Читать книгу Coming Back To Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick - Marcus Trescothick - Страница 13

‘Wow. Bloody brilliant. Knackered. Run to a standstill, but 79, SEVENTY-NINE, for England! I loved that drug.’

‘Marcus, can I have a word?’ I knew the tone of Duncan Fletcher’s voice by now. I had been with the England squad for 48 hours, training and netting, initially at Lord’s, then at The Oval, where the first of the matches in the triangular NatWest series with West Indies and Zimbabwe was to be played the next day, 8 July 2000, against Zimbabwe. My first-ever team meeting had come and gone, without the XI being announced, so the moment Duncan spoke I knew what he was about to tell me would either send my spirits skyward or down to my boots. I studied his face to see if I could find any clues. Nothing. On the outside Duncan was the original closed book. On the inside, until you gained his trust, the pages were blank as well.

We were standing outside the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, when he pulled me to one side of the group of players with whom I had just returned after dinner.

‘Look,’ he continued, ‘you’re playing tomorrow. I just want you to go out there and play your natural game. Play like you’ve been playing for Somerset and enjoy it.’ And a funny thing happened. After all the waiting and wondering, all the uncertainty over whether I would ever hear those words and the occasional utter certainty I never would, I took what he said totally in my stride. Not in an arrogant way, nor blasé. I just thought: ‘Duncan’s just told me I’m playing for England tomorrow. Isn’t this great?’

By the time I walked into our dressing-room at The Oval the following day, I felt somewhat different. I looked around me and, suddenly, instead of a 24-year-old with several seasons of county cricket under my belt, some better than others, I felt like a spotty school kid on Jim’ll Fix It.

Over there was Graeme Hick, not only my early role model as a player but also my kit model as well. Alec Stewart, who seemed to have been playing for England for about 100 years and was actually about to set a new one-day international appearance record (125) and, in a few weeks’ time, play in his 100th Test, was busy making sure everything was in its place; and Darren Gough and my Somerset colleague Andy Caddick were tearing into each other like an old married couple which they carried on doing for the rest of the time they played together for England. Their mainly pretend bickering had actually boiled over in the recent second Test against West Indies at Lord’s when they and Dominic Cork had taken all ten wickets between them as the Windies collapsed in their second innings to 54 all out. By taking five wickets Caddick had earned the right for his name and analysis to be printed on the dressing-room honours board showing hundreds and five-wicket bowling spells in Test cricket, something Gough was desperate to achieve but had so far failed to do. Caddy had taken it too far and Duncan felt obliged to step in and pour oil on troubled bowlers, but you could tell all was well because they were back to the usual nagging and points-scoring. Graham Thorpe was there, back after having made himself unavailable for the previous winter tour to South Africa, to spend more time with his young family and suffering from burnout. ‘Suffering from what?’ I thought at the time. I respected Thorpe as a top batsman and great professional, who didn’t? But burnout, what the hell was he on about? Still, I was impressed by the way he was operating around inside his own quiet bubble, ready to flick his switch to the ‘on’ position the instant he walked onto the pitch and not a moment before. Matthew Maynard was trying not to show how much he was dying for a fag and a young Andrew Flintoff was bouncing around like a 6ft 5 in, 17 and a half stone Tigger, charming and infuriating everyone in equal measure. I wasn’t exactly overawed, more like brilliantly and blindingly excited by what was about to happen. But I definitely couldn’t calm down so I asked Dean Conway, our one-day physio, if he would give me a head and neck massage to help me try to relax.

By the time the call came through that Alec Stewart, who was filling in as skipper for the injured Nasser, had won the toss and we were batting – or rather I was batting – I was trying everything I could to switch into cricket mode. But I was really cacking myself. Then, almost from the second I walked out of the dressing-room with Alec to open the innings, and the roar went up from the capacity crowd, everything felt just right.

