 but was then reported by ICC referee for a suspect action – then he bashed 61 in no time, and our evening was made complete when we were attacked by a swarm of insects, attracted by the humidity and the floodlights if not by the standard of our bowling and fielding. Gough swallowed a mouthful when he ran up to bowl, and the bowlers appealed at their peril. All of them wore sunglasses and White bowled in a cap. One of the little sods climbed up the middle stump and paused for a close-up on the stump camera, and, to millions of horrified TV viewers, the magnifying effect made him look like the cockroach that ate Cincinnati. In the last match in Rawalpindi, again won by Pakistan, the main distraction was acute physical pain. So many spectators had arrived intent on getting into the ground without tickets, even though the ground was full of those who had them, that the local police decided to try and disperse them with tear gas. The trouble was the wind picked it up and blew it right across the field just as Thorpe and me were trying to dig us out of the mire. Nasser had already been given out to the worst lbw decision of the century when Wasim Akram’s slower ball pitched about two foot outside his left-stump and had chosen to release his frustration by smashing in the glass door of the dressing-room fridge with his bat.
When the gas came it felt like all the saliva had been removed from your mouth and throat and then your eyes stung like someone had thrown salt into them. It was bloody horrible.
Afterwards, and prior to the start of the Test series, Duncan spoke to me and asked me if I would be prepared to join the tour management committee alongside himself, Nasser, Alec and Gough. I was pretty taken aback, but it seemed a reasonable idea. Duncan wanted the views of all the players to be heard, even the new boys, and this would give me a chance of being their voice. Nasser particularly wanted me to keep an eye on any possibility that a player might be suffering from too much mickey-taking. I loved getting involved in dressing-room banter, even though I took my fair share of stick. But I’d spoken to him about my feelings as regards bullying. If ever I felt it was going too far I hated it and would often try and intervene. Nasser wanted me to take responsibility for this in our dressing-room and I was happy to agree.
By the time the first Test started, a fortnight later on 15 November, I wondered what I had let myself in for.
Just prior to coming out to Pakistan and then again on arrival we had been briefed on two important subjects. First, the issue of match-fixing was very much alive. A report by a Pakistan judge, Justice Al Quayyum, had named a number of Pakistan players as possibly being implicated. Secondly, a report by the Delhi Criminal Investigation Bureau into allegations made by a man called MK Gupta, an Indian bookmaker who claimed he had paid various international cricketers for seemingly innocent information over the past few years, was about to be published. The other issue was our behaviour. This was the first time England had played in Pakistan for 13 years, since the infamous row on the field between the England captain Mike Gatting and the Pakistan umpire Shakoor Rana. So it was absolutely vital that the series was played without any kind of incident. The Pakistan people had been affronted by Gatting’s comments about Shakoor and the slightest thing might spark big trouble.
If anyone in the party hadn’t been paying attention, from the moment we arrived at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Rawalpindi at the end of October to prepare for our first first-class match against the Pakistan Cricket Board’s Patron’s XI, they were now. I noticed a strange mood around the place when I came down to breakfast on the first morning. It didn’t take long to find out why.
Alec Stewart had been named in the Delhi police report as one of those international stars, and the only England player, who MK Gupta claimed he had paid money to for information; £5,000, to be precise. It was a bombshell none of us had been expecting. When the Quayyum report had been released, Sir Ian MacLaurin, the ECB chairman, said that any player named should be suspended from all cricket until his innocence was proven, or otherwise, and that applied to Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Inzamam ul Haq. Inevitably, the media were asking why this should not now apply to Alec. He stayed at the hotel for most of the match, rested in advance of the news breaking out, but you could see the whole thing had a terrible effect on him. He just looked pale and unwell for the entire time we were there. We all believed him to be totally innocent, but the strain must have been almost intolerable. He spent all week defending his integrity but it took him a long time to recover and by the end of the year the knock-on effect nearly brought his England career to a premature end.
And then, in the next match against the catchily named North-West Frontier Province Governor’s XI, Caddy behaved as though he must have been staring idly out of the window during our pre-tour reminder about best behaviour.
I made 93 in our first innings, just failing to reach my first first-class hundred for England, but we were well on top and on the way to bowling them out cheaply in their second when Caddy had an appeal for a catch at the wicket turned down. He went too far, with the umpire Sajjad Asghar claiming afterwards he had made derogatory comments ‘about my country’. Caddy said that was a misunderstanding, although he later apologised for his outburst.
Nasser appeared on TV afterwards to defend Caddick with what some thought was rather too much passion. Little did anyone outside the dressing-room know the reason why. Some time in that second innings Graham Thorpe shelled a pretty straightforward catch at slip. When Nasser had a go at him, Thorpe reacted by hurling the ball towards him, which made the skipper even more annoyed. Later in the dressing-room the two of them squared up and a five-minute, full-on, massive row ensued, with fingers jabbed in chests, insults exchanged and kit everywhere. Nasser wanted our level of intensity to be as high as possible all the time, Thorpe’s attitude to practice matches was less about the match and more about the practice. I just sat there in the corner thinking: ‘Oh my God. We haven’t even started the Tests and this team is falling to bits.’
But the incidents did seem to help us all let off steam, and from then on the team pulled together so strongly that, after drawing the first two Tests in Lahore and Faisalabad, our resolve to leave after the last in Karachi unbeaten was massive.
In order to do so, after conceding 405 in the first innings, despite my first and, amazingly, only wicket for England – Imran Nazir, in a spell of one for 34 off fourteen overs at first change – Atherton had to be at his obdurate best.
By this stage of the tour I had realised that if I was going to be playing my cricket at this level and in these conditions I was going to have to get much, much fitter. The penny finally dropped when I went for a run around the outfield with Phil Neale, our operations manager, and I was blowing out of my arse to keep up with him, even though he was old enough to be my dad. Phil had played many years for Worcestershire and as a footballer for Lincoln City and had always kept himself in shape, but this was ridiculous.
By now I was knackered, pure and simple, so watching Athers bat for nine hours and 38 minutes to score 125 from the dressing-room couch was just what I needed. When we bowled them out for 158 on the final afternoon – Ashley Giles spinning out Inzy the previous evening had been the breakthrough and he finished the series with 17 wickets – leaving us 176 in a minimum of 44 overs, Ath’s marathon feat of skill and endurance became more than mere defiance.
I had just about enough energy to make 24 in our run chase, but then Thorpe and Hick brilliantly took over.
