so, however. It was only a stone’s throw from the ground at Taunton, as you could tell by the number of broken windows. Four of us young lads shared what was notionally a two-bedroom house, me and a guy called Paul Clifford in a tiny box room and Andy Payne and Jason Kerr in another slightly bigger box room. It was a disgrace. Apart from the fact that I could touch all four walls of my bedroom from the middle of it, the other notable aspect of the house was that it smelled of cat’s urine – all the time. No matter what we tried, air fresheners, keeping the windows open, everything, the place stunk of cat urine 24 hours a day and it was worst first thing in the morning. We reckoned they used to wait until the house was quiet, come in for a few bevvies and a game of cards and then get down to some serious urinating before wandering off for another day on the tiles.
Payne was a menace as well, a complete psycho whose most prized possession was the air rifle with which he spent most of his spare time shooting me. He’d stuff these little white plastic pellets down the barrel, aim and fire. Day or night, watching TV or reading the paper – whack! – suddenly, out of nowhere, I’d take one in the side of the head. To this day I still carry a slight scar on my left cheek as a result of one of his numerous attempts on my life. It was like living with Lee Harvey Oswald.
It was great fun, all of it, and, with regular mercy dashes home to stock up on mum’s cheese flans, it made being away from home better than bearable.
I’d like to say that when the call finally came, on 12 May 1993, informing me I would be playing in the 1st XI against Lancashire the very next day, I was up for it and ready for anything.
I’d like to say it, but actually I was anything but. My feelings on that first morning were jumbled. I was incredibly excited to be sharing a dressing-room with players like Andy Caddick, just about to make his Test debut; our captain Chris Tavare, one of the 1981 Ashes heroes I had copied as a child in front of my living room telly; Mark Lathwell, who, that season, at 22, scored two 20s and a 30 against the rampant touring Australians and was promptly discarded but whose talent sometimes left you speechless; and Mushtaq Ahmed, the Pakistan leg-spinner who was one of the most feared bowlers in the world, making his championship debut.
But one look over at their dressing-room balcony also made me very nervous. No one said it was meant to be easy, but my early season form with the seconds had been pretty poor – I had just made a big fat nought in a 2nd XI match at Edgbaston. The pitch that morning at Taunton was the colour of Robin Hood’s tights and Lancashire’s opening pair were Phil DeFreitas, on his day one of England’s best swing bowlers, and Wasim Akram, the Pakistan Test star who was almost certainly the best fast left-arm swing and seam bowler ever to draw breath. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I was actually a bit scared of the idea of Wasim’s pace. At the same time, however, as with all really quick bowling throughout my career, that tingle of fear was like an energy charge. Even though I had some success against ‘Was’ later with England, including my first Test hundred in this country in 2001, facing him was always an intoxicating mix of fear and anticipation.
In the end I was proud to be part of an epic victory, gained by 15 runs at 5.30 p.m. on the second day and watched by mum and dad. Some say it was the bowling of Mushy and Caddick, who took 12 wickets in the match and his career-best 9 for 32 in 11.2 overs in their second innings of 72 all out, which tilted the balance our way. I’d like to think my four runs (1 and 3, out to DeFreitas lbw and caught behind) also helped, a notion Mike Atherton found strangely difficult to comprehend when I shared an England dressing-room with him years later. All I remember, in actual fact, was just not being able to hit the ball, apart from two edges through the vacant slip area to third man that brought me the single and the three.
My education was advanced in one other way, though. I was sledged for the first time and not in the general, genial, jokey way that I had been brought up to believe was all part of the camaraderie of the game, but nastily and unnecessarily. Looking back now it was probably just a throwaway line long forgotten by the bloke who said it, the Lancashire batsman Nick Speak, but, at the time it left a sour taste. After Warren Hegg had caught me off ‘Daffy’ in the second innings, Speak walked up to Wasim within my earshot and said: ‘This bloke is sh**.’ I’ll never forget it because it annoyed me so much. It wasn’t the worst thing he could have said and I could handle myself all right, but I was a 17-year-old kid trying to find my way in the game and to me what he said just amounted to an attempt to bully me, no more no less. I used to get a lot of that stuff. To me, it wasn’t really sledging, or trying to get under someone’s skin or put them off their stroke. It was bullying, pure and simple. And I have always hated bullies. In years to come, whenever dressing-room banter crossed the line I made it my business to keep an eye on things.
I was due to get another go in the next match, against Worcestershire at New Road, but I then managed to make myself fairly unpopular with the club by turning out to play for Keynsham the next day without telling them, diving on the boundary to stop a four and knackering my knee. The county’s mood with me barely improved for the rest of the season. At least I was consistent. At the beginning of July I followed up my 1 and 3 with 6 and 0 against Sussex at Taunton and rounded things off nicely with 4 and 0 against Leicestershire at Weston Super Mare in mid-August. No wonder they never bothered taking me on any away trips. Fourteen runs at 2.33, with allowances, expenses and, remarkably, two win bonuses from my three matches, I was working out at around £250 a run.
But Peter Robinson, our coach, kept faith. I had wondered when I joined whether the coaching staff might try and get me to change or adapt my batting style, but they didn’t, even though I was clearly struggling to cope with the demands of playing at this level. My game was basically the same then as it is today, with a few adjustments. For my big scoring shots, on the offside and straight I would cut and drive, sweep or slog-sweep the spinners and pull or whip the quicks off my legs hard and, if safe, in the air. There was always talk about my footwork, or lack of it, but my game was based on my knowing exactly where my off stump was, and playing with my head and body still, straight and facing wicket to wicket. Robbo kept telling me to stick to what I was good at, encouraged me to express myself and I was still scoring good runs in the seconds, including my first 2nd XI century against Kent, for whom a lad called Duncan Spencer was making waves as a tearaway paceman. Whatever questions were already being asked about my technique, at least I was able to show my courage against the fast stuff was never going to be in question. It wasn’t much use on my first England Under-19 tour that winter, however, under skipper Michael Vaughan, against the Sri Lankan spinners.
* * *
Luck. However you dress up a person’s life or career, whatever talent a person has or whatever opportunities arise, somewhere along the line everyone needs luck in order to succeed.
I had mine when I needed it most, soon after the start of the 1994 season, just around the time when some at Somerset might have been starting to have second thoughts about me. Though Robinson and Bob Cottam insisted they would carry on backing me, others at the club might not have been so sure after my wholly unimpressive baptism in championship cricket. Prior to the start of the season, Bob called me in and told me that, at some stage, they were going to give me a run of at least three championship matches to see how I was progressing. He didn’t spell out what might happen if I failed, but my two-year contract would be up at the end of the season and a decision on whether I was worth persevering with would have to be made one way or the other before then.
I started brilliantly, scoring 0 and 7, again versus Lancashire, batting down the order at Southport at the end of May. So promoting me to open in the next match against Hampshire at Taunton at the start of June was either a tactical masterstroke or one of the last few remaining rolls of the dice. It looked very much like the latter when, on two, the West Indies paceman Winston Benjamin sent down another very quick ball, I fended it off and waited for Tony Middleton, under the lid at short leg, to bring this latest epic innings to a close.
They say your whole life flashes in front of you in the instant before you buy the farm; even