‘God, isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself as we walked down the steps to the pitch, our studs crunching on the concrete beneath our boots. ‘Isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself, when we stepped onto the springy outfield for the walk to the middle and the crowd noise cranked up a notch. ‘Isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself when Alec asked me whether I wanted to take strike and I said, ‘Yes, if you like’. ‘Isn’t this great?’ I thought to myself when I asked the umpire Ray Julian for middle-and leg guard and, when I hit my first boundary and heard the crowd burst into cheers and applause I thought to myself: ‘Isn’t this fantastic?’

It was like a drug. That was it. There and then. That was where I wanted to be. That was what I wanted to do.

Through the tens, with Alec, to 20, to 30, to 40 along with Hick, who made 50 and looked very much like God from where I was standing but who also, super-fit, showed everyone inside the dressing-room just how much work I had to do in that respect by running me off my feet in a stand of 106. Past 50, helmet off, arms up, bat raised. Another boundary, another roar from the crowd. More of the drug, please. More, more, more, and, finally out at 79, more, every step of the way back to the dressing-room.

Wow. Bloody brilliant. Knackered. Run to a standstill, but 79, SEVENTY-NINE, for England! I loved that drug.

Sitting in the dressing-room afterwards, the overriding feeling among the players was huge disappointment that we lost, that after we had barely made it past 200, the Zims cruised home by five wickets and that was not good enough. And there I was, struggling badly to stop myself from racing round the room punching the air and all the locker doors, chanting ‘79, 79, 79!’

Next day, there I was, in all the papers, my face in the photos. Me, in all the papers! And up again and straight on to play the West Indies and Brian Lara … at Lord’s. More, 49 this time in the only innings of a rain-ruined match, then 29 against Zimbabwe at Old Trafford (won) and two wickets for seven runs in ten balls, and, at Chester-le-Street on 15 July, my best of the series, 87 not out with Alec Stewart 74 not out, in an unbeaten first-wicket stand of 171 to overhaul West Indies and win by ten wickets. I had made 244 runs in my first four innings and had my first close look at Lara batting. He was not at his best all summer and, later, fell to very good plans in the rest of the Test series, but what hands and what an eye. Isn’t this great?

I cannot exactly recall how long Eddie Gregg, my friend from childhood and team-mate in the St Anne’s kids’ football team, had been ill at this stage. He had been fighting leukaemia for some time and most reports had been relatively encouraging. I had phoned him from time to time and his spirits had always been pretty high. But when I rang him in between innings at Chester-le-Street, it was obvious things were not good. He was having trouble speaking and it was quite distressing to listen to him. I told Eddie I’d call again soon. It was the last time I spoke to him.

In the final against Zimbabwe on Saturday 22 July, I enjoyed my first England victory at Lord’s, by six wickets, Then, until about 2 a.m., my first skinful as an England player and, from around 6 a.m., my first belting hangover, when Hayley drove me up to Scarborough to play for Somerset in the National League 45-over match against Yorkshire the very next day. Snoring my head off in the passenger seat, we only stopped to stock up on cans of Red Bull and then my bastard team-mates took one look at me and made me bowl six overs (two for 16) as we skittled out Yorkshire for 141. How I was able to stand when it was our turn to bat, let alone score 12, is anyone’s guess. I’m told we won by two wickets.

Stewart batted out of his skin in that series, finishing with 408 runs with two hundreds and 97 in the final. But after the squad was announced for the third Test against West Indies at Old Trafford, due to start on 3 August, most of the talk was about the fact that he and Mike Atherton would both be winning their 100th cap. Some of it was about me winning my first.

Unusually, the selectors had gone public ten days in advance. They had reacted to the fact that, after the first two Tests against West Indies, one lost and the second, a see-saw affair won by two wickets in near-darkness at Lord’s thanks to the aforementioned exploits of Caddick, Gough and Cork and excellent second innings batting from the lattermost, England had not managed a Test fifty between them. Hicky had struggled to impose himself again as had Mark Ramprakash, who had been tried as an opener in the summer’s first Test action against Zimbabwe, but in his last match, at headquarters, he made just 0 and 2; and that, along with my performances in the NatWest series persuaded Duncan and Nasser to stick with me for the Tests as well, though the first I knew of it was when I saw the announcement of the squad on Teletext.

And now I was cooking with gas. The thrill of what I had done was still buzzing inside me and now, the thought of playing Test cricket … more, more, more … and when, the night before the start of the match, someone read out the team and my name was in it, it was all I could do to refrain from shouting out: ‘You f***in’ beauty!’

Atherton, Trescothick, Hussain (captain), Thorpe, Stewart, Vaughan, White, Cork, Croft, Caddick and Gough … The only thing still nagging at the back of my mind was when exactly Nasser was actually going to say hello.

After we bowled them out on the first day for 157, with Gough, Caddick, Cork and White never letting them get a moment’s peace, I was not merely ready for my turn, I was bursting for it.

In the event, my enthusiasm to get into the battle nearly got the better of me. My only previous memory of playing with Mike Atherton, my opening partner, was in my inglorious debut for Somerset against Lancashire in 1993. I’m sure he didn’t know me from a bar of soap and we never got around to discussing how our new partnership might work nor any matters of procedure, like calling, running between wickets etc.

So, when I bounded down the dressing-room steps, through the corridor out onto the pavilion concourse and down the steps towards the gate leading to the field of play, I was somewhat surprised when Athers came sprinting past me, bat first, like a bank robber running for his getaway car, nearly sending me flying into the laps of bewildered spectators.

‘Blimey, Ath,’ I said to him as we walked out to the middle. ‘What was all that about?’

‘Sorry, Tres,’ he replied, amid the tumultuous applause he was getting from his home supporters celebrating his great milestone. ‘I forgot to tell you. I’ve got this superstition. Whenever I go out to bat with someone at the start of an innings, I’ve got to be the first one on the pitch.’

It was somehow reassuring to think that M.A. Atherton, captain of Manchester Grammar School, Cambridge University, Lancashire and England (a record 54 times), winner of 100 Test caps, History graduate and real ale expert, was just as bonkers about the ‘dark arts’ of cricket as the next mug. My superstition? Never you mind.

When he was out for 1, at 1 for one, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But there was nothing remotely amusing about what happened next. Nasser (still no word, by the way) made just 10, six of which arrived courtesy of Courtney Walsh stepping on the boundary rope after catching him off Curtly Ambrose, which left us 17 for two; and then Thorpe, returning to the Test arena after easing his way back in the one-dayers, lost sight of a perfect slower ball from Walsh, coming out of the background of the hospitality boxes behind him, ducked and was plumb lbw for nought at 17 for three. And I looked up at the board and realized that I hadn’t scored a run.

It was not that I wasn’t trying to, but Ambrose and Walsh, while not as quick as in their terrifying pomp, just never gave me anything to hit. Forty-five minutes I had to wait to get off the mark in Test cricket, before I punched one down the ground for two off Franklyn Rose to a mixture of ironic cheers and appreciative applause. I wasn’t worried. The absolute priority was to stay in and get a partnership going with someone. Who else, of course, in his 100th Test and on the day the nation was celebrating the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday, than Alec Stewart? And what else could he possibly do other than score a century?

He batted exquisitely from start to finish, and still found time to help me concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing as well. We had both reached fifty and had taken England into the lead without losing any more wickets and we weren’t far away from ending the day with a healthy advantage when I noticed how close Alec was getting to three figures. What I didn’t notice, and, again my lack of experience of playing with these guys meant I had no idea about, was Alec’s growing twitchiness as he approached the magic figure. Up in the dressing-room, they knew. Atherton and Hussain and Thorpe and Caddick and Gough and Cork and White, all of whom had played with Alec for all of their careers, they knew. Whenever Alec got into the 90s you had to be ready to run, sometimes at very short notice indeed and occasionally without any at all.

Alec disputes it to this day, but had Jimmy Adams, their skipper and one of the quickest fielders in the world, picked up the ball cleanly and hit the stumps with his throw, as you would have backed him to do eight times out of ten, I would have been gone, run out by a yard at least. Alec wouldn’t have known anything about it, of course, so intent was he in charging down the other end for the single to bring up his hundred, but there was utter chaos going on behind him. There I was scrambling and diving to make my ground. And there was Jimmy, taking his eye off the ball, letting it clang off his hands and dribble out in front of him. No pick-up, no throw, no run out. Instead the most extraordinary and prolonged ovation anyone there could ever recall, as the capacity crowd rose to applaud and cheer Alec’s win-double of 100 runs in his 100th Test, and applaud and cheer some more. The innings took three hours and the applause and the cheering about the same.

For me, a complete cricket fanatic, it was really something to be out there with Alec, sharing in his and the crowd’s joy, but there was one drawback. Every time the commotion died down long enough for me to take my mark and prepare to face the next delivery, someone would start up the applause and cheering again. This happened four times before we finally got the match resumed. In all probability there are people still standing there now, still clapping and cheering, eight years on.

Eventually the noise abated long enough for us to restart and we made it through to the close but were both out quickly the following morning. Though we finished with a lead of 148, Lara then took control with an impeccable hundred, punctuated by a net session during the lunchtime break on day four, and that, along with the damp weather, secured the draw.

My second innings 38 not out encouraged me to tell Caddy afterwards that I was thinking of quitting Test cricket straight away.

‘What the f**k for?’ he asked me.

‘Because I’m averaging 104, and that’s better than Don Brad-man.’

With ten days off before the fourth Test at Headingley, the first real break since I came into the squad, I took some time to reflect on events thus far. My overriding impression was this: at the time I arrived some of the senior players were undoubtedly feeling the pressure. I felt, particularly among the batsmen, guys like Hick, Ramprakash, Thorpe, Hussain, Stewart and Atherton, that they had become conditioned by years of inconsistency to a somewhat negative mindset. Losing to New Zealand the summer before and the absolute mauling they got in the media had obviously hurt them and by now they were so used to being hammered in print if things didn’t go their way that maybe they were not prepared to be bold and take too many risks when risk-taking might have turned out to be the best policy. In short, fear of failure was preventing them from truly expressing their talent and I think they were glad to see someone like me, and other young players like Vaughan and Fred, come in from outside and perhaps take some of the focus and the pressure away from them for a while.

And then we went and absolutely smashed West Indies in the last two Tests. The fourth was crazy, over within two days, and it might have been over even quicker if I had remembered to tell Nasser Hussain something quite important a little earlier than I did.

Batting was hard work from the start. From the Rugby Stand End, the bowlers were making the ball bounce alarmingly and there was plenty of swing and seam movement as well. In West Indies’ first innings, Craig White, who was now able to bowl at 90 mph regularly and was already a master of reverse swing, bowled brilliantly in tandem with Darren Gough and his swing from round the wicket into Lara made the best batsman in the world look like a novice. Craig finished with five for 57 as they struggled to 172, then Michael Vaughan made an excellent 76, and Hick, down the order at eight because Caddick had gone in as nightwatchman, a brave 59 to help us to 272 and a lead of exactly 100. When their second innings started we were determined to keep things tight because we knew chasing anything over 150 to win might be extremely tricky. But in the end we never did have to bat again. Gough got amongst them again, adding four wickets to the three he took in the first dig, then, for a while nothing much seemed to be happening. Something had been bugging me all match and suddenly I remembered what it was. ‘Why don’t you give Caddy a go from the Rugby Stand End?’ I suggested to Nasser. ‘He was unplayable from that end last time Somerset were here.’

And so he did, for the first time in the match, after tea on day two, and Caddy proceeded to bowl the over of his life. When it started West Indies were in deep trouble at 52 for five. When it ended, they were almost gone at 53 for nine. He took four wickets in six balls, one lbw and three clean bowled and, by the time he finished the innings eight balls later, he had taken five for 14 and they were all out for 61, the lowest Test score at Headingley. ‘Thanks for that tip about Caddy,’ Nasser said as we ran off in celebration of going 2–1 up. ‘But why didn’t you let me know earlier?’ I’m pretty sure this was the first time he had actually said anything to me at all. And I thought: ‘Isn’t this great?’

* * *

We were playing golf at Sunningdale in a sponsor’s event prior to the fifth Test at The Oval when I received the phone call telling me that Eddie was dead.

One of my greatest regrets in life is that I didn’t wear a black armband in that final Test match. Had Eddie Gregg died later in my career I would have done so without thinking twice, but, at the time, as the new kid in the dressing-room I felt a little embarrassed about the idea of making such a public show of my feelings. I also reasoned that if I did make this gesture I would then have to explain why and it all just seemed not quite right to me. I spoke to his dad, Alan, and told him that if I ever did manage to make a Test hundred I would dedicate it to Eddie, and, while it would not be true to say that was uppermost in my thoughts when the match began with Atherton first, then me, walking out to bat after winning the toss, it was in there somewhere.

Batting with Atherton always did help me keep focused. If ever I felt tempted to revert to instinct and try and bash the ball everywhere, one look at the bloke at the other end blocking the crap out of it soon put me back on the straight and narrow, and anyone could see how determined he was to make a big contribution here. There had already been rumours that, because of his dodgy back, he would probably retire after the following summer’s Ashes series, and Athers might even have been thinking this could be his last Test here. And he had another reason to do well. It wasn’t just that England hadn’t beaten West Indies in a Test series for 31 years, it was also that Ath had harrowing memories of one of those defeats in particular, when, in his first series as skipper, back in 1994, he had gone in to bat in the second innings of the Trinidad Test with his side needing 194 to win, got out for nought and watched from the dressing-room as Ambrose blew them away for 46 all out. Batting with him in this mood, relaxed but utterly determined, helped calm me down as well and we put on 159 for the first wicket, which, the way our bowlers were bowling and they were currently batting, should have gone a long way to securing a winning position. A measure of how fragile a side we still were, however, was that it took a second innings ton from him to make sure, because apart from us two, no one else managed to make fifty.

After lining up to pay tribute to Walsh and Ambrose, playing their final Tests before retirement, Caddick finished them off and we doused the place in champagne.

I was tired, but still looking forward to finishing off the season with Somerset, when Duncan told me he wanted me to stop right then. I was not convinced. After facing Ambrose and Walsh for the best part of two months I quite fancied making some runs against some less stingy bowling attacks at the County Ground. But Duncan insisted and, later that winter when I was dragging myself around Sri Lanka, I’m glad he did.

Winning the Professional Cricketers’ Association Player of the Year award at the Royal Albert Hall a few weeks after the end of the season gave me my first chance to make a public tribute to Eddie, and then all my thoughts for the time being were back on the winter tours to come. First up was a 12-day trip to Nairobi for the ICC Knockout Trophy and we were duly knocked out as soon as we played a major Test playing nation, South Africa. It was pretty dismal, but one thing did stick in my mind. The following day, back at the hotel for a debriefing, Duncan gave us a good shoeing, and even went so far as to ask us to consider the subject of our commitment. Some of the more experienced pros seemed unimpressed, but Duncan just nailed any dissent in the room by citing the example of Jacques Kallis.

Duncan’s point was all about just how dedicated he expected us to be while he was in charge. The day before, Kallis had been outstanding against us, taking two for 26 in his eight overs as we made just 182, then leading them to victory with the bat, making 78 not out. Yet when he got back to the hotel Duncan had seen him pounding away on the treadmill in the gym for half an hour as if he had done nothing all day, while we were all sitting around by the pool unwinding with a few beers. The point was well made and planted a seed in the minds of one or two of us.

There was very little time to do anything other than resolve to improve fitness at the very least before we were off to Pakistan for the next tour. By the time we came home, just before Christmas, we had been through an experience that had almost everything.

By now the pattern of early-tour blues I experienced every time I went abroad with England was well established but manageable. For the first week I would be awful, sleep badly, feel agitated and miss home like mad and then, as soon as the cricket started, I would be able to put those feelings to one side and throw myself into playing or training. It was as though my sheer love of cricket, the simple thrill I never lost of hitting a ball with a bat and everything else that went with it, would conquer all ills. It also helped me no end that, in our opening warm-up match, against the Sind Governor’s XI in Karachi, I made my first century for England, and we were straight into a three-match one-day series which, though short, was crammed full of incident.

