Ntini, Boeta Dippenaar and Mark Boucher, by now I was well aware that the pros had worked me out. They knew exactly where to bowl to me, just short of a length and just outside off stump and I couldn’t help myself. I went after them time after time, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the ball and consequently I just couldn’t stop getting out caught behind, in the slips or the covers, or just playing and missing. Some days I didn’t look as if I could bat to save my life.
Same again in 1996, though with all the upheavals going on at the club that season I’m not sure too many people actually noticed. Our form was unsatisfactory all round and, as time went on, the captain Andy Hayhurst appeared to let his own poor form affect his captaincy and the burden of captaincy affect his form. There were rumours that Caddick was looking to move on, that the committee weren’t happy with the way things were being run on and off the field and that Peter Bowler, the experienced Australian who had joined us from Derbyshire, was keen to take over the reins. Brian Rose, a club stalwart, England batsman and supporting act in the side that included Ian Botham, Viv Richards, Joel Garner, Peter Roebuck and Vic Marks which filled the previously empty trophy cabinet in the 1980s, was brought back to the club as chairman of the cricket committee, though he carried on his full-time job in the paper industry.
On 1 August, an hour before our championship match with Hampshire was due to start, a funny thing happened on the way to the scrapheap.
I had struggled all season with the same technical problem that had scuppered me in ’95. But Rose had decided that the way things were going the best way forward for the club was to back the young players through thick and thin. When Rose rang Peter Anderson at 10 a.m. that day from his office in Watchet, and the club secretary read out the team Andy Hayhurst had selected to take with him into battle, with me not in it, Rose’s response was swift and decisive and, to some, quite barmy.
‘Sorry, Brian,’ Anderson said. ‘I’m not sure I quite got that. You want me to do what?’
‘Peter, let me say it again,’ Rose replied. ‘I want you to go into the dressing-room and tell Hayhurst he’s dropped, bring in Marcus Trescothick in his place and ask Peter Bowler to take over the captaincy.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Anderson said. ‘Tell the captain he’s dropped? He won’t be happy with that. Why can’t you do it?’
‘Because I’m stuck at work and won’t be able to get there until lunch.’
‘You’re sure this is what you want me to do. If this goes wrong the press will have a field day.’
‘Sod the press. I’m chairman of the cricket committee. It’s my decision. I’ll take full responsibility.’
Peter Anderson tells the story that by the time this conversation ended Andy Hayhurst had not only made it to the middle to toss up with the Hampshire skipper John Stephenson, but that the coin was already in the air.
Even allowing for Anderson’s poetic licence, Hayhurst was obviously rather taken aback to receive the news that he had been effectively sacked as captain by the chairman of the cricket committee. As for me, instead of heading off for a 2nd XI match, I was back in the 1sts.
Rose arrived at the ground at lunchtime, preparing to face the local press and talk his way out of a tricky situation. Andy was a top bloke and very popular in these parts, and what had happened and how and when it had happened would take some explaining. Anderson saw Rose’s car pull into the car park and ran out to try and head him off.
‘What’s happened, Pete?’ Rose asked. ‘Is it bad?’
‘Well, Brian, you might say your actions have caused quite a stir. Andy didn’t take it too well, as you can imagine, and, er, Peter Bowler got nought.’
‘Oh Christ!’ said Rose, and then he noticed a smile creep across Anderson’s face.
‘You jammy bastard,’ Anderson said. ‘Marcus is 100 not out. He’s been bashing it everywhere.’
I finished with 178, my highest score to date.
‘Is this the same bloke who got all those runs as a kid?’ he asked. “kin ‘ell, what happened to you, then? I thought you were going to be a player. Any chance of you fulfilling your potential? Ever?’
I was sorry to see Andy Hayhurst go when he left at the end of the 1996 season, and just as sad when Bob Cottam was also released. But all of us at Somerset were enthused by the arrival of the man to replace him, the incredibly successful captain of Warwickshire, the recently retired Dermot Reeve.
Dermot was a radical thinker, a livewire who was always questioning and challenging conventional cricketing wisdom. He held certain things as given; firstly, whatever your talent, you had a better chance of employing it effectively if you were super-fit for the purpose. And that meant me. Secondly, very much like Duncan Fletcher later, he wanted players to have more than one string to their bow. And that also meant me. During the time he was in charge he got me fitter and he got me bowling, pretty successfully. The downside was that, at least initially, my batting stalled. I didn’t exactly go backwards but I definitely failed to make any significant progress until my second winter in Australia, in 1998–99.
For various reasons, another young batsman was also starting a difficult period, but in the case of Mark Lathwell it was to end eventually in his premature retirement.
I cannot overstate how brilliant Lathwell was. Sure, he found the experience of playing for England unnerving. The rumour goes that when Graham Gooch rang him up to tell him he was being left out after two Tests against Australia in ‘93, he mumbled something along the lines of ‘Thank God for that.’ But what a talent – a little bit of genius. Sometimes, watching him from the other end, he would amaze you by doing things you would never have seen coming, like shape to leave a ball outside the off-stump, then, with hands quick as a cobra’s strike, blast it through mid-wicket for four. There were occasions when people just could not bowl to him. I know he didn’t really enjoy being under the spotlight with England but he loved playing for Somerset. Why Dermot felt he had to try and change his technique I’ll never know, but attempting to persuade this utterly unconventional batsman to play in a more conventional fashion was the beginning of the end for Lathwell. He eventually lost his love of the game, then after suffering severe injury, when he tried a comeback he realized his heart was no longer in it, which was a tragedy for him and for English cricket.
One good thing did come out of the 1996 season. I met and started going out with a local girl called Hayley Rowse, who had a lovely smile, lovely eyes and a down-to-earth personality that ideally suited my own. I’d glimpsed her a few times, working in the Tony Price sports shop in town and I knew she was interested in cricket. But the first time I tried to talk to her socially, one night in Dellers nightclub, it was pretty clear she wasn’t interested in me at all. I kept trying to catch her eye and pluck up the courage to talk to her, but every time I did she ducked, dived or hid behind one of her mates. I persisted, though, eventually wearing down her resistance and that was the start of a partnership that has since produced two lovely girls and lots of wonderful memories. In later years we shared fantastic times, like the celebrations at The Oval in 2005 and, when the dark times came, I’m not certain I would have survived without her.
