was prepared to travel to India as captain of the side, Gooch said yes.
Once again the Board had allowed their lack of foresight to make them look just plain daft. Why had they not foreseen the question of the blacklist? And if they had, was it not plain arrogance that led them to believe they could sweet-talk the Indian government if things got difficult?
Finally, after two seasons of complete shambles, the Test and County Cricket Board decided to take swift and decisive action over the future course of the running of the England cricket team and its public image.
Towards the end of the year it was decided that, in future, the England team should be the responsibility of an England committee, and the next step was to decide who should lead it. To that end the county chairmen entrusted this task to a two-man working party comprising A C Smith, the chief executive, and Raman Subba Row, the chairman. Subba Row, the man who had sanctioned the £1,000 hardship bonus to Gatting’s 1987 Pakistan tour party, now had another brainwave. He reasoned that England needed a strong figurehead in charge, someone whose reputation as a cricketer would leave no room for criticism, and a man with the kind of charisma and public persona that would send off the right signals in the world of cricket. So far so good. The problem was his choice: ‘Lord’ Ted Dexter.
The next the county chairmen heard of developments was at the winter Board meeting at Lord’s in January 1989. They had gone there to discuss the Board’s position with regard to overtures being made to England cricketers by Ali Bacher, the leading figure in South African cricket and later to become the head of the Unified Cricket Board.
Rumours had been circulating regarding a ‘rebel tour’ set up by Bacher and the chairmen discussed how the situation should be handled when push came to shove. At the end of the meeting Subba Row threw in, almost casually: ‘By the way, gentlemen, I think we may have settled on the man we are looking for to chair the England committee. Ted Dexter.’
Chris Middleton, the controversial chairman of Derbyshire who, four years later, orchestrated the moves to oust Dexter, takes up the story. ‘I knew very little about Dexter apart from the fact that he had been a marvellous Test batsman for England, but at the time we as county chairmen were happy to hear that one suggestion had at last been put forward. We were told by Subba Row that this had to be kept secret and that we should tell no one, and we all agreed. I didn’t even tell my wife.
‘Nothing more was said or heard on the subject for a couple of months. Then, one evening in late March, I was at home watching television and saw Raman Subba Row, his wife Anne and Ted and Susan Dexter dressed up for an evening out and heard Dexter announce that he had been appointed the new chairman of the England committee, the new chairman of selectors.’
Dexter had been installed, all right, but with absolutely no reference to the county chairmen. And the decision of Subba Row and Smith to present them with a fait accompli caused severe consternation. Many chairmen felt that Subba Row had overstepped the bounds of his authority and they never forgave him for it. They had thought that any firm proposal by the working party would be ratified by them before being allowed to take place. No such procedure took place. And that was not the only surprise in store.
The England committee was to comprise Dexter as chairman, Micky Stewart, the England coach, and the captain, whoever that may be.
And in a further move unbeknown to the chairmen at the time, Subba Row also decreed that the committee was to be joined and influenced by another figure, namely the chairman of the TCCB cricket committee, Ossie Wheatley, who was to have the veto over the committee’s appointment of England captain.
Subba Row believed the Board needed this safeguard on the England selection panel because of what had happened the previous winter. Such an unholy mess had persuaded him that a man with a broader view of the whole picture should be included in the selection process.
But by effectively taking one of the primary functions of the England committee, namely the final say over the selection of the captain, out of their hands, Subba Row merely undermined their authority over the process. The potential for confusion was enormous.
And so it came to pass when Dexter was called upon to make his first decision as the new chairman of selectors – the choice of England captain. Three names were mentioned: David Gower, Mike Gatting and Graham Gooch. Dexter interviewed Gower and Gatting but not Gooch and it became clear quite quickly that the Essex man was never in the frame. Presumably he didn’t fit into Dexter’s idea of the required new style of leadership. Not surprising really as in his previous role as newspaper pundit Dexter had written in the Sunday Mirror that Gooch’s captaincy at The Oval Test against West Indies in 1988 had the effect on him of a ‘slap in the face with a wet fish.’
Gooch had offered the perfectly reasonable assertion that ‘a team is only as good as the players. Nobody can turn a bad team into a good one.’
Dexter thought better. This was his responese: ‘No wonder the England team is in such a sorry state if that is the general atmosphere in the dressing room … A captain must make his men feel that everything is possible. The Gooch approach means that the West Indies were inevitably going to win at The Oval and that he was resigned to that result before the game began. Translate his theories on to the battlefield and there would never be a victory against the odds. David would never have killed Goliath because it wasn’t worth a try.’
Steady on, Ted.
The full story of how Gower was chosen ahead of Gatting, and for that matter Gooch as well, did not come out until it was made public by the England committee at the end of the disastrous Ashes campaign of 1989, presumably in order to deflect some criticism away from the selectors over what had happened that summer.
According to the story it was Gatting rather than Gower who had been the first choice of Dexter and Stewart. Indeed, prior to the appointment the rumour-mill had gone into overdrive predicting that the Middlesex man had the job in the bag. Enter Ossie Wheatley.
Wheatley was a former captain and chairman of Glamorgan and a contemporary of Dexter’s at Cambridge. But ninety-nine per cent of county cricketers would not have known him had they fallen over him. Wheatley, it was said, had decided that the time was not yet right for Gatting to be reinstated because of the events that had happened during his previous term of office. Wheatley was ostensibly mainly concerned with Gatting’s public row with the Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana in the Faisalabad Test on the 1987–88 tour and other examples of poor behaviour.
It was never said publicly, however, but most of us were convinced that it wasn’t only the behaviour of Gatting and his team during that winter that led to Wheatley employing his veto. Quite clearly, according to the story, the business involving Gatting and the barmaid at Rothley Court in the early part of the summer of 1988 had had a large bearing on Wheatley’s decision.
Wheatley informed Dexter and Stewart that Gatting should not be considered and the new England committee turned instead to David Gower.
Not a great way for Dexter’s ‘Brave New World’ to begin. And as the summer progressed many commentators were crying out for a return to the cowardly old one.
The explanation that Dexter had originally wanted Gatting ahead of Gower has always puzzled me. I never thought of Gatting as Dexter’s type of captain. Clearly Micky Stewart would have wanted Gatt, as he was the captain on Stewart’s and England’s successful expedition to Australia in 1986–87. He was also captain when England reached the final of the 1987 World Cup. Stewart and Gatting were very similar in their approach to the game and got on well. On the other hand, Gower, all elegance, grace and style was much more Dexter’s cup of tea. Perhaps Graeme Wright, then the editor of the Wisden Almanack, writing his notes in the 1989 edition, came
