the close of play, we had a lead of 279, enough to help us push home an advantage the next day. But when I got back to the dressing room, I found Boycs still sulking and sitting on a bench with a towel over his head. He was not talking to anyone, and certainly not to me. This wall of silence remained well into the following day.
The only player he did converse with was his Yorkshire team-mate and ally Geoff Cope, with whom he spent the next morning wandering around the outfield agonizing over the declaration and his position as captain.
In the end, we declared at the overnight total then bowled New Zealand out easily to win by lunch time on the final day. That morning session was perhaps one of the most bizarre of my career. Boycs was still not talking to me, so when I was bowling he communicated with me via the other fielders. Whoever was fielding at cover or mid-off would be sent over to say to me ‘Boycs wants to know if you want another slip’ and I would respond ‘Tell him that would be nice’. The fielder would then trot over to Boycs and pass on the message. It was all so unbelievably petty. After the match was over and won, needless to say Boycs took great delight in informing the press of how well his plans had worked out.
The victory, no matter how it was achieved in the end, was especially sweet for me because of my first Test hundred, an innings that proved to me that as well as learning things about people I was also learning things about the game. In my early career, batting was a very straightforward business. ‘Get out there and give it a whack’ was my philosophy. But if I was going to succeed at the highest level the time had come to give it a bit more thought than that. It was thinking and learning from my experiences in the first Test at Wellington that helped me make the century in the second Test at Christchurch that proved so decisive. At Wellington, Richard Hadlee got me out twice by tempting me into the hook and getting me caught once at square leg and then at deep backward square leg for 7 and 19 respectively.
When we got to Christchurch I remembered the lesson. This time when Hadlee bowled short to me I just let the ball go. It was still an aggressive innings, but it was controlled aggression. It was a lovely feeling to have reached this milestone, and when it was over I just wanted to go out there and do it again.
Another 50 in the second innings to go with my five-wicket haul and my century in the first proved a vital contribution to our levelling the series at 1-1. It also meant that I was well on the way to establishing myself; and the following summer against Pakistan I managed to do just that. In the first Test at Edgbaston I made another century in our victory by an innings and 57 runs, and it was here that I had my first encounter with the kind of controversy that has cast a constant shadow over all my dealings with Pakistan.
The Pakistan players and management were unhappy at the way Bob Willis had bowled at the nightwatchman Iqbal Qasim as they followed on, chasing our 452 for eight declared. Qasim came to the crease late on the Saturday evening to see out the last over, which he did with ease. Then on the Monday, he survived a number of lifting deliveries from Willis without any fuss. Mike Brearley, back in harness after recovering from a broken arm, commented after the match that he felt Qasim was a competent and able player. When Willis tried another approach, by coming round the wicket, he caught Qasim with a lifter that hit him in the mouth, forcing him to retire hurt.
The Pakistan manager, Mahmood Hussain, accused Willis of using unfair tactics, but as I saw it, the problem was not Qasim’s lack of ability but the fact the visitors were heading for defeat by an innings inside four days. The way Qasim had batted up until that point proved he was no rabbit.
Nevertheless in the interests of fairness, a compromise was reached between the two managements, and the teams went into the next match at Lord’s with a collective total of five players classified as non-batsmen and to be spared the ordeal of the bouncer. Willis and Hendrick were the English players singled out, while the Pakistanis had preservation orders slapped on Qasim, Sikander Bakht and Liaqat Ali. The protection, however, did not spare them from defeat as I enjoyed my best match yet for England.
I scored my third Test century, 108, as we reached 364. In their first innings Willis took five wickets and Phil Edmonds four to force the follow on, and second time around it was my turn with the ball as I took eight wickets for 34. I had been put on at the Nursery End to allow Willis to change ends and I just needed one sniff to get into my rhythm. I took seven wickets in the morning session as their last eight wickets fell for 43, to complete the best return by an England bowler since Jim Laker had taken nine for 37 and ten for 53 against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956. They tell me that this was the best all-round performance ever by an England player.
New Zealand were our next opponents in that ‘split’ summer of 1978, and although my batting tailed off slightly, my bowling continued to reap rewards. In the three-match series, I took six for 34 in the second Test at Trent Bridge and followed that up with six for 101 and five for 39 in the final Test of the summer at Lord’s as we completed three straight wins.
That marked the end of my first year in Test cricket. The apprehensive debutante had come of age; I could be well pleased with my record from eleven Tests of three centuries, eight five-wicket hauls and one bag of ten wickets in a match.
Off the field, things were going fantastically well too. As far as the public were concerned, the void created by Tony Greig’s defection to Packer had been well and truly filled. The Fleet Street publicity machine was working overtime to keep tabs on the new ‘superstar’; the sponsorship deals, exclusive newspaper articles, and all the other trappings of success were becoming part of our everyday lives. Helped by my agent, the legendary Fleet Street figure Reg Hayter, to whom I had been introduced by Brian Close, a mutual friend, I grabbed everything with both hands. After all, you never know when it is all going to end and I realized that this was the time to cash in. Unfortunately, these developments simply caused more problems for Kath. We had some great times during this period, but because of my off-field commitments, they were becoming fewer and farther between. Most of the functions to which I was invited, whether cricket dinners, pro-am celebrity golf tournaments or other publicity events, were for men only, while the rest of the time was usually spent enjoying typical bachelor pursuits – rounds of golf or nights in the Somerset pubs, for instance. Kath told me later that she felt very much like a spare part, particularly as she was carrying a nine-month-old Liam around with her at the same time. Looking back, I can’t blame her for thinking like that. All I can offer in my defence is that my world was travelling at 100 mph. It was heady stuff and my head was spinning.
When it became obvious that I was going to make the trip to Australia that winter, Kath made it quite clear to me that the prospect of another long separation did not fill her with joy. In fact, when I had returned from Pakistan and New Zealand a year earlier, we vowed we would never again be apart from each other for so long. Kath was pregnant again and after consulting the doctors she had been told that she could only come out to Australia provided she returned by the middle of December. If we were going to have any decent time together, it had to be right at the beginning of the tour. The TCCB have never been keen on wives coming out on tour but we wrote off with a formal request and were told that we would be notified in due course. When the TCCB secretary Donald Carr rang to tell me that the answer was no, I told him that this was not good enough and I urged him to do everything in his power to change the decision. The conversations continued throughout the evening but I was getting nowhere fast. Finally, my patience snapped and I issued an ultimatum. ‘If you won’t allow Kath to join me I shall withdraw from the tour’ and I meant it. The next morning an early call from Donald indicated that the ploy had worked and Kath was able to join me for about two and a half weeks.
Many observers chose to concentrate on the fact that we achieved our 5-1 success under Brearley against an Aussie side badly damaged by defections to Packer, but they tended to forget that we had lost some great players of our own. In any case, you can only beat what’s there.
I was lucky to make the tour at all, my part in the proceedings being delayed after I cut my wrist badly from accidentally
