Lilleshall. I made my first century in senior cricket, for Keynsham in the Western League in 1989, aged 14 and in 1990, after an England Schools Cricket Association trials tournament in Oxford, when England named their first-ever Under-14 squad, selected by David Lloyd among others, I was in it, alongside Andrew Flintoff and Paul Collingwood. Fred was a big boisterous bloke who could launch it miles. Colly, at that stage was an irritating dobber who bowled gentle inswing to left-handers and I whacked the living c**p out of him. If you had said to us then that, in 15 years’ time, we would be standing at The Oval drenching ourselves in Ashes champagne…
David Lloyd was impressed by my batting, less so by my size and shape, which by now was on the portly side of chubby. Unsurprising really, as my diet comprised all and only the wrong things; sausages were my favourite, hence the nickname ‘Banger’, later coined by Bob Cottam at Somerset, that has stuck with me ever since. Then, in no particular order, sausages, chips, sausages, toast, sausages, baked beans, sausages, cheese, sausages, eggs, sausages and the occasional sausage thrown in, topped off with a sprinkling of sausage. The only muscles I had in my body were around my mouth. If someone put a slice of cucumber in front of me, or any other salad item for that matter, and said ‘eat that and I’ll give you £100’, I’d say no chance. Fruit? Forget it. Vegetables? Why?
Christmas dinner in our house was a bit strange, to say the least. While everyone else would be tucking into traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings, my festive fare consisted of tinned carrots (I didn’t like the fresh ones, obviously) and a variety of potatoes, roast, boiled and mashed, which I’d stuff between slices of bread to make spud sarnies.
I cannot eat enough steak these days, but then I couldn’t stand the taste and texture of meat at all. When mum used to try and feed me meat of any kind as a toddler I would just retch or spit it out. I didn’t eat chicken until I was 20, when my Somerset teammate Rob Turner persuaded me to try a McDonald’s chicken-burger. I was so proud I rang my mum and told her, as I was washing it down with a million cans of fizzy-pop. I ate my first beef burger when I was 29. No, really. I’m not kidding.
Lloyd did mention to someone that perhaps the subject of my weight and general fitness might have to be addressed and I know it later cost me a place on the West of England Schools tour to the West Indies and possibly a place on the following year’s England Under-15 squad, but, at 14, the fact that I could hit the ball harder than seemingly anyone else my age in the entire country covered a multitude of sins. I might not have been the sprightliest in the field or between the wickets, but when you stood behind the stumps with the gloves on, and hit the ball like I did, what did I need to run for? Dad did try and take me out jogging a few times but I could barely make it to the end of our road and he soon gave it up as a bad job.
If there had been the slightest doubt about where my young life was heading, the summer of 1991 sealed my fate.
God knows how many games of cricket I played that season – for the school, for Keynsham, for West of England Schools, for Avon Schools, and, as a 15-year-old, for Somerset Under-19s under the county coach Peter Robinson, who had already bowled a million left-arm spinners to me in the freezing cold of Peter Wight’s Indoor School in Bath on Wednesday winter evenings. Sometimes I played twice in a day, a match for the club Under-17s in the morning, then an afternoon game for the 1st XI. I reckon I played more than 50 innings in all and I scored millions, including 13 hundreds and my first double. It was not enough to win selection for the England Under-15s, which hacked me right off – Phil Neville, then of Lancashire schools but later Manchester United and England, was picked ahead of me – but, by the time I began my last innings of the summer, in the last match on the last day, for Keynsham against Old Georgians, what I did know was that mum had totted up all the scores and I needed 84 runs to reach 4,000 for the season. That might be something to interest the selectors who had left me out of that England side, I reckoned.
Then the batsman’s nightmare. My sister was to-ing and fro-ing at home so we arrived late for the start of the match. All I had been thinking about was getting in early enough to give myself the best chance of making the required number of runs. But, when we arrived late and I was told we had won the toss and were already batting, that meant less chance for me. And what if the openers never got out?
Eventually I went in, but time was running out. The tension built up because everyone there knew what was at stake, and, with one ball to go in our innings I still needed two runs. I got a bottom edge on a decent yorker and groaned inwardly as the keeper parried it. I set off for the other end knowing I might be able to run a single but unless something extraordinary happened there was no way I would get two. Then, something extraordinary did happen.
Their keeper threw the ball at the stumps to try and run out my partner; he was in by miles when the ball hit the stumps and ricocheted off into the covers and I was able to scramble back for the second. I remember walking off the pitch bawling my eyes out.
And 4,000 seemed to be the magic number. Soon afterwards The Cricketer Magazine told me I had won their award for the outstanding young cricketer of the year. I duly pitched up at Lord’s to receive my award and a load of kit from Mickey Stewart, the England senior coach, Angus Fraser and Carl Hooper, who had been opponents in that summer’s Test series, and the radio commentator Brian Johnston. When he watched me in the indoor school nets at Lord’s that day Mickey made a point of querying why I hadn’t been picked for the Under-15s, and soon afterwards he made sure I was awarded a place on the MCC School of Merit training scheme there, for which I travelled up to London once a week throughout the winter, which was a wonderful consolation.
Brian Johnston’s behaviour that day was magnificently eccentric. Johnners had an absolute obsession about the Australian soap opera Neighbours. Wherever he was, if Neighbours was on the telly he had to watch it. Everything stopped for Ramsay Street. And there and then, as we were settling down to a buffet reception after the awards had been completed, Johnners set up a portable TV in the corner of the room and switched it on for his daily dose of Kylie, Jason and Madge.
After all that, then scoring heavily for Somerset Under-19s, including an unbeaten 158 against Warwickshire, followed by a 2nd XI appearance, sitting my GCSEs in the summer of 1992 seemed somewhat beside the point. Bob Cottam, the Director of Cricket at Somerset, and Peter Robinson, the coach had already indicated they would be interested in signing me. The headmaster at Sir Bernard Lovell recommended I should turn them down and go back for A-levels, but, as I’d managed the sum total of one pass in my GCSEs, a ‘B’, in Drama, I can only think he must have spotted something in me no one else had done thus far. I told him, politely, that I could get an education at any age but I would only get one chance at cricket. There was talk of me enrolling at Bath Technical College to do a sports training course or some such, but when it became clear the only thing I wanted to do for a living was play cricket, mum sat me down and said: ‘Right, well, if you’re going to play cricket, do it properly. That means you’ve got to knuckle down and train and do everything you have to.’
Just before the end of my academic career I received news that I had been selected for the England Under-17s, to play three Tests against South Africa in July and August, and, only a few days after I left school, aged 16 and a half, dad received a hand-written letter from the Somerset secretary Peter Anderson, confirming that they wanted me to join them, as of 17 August, on a contract that would see me through until 1994.
‘The salary level is in line with that of other junior players,’ he wrote.
‘There is a minimum wage agreement but that does not come into force until a player has two years’ service. I think that with accommodation paid for plus allowances on match days, it is not too bad for youngsters. However, should you wish to discuss this or any other matter, please give me a ring.
‘We are very happy that Marcus wishes to join us. He will have a lot to do and learn, of course, but at least he now has a chance to realize his ambition.’