We won the opener, in Karachi, with Freddie batting magnificently for 84 to help us reach a stiff target of 304. In the second, at Lahore on 27 October, we were first befuddled by Shahid Afridi’s leg-spinners – he took five for 40 but was then reported by ICC referee for a suspect action – then he bashed 61 in no time, and our evening was made complete when we were attacked by a swarm of insects, attracted by the humidity and the floodlights if not by the standard of our bowling and fielding. Gough swallowed a mouthful when he ran up to bowl, and the bowlers appealed at their peril. All of them wore sunglasses and White bowled in a cap. One of the little sods climbed up the middle stump and paused for a close-up on the stump camera, and, to millions of horrified TV viewers, the magnifying effect made him look like the cockroach that ate Cincinnati. In the last match in Rawalpindi, again won by Pakistan, the main distraction was acute physical pain. So many spectators had arrived intent on getting into the ground without tickets, even though the ground was full of those who had them, that the local police decided to try and disperse them with tear gas. The trouble was the wind picked it up and blew it right across the field just as Thorpe and me were trying to dig us out of the mire. Nasser had already been given out to the worst lbw decision of the century when Wasim Akram’s slower ball pitched about two foot outside his left-stump and had chosen to release his frustration by smashing in the glass door of the dressing-room fridge with his bat.

When the gas came it felt like all the saliva had been removed from your mouth and throat and then your eyes stung like someone had thrown salt into them. It was bloody horrible.

Afterwards, and prior to the start of the Test series, Duncan spoke to me and asked me if I would be prepared to join the tour management committee alongside himself, Nasser, Alec and Gough. I was pretty taken aback, but it seemed a reasonable idea. Duncan wanted the views of all the players to be heard, even the new boys, and this would give me a chance of being their voice. Nasser particularly wanted me to keep an eye on any possibility that a player might be suffering from too much mickey-taking. I loved getting involved in dressing-room banter, even though I took my fair share of stick. But I’d spoken to him about my feelings as regards bullying. If ever I felt it was going too far I hated it and would often try and intervene. Nasser wanted me to take responsibility for this in our dressing-room and I was happy to agree.

By the time the first Test started, a fortnight later on 15 November, I wondered what I had let myself in for.

Just prior to coming out to Pakistan and then again on arrival we had been briefed on two important subjects. First, the issue of match-fixing was very much alive. A report by a Pakistan judge, Justice Al Quayyum, had named a number of Pakistan players as possibly being implicated. Secondly, a report by the Delhi Criminal Investigation Bureau into allegations made by a man called MK Gupta, an Indian bookmaker who claimed he had paid various international cricketers for seemingly innocent information over the past few years, was about to be published. The other issue was our behaviour. This was the first time England had played in Pakistan for 13 years, since the infamous row on the field between the England captain Mike Gatting and the Pakistan umpire Shakoor Rana. So it was absolutely vital that the series was played without any kind of incident. The Pakistan people had been affronted by Gatting’s comments about Shakoor and the slightest thing might spark big trouble.

If anyone in the party hadn’t been paying attention, from the moment we arrived at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Rawalpindi at the end of October to prepare for our first first-class match against the Pakistan Cricket Board’s Patron’s XI, they were now. I noticed a strange mood around the place when I came down to breakfast on the first morning. It didn’t take long to find out why.

Alec Stewart had been named in the Delhi police report as one of those international stars, and the only England player, who MK Gupta claimed he had paid money to for information; £5,000, to be precise. It was a bombshell none of us had been expecting. When the Quayyum report had been released, Sir Ian MacLaurin, the ECB chairman, said that any player named should be suspended from all cricket until his innocence was proven, or otherwise, and that applied to Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Inzamam ul Haq. Inevitably, the media were asking why this should not now apply to Alec. He stayed at the hotel for most of the match, rested in advance of the news breaking out, but you could see the whole thing had a terrible effect on him. He just looked pale and unwell for the entire time we were there. We all believed him to be totally innocent, but the strain must have been almost intolerable. He spent all week defending his integrity but it took him a long time to recover and by the end of the year the knock-on effect nearly brought his England career to a premature end.

And then, in the next match against the catchily named North-West Frontier Province Governor’s XI, Caddy behaved as though he must have been staring idly out of the window during our pre-tour reminder about best behaviour.

I made 93 in our first innings, just failing to reach my first first-class hundred for England, but we were well on top and on the way to bowling them out cheaply in their second when Caddy had an appeal for a catch at the wicket turned down. He went too far, with the umpire Sajjad Asghar claiming afterwards he had made derogatory comments ‘about my country’. Caddy said that was a misunderstanding, although he later apologised for his outburst.

Nasser appeared on TV afterwards to defend Caddick with what some thought was rather too much passion. Little did anyone outside the dressing-room know the reason why. Some time in that second innings Graham Thorpe shelled a pretty straightforward catch at slip. When Nasser had a go at him, Thorpe reacted by hurling the ball towards him, which made the skipper even more annoyed. Later in the dressing-room the two of them squared up and a five-minute, full-on, massive row ensued, with fingers jabbed in chests, insults exchanged and kit everywhere. Nasser wanted our level of intensity to be as high as possible all the time, Thorpe’s attitude to practice matches was less about the match and more about the practice. I just sat there in the corner thinking: ‘Oh my God. We haven’t even started the Tests and this team is falling to bits.’

But the incidents did seem to help us all let off steam, and from then on the team pulled together so strongly that, after drawing the first two Tests in Lahore and Faisalabad, our resolve to leave after the last in Karachi unbeaten was massive.

In order to do so, after conceding 405 in the first innings, despite my first and, amazingly, only wicket for England – Imran Nazir, in a spell of one for 34 off fourteen overs at first change – Atherton had to be at his obdurate best.

By this stage of the tour I had realised that if I was going to be playing my cricket at this level and in these conditions I was going to have to get much, much fitter. The penny finally dropped when I went for a run around the outfield with Phil Neale, our operations manager, and I was blowing out of my arse to keep up with him, even though he was old enough to be my dad. Phil had played many years for Worcestershire and as a footballer for Lincoln City and had always kept himself in shape, but this was ridiculous.

By now I was knackered, pure and simple, so watching Athers bat for nine hours and 38 minutes to score 125 from the dressing-room couch was just what I needed. When we bowled them out for 158 on the final afternoon – Ashley Giles spinning out Inzy the previous evening had been the breakthrough and he finished the series with 17 wickets – leaving us 176 in a minimum of 44 overs, Ath’s marathon feat of skill and endurance became more than mere defiance.

I had just about enough energy to make 24 in our run chase, but then Thorpe and Hick brilliantly took over. The Pakistan skipper Moin Khan tried every trick in the book to slow up the game; he knew what time it got dark in Karachi at this time of year and the shadows were lengthening fast. Soon enough the sun dipped behind the stands. We were still scoring at a good enough rate, with Thorpe and Hick running them ragged, but it looked as though we were bound to run out of time, balls, and light.

Yet the umpires, Steve Bucknor and Mohammad Nazir, clearly miffed by the delaying tactics, seemed determined to carry on, come what may.

In the dressing-room we were all going crazy. As per usual cricket superstition dictated that no one was allowed to move from their position. Nasser was doing his nut about the time-wasting, worst of which was the bowlers changing from round the wicket to over again ball after ball. It was taking so much time for the groundstaff to wheel the sightscreen into position every time the bowlers changed over, that Matthew Hoggard ran out of the dressing-room and started pushing it himself. And when Hick was out and Nasser went in with only a few needed to win, the light was all but gone. Trying to spot the whereabouts of the ball was nigh on impossible. The only clue you got was when one of the fielders moved and in the end it was so dark nobody did.

I had no idea where Thorpe’s winning runs had come from until we watched the finale on TV much later. But when they did we celebrated in somewhat surreal fashion, by spraying bottles, grand-prix style, all over the dressing-room. No one seemed to mind much that they contained 7Up and Coke – no alcohol allowed, of course – but there wasn’t a drop of British Airways champagne left when we arrived home the day after.