Читать книгу Coming Back To Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick - Marcus Trescothick - Страница 9

‘It absolutely confirmed that this was the life I wanted to live, to play and bat against men, not boys. And it showed those around me in the dressing-room that, if nothing else, I wasn’t easily intimidated …’

I was 16 years old when I became a Somerset player. I was 24 when I became an England player, and the eight-summer journey was long and anything but straightforward.

I encountered a few spectacularly massive highs and some pretty low lows along the way. Many times I doubted whether I would ever fulfil my potential and a number of county bowlers were kind enough to suggest I might be right.

In my first full year, 1994, aged 18, I scored more than 2,500 runs in all forms of cricket – first-class, domestic one-day and England Under-19 Test and ODIs. Most important from my point of view was that I made 924 championship runs at 48.63 with a top score of 121 and almost certainly would have become the youngest Somerset batsman to score 1,000 runs in a season had England not insisted I miss three county matches to play for the Under-19s against India. Within three years however, I was not far short of being convinced that I was finished, undone by a technical flaw I could not seem to eradicate no matter how hard I tried. By the time my career kick-started again in July 1997, a measure of how desperate my situation had become was that the innings that did it, a marathon 322 against Warwickshire at Taunton came in the 2nd XI, for whom my previous best that season had been 55. I was batting at number five, in the process of being converted by our coach, Dermot Reeve, into an all-rounder and wondering where all this was going to end. And it took not one winter in Australia, but two, to help me find the tools I needed to rebuild my hopes and forge my future as an international cricketer.

I had mixed feelings when, as arranged, I walked through the gates at the County Ground in Taunton on 17 August 1992, to embark on a career being paid to play cricket. England’s three-Test Under-17 series against a South African side starring their ‘gun’ player Jacques Kallis had gone well, particularly the second at Oundle school where I made 158 and 79 in a high-scoring draw, so I was not short of confidence in my own ability. I was extremely uncomfortable about leaving home, however, and the first week or so was pretty tough. But gradually, after forcing myself to get involved and do the stuff that I had to do, I was able to push the feelings of homesickness into the background.

It helped that we were into playing cricket almost straight away and that I had already turned out for the seconds that summer and scored some decent runs. It was also greatly in my favour that in one of my early matches, against a Surrey side containing Adam Hollioake and Mark Butcher, I had withstood a rather tasty spell from the South African paceman Rudi Bryson. This is what it’s all about, I thought, as I prepared to face Bryson for the first time, with a score to make and a total to reach for victory on the last day. This is what all those hours in the nets, all that batting, all that practice had been for. Bring it on.

Bryson spent the next two hours bowling four or five bumpers an over at my head. I had never seen a ball travel so fast or rather, initially, not seen it.

For what seemed like ages, I just kept ducking it and ducking it, trying desperately to show no outward signs of the truth that I was, in fact, inwardly screaming: ‘JESUS CHRIST, DON’T LET HIM KILL ME. DEAR JESUS CHRIST, JUST DON’T LET HIM KILL ME’.

Somehow, I got through it, managed first to survive then make solid enough contact to score 34 not out to finish off the game. It was the most exhilarating experience of my cricketing life. On the one hand I was asking myself: ‘How the hell could anyone bowl so fast?’ And on the other I was thinking: ‘No matter how fast he bowled, I won.’

The experience did two things for me. It absolutely confirmed that this was the life I wanted to live, to play and bat against men, not boys. And it showed those around me in the dressing-room that, if nothing else, I wasn’t easily intimidated, though some might have ascribed that characteristic to the old adage about no sense, no feeling.

I made my second significant contribution to team morale in my first match as a ‘contracted’ player, against Sussex at Eastbourne. We stayed at a rather tired-looking seaside hotel and I was rooming with Iain Fletcher, one of a number of slightly older young players trying to make the grade at the club. When we went down to breakfast on the morning of the match I couldn’t work out why he was having quite so such trouble containing his mirth, until he announced to the assembled assortment of old stagers and young shavers that he had just witnessed me making my own bed. Mum would have been proud of me. The other lads thought it pretty hilarious that I had no idea hotels employed people to do that kind of thing for you.

That winter I was off abroad again, this time with the Under-18 schools in a very short four-nation tournament in South Africa, at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town.

When I turned up at pre-season training in 1993 I was ready in my own mind to take the next step, hoping that my chance would come soon and confident I would be big enough to take it.

And the kit. Oh Lord, the kit. If ever someone asked me to go on Desert Island Discs, if I managed to get past the title of the programme, as well as the complete works of Eminem to listen to there would be no question of my luxury item. It would be a spanking new kit catalogue stuffed page after beautiful page full of brand new kit. From a very young age my idea of paradise on earth on a rainy day was to pore over the pages of the latest catalogues revealing all the joys of this year’s new kit; bats, pads, gloves, inners, boots, sweaters, shirts, boxes, arm-guards, thigh-pads; I adored them all, especially anything worn by Graeme Hick, whose batting I found inspirational to watch.

I was already obsessed by bats, to the extent that if anyone in the dressing-room wanted a couple of millimetres shaved off the bottom, or a new rubber grip put on the handle, I took it upon myself to do the job. And even if they didn’t want me to, I’d do it anyway. Anything to do with bats and bat care, I was the expert, and that has never changed. Call me Doctor Blade. Even at this age I told Iain Fletcher that when I retired from playing I wanted to be a bat-maker and I still might, at that. Fletcher reckons my behaviour was something between dedicated and obsessive compulsive; which, incidentally would explain a lot of other things like my sausage-only diet and later, when it was time to try and get myself fit for England, the fact that you would have to blindfold, cuff and gag me to get me away from the gym.

For now, when I turned up at Taunton as winter was giving way to spring that year and saw wave after wave of new kit coming in, all this brand new stuff to ponce around in was bliss. The idea that I was going to be given it for free, rather than have to pay, as I had done until this point – quite frankly I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful on God’s green earth.

Then there was the money. Three thousand pounds of real actual money for the summer, just for playing cricket. At 17, with mum and dad still supporting me, no car yet, lodgings supplied and only maybe a bit of food and drink to have to fork out for, how the hell was I going to spend all that loot? I’d been paid for odd jobs around the house before, and we were always doing little earners like the paper round for three quid a week. And suddenly three thousand pounds was coming my way. The figure was quite fantastic.

My accommodation was less 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 as the ball was travelling towards Middleton, ready and waiting no more than three yards away on my left-hand side, with the roar of celebration beginning to gurgle up from the pit of Benjamin’s stomach, I had more than enough time to work out the following equations: 1+3+6+0+4+0+0+7+2 = 23, and 23 divided by nine = not enough (2.55 recurring, in fact).

And then Tony Middleton dropped the ball. I could have kissed him. Eight runs later I had, as Wisden recorded, ‘escaped single figures for the first time’ in my ninth first-class innings, and I went on to make 81, an innings I must have played in a trance because I remember absolutely nothing whatsoever about it. After two days of rain, our declaration and a double forfeiture of innings meant they were chasing 333 to win on the last day and we prevailed thanks mainly to the 90mph bowling of Andre Van Troost, our Flying Dutchman who remains the fastest bowler ever to come out of the Netherlands, and, swearing his head off in a unique twisted mixture of English and Dutch, the most unintentionally hilarious when angry as well.

I was away. Opening with Lathwell for almost all of the remainder of the season, I followed up my maiden first-class 50 with another, in my very next innings against Yorkshire at Headingley and then, at Bath a week later, my first hundred, against Surrey. Lathwell kicked off with a double in our first innings, Somerset’s first-ever on this ground, then I scored 121 in our second as we declared on 329 for six, setting them 470 to win and had them 48 for three at the close on the Saturday.

I was ecstatic and spent the rest of the evening down the road at Keynsham with Eddie Gregg, Lee Cole and the rest of the lads, playing silly drinking games, like spoof and piling up beer mats on the edge of a table, flicking them up with your hand from underneath and seeing how many you could catch. Once a club cricketer, always a club cricketer. Utterly bladdered by the end of all this, I crashed out that night wondering if life could ever get any better. And the runs kept flowing like Taunton scrumpy.

The day after we had finished off Surrey by 317 runs, I made 116 against Oxfordshire in my NatWest debut, then four 50s in the next six championship innings, and, at the end of July, another century, against Sussex at Hove. At that stage, from and including the innings when Tony Middleton gave me a second chance against Hampshire back in May, my run of scores in the championship read 81, 54, 26, 121, 55, 0, 53, 59, 8, 87, 0 and 115. Forget 23 in my first nine innings, I had made 659 in the next ten, including six fifties and two hundreds.

Now, up to this point I’d never exactly been thought of as the next Che Guevara; even at school I was more of a hopeless case than a rebel with, or without, a cause, but what happened next took me about as close to challenging authority as I had ever been before. In the middle of this unbelievable about-turn and run of form against some of the best bowlers in the country I had to stop playing for Somerset and start playing for the England Under-19s.

At the beginning of August, instead of playing two championship matches against Durham at Taunton and Middlesex at Lord’s, I had to play in two Under-19 one-day internationals against India and the first of three Tests, again under Michael Vaughan and, unbelievably irritatingly, at Taunton. There was just no comparison in the standard of cricket, and while it was, of course, always an honour to represent my country at this level, I felt it was also a complete waste of my time. My heart wasn’t in it. I wasn’t being arrogant or getting too big for my bangers, it was just that I knew I would learn so much more playing for my county than England Under-19s at this stage; I was on a roll and I had my eyes well and truly fixed on making 1,000 runs for the season and a possible England A tour place at the end of it. And I told them so.

When Micky Stewart, who had just stood down as senior England coach to be succeeded by Keith Fletcher but was still heavily involved in the set-up, came down to Taunton to discuss the issue and asked if any of those present in the room among the Under-19s squad would rather be playing for their clubs, of the nine in our squad who had played first-class cricket, I was the only one in the room who said yes and why. ‘I just think I’ll learn more playing senior cricket than against players my own age,’ I said.

It didn’t work. After making 15 and 92 on my return to county cricket against Essex, it was off to the second Under-19 Test where I hit 140 in our second innings, and with another 64 runs under my belt against Northants, on 8 and 9 September, in the third and final Under-19 Test at Edgbaston, I took out my frustration at having to miss a third championship match, against Kent at Canterbury, on the Indian attack. After a rain delayed start we slumped to 27 for five at the end of the first day, of which I had made 11 not out. The next day we finished up 381 all out, with me making 206 from 233 deliveries.

Starting the final championship match of the season, against Derbyshire at Taunton I needed 127 runs to reach the magic 1,000.

Rain washed out play until after lunch on the third day so, realistically, I had to make them all in one go. I scored 51 in our first innings, edging to 924, only 76 away, and spent the rest of the rain-ruined match cursing the fact that playing for England Under-19s had cost me a probable six innings in which I would only have had to average 15.81 to become, at 18 and a half, the youngest Somerset player ever to make 1,000 runs in a season.

Not that I’m bitter but, to cap it all, England then picked Vaughany ahead of me for the A tour to India and Bangladesh, while they gave me the runners-up prize, captaining the Under-19s in West Indies that winter. On second thoughts …

I consoled myself by passing my driving test, at the second attempt, not before nearly wiping myself out in a scene reminiscent of the final moments of the original Italian Job, starring Michael Caine, when their getaway coach is teetering on the edge of a 1,000 foot drop on an Alpine road. Practising my reversing and three-point turns in a private road running left-to-right halfway up a hill and parallel to the ground, I attempted to reverse uphill into a driveway, got my left and right hands confused, reversed down the hill, and back wheels first, over a four foot sheer drop and smashed the rear of the car into a concrete post. There I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my Ford Sierra staring straight ahead at the sky above me. I jumped out, took one look at the car and realized that if the post hadn’t stopped the car dead it would almost certainly have rolled backwards all the way down the hill and quite probably into the stream at the bottom. The RAC had to come and rescue the car. The undercarriage was totally wrecked. I was lucky I wasn’t.

I duly skippered the Under-19s in the Caribbean, with David Lloyd as coach and Freddie as all-rounder. Alex Morris of Yorkshire and later Hampshire provided the musical talent – his dad Chris had had a couple of UK hits in the 1960s under the name Lance Fortune, the best-known being ‘When Will You Be Mine’ which became our unofficial tour anthem, though nobody ever sang it or knew any of the words, not even ‘Almo’. The name Lance Fortune had been dreamed up by his manager, Larry Parnes, who liked it so much that when Fortune’s fame dried up, Parnes simply recycled it, giving it to another act he managed, a bloke called Clive Powell, who later became the sixties pop icon Georgie Fame. Despite my disappointment at being overlooked for the A tour, and after the usual early tour shakes, I had an incredible time as one of 15 young blokes playing cricket in the Caribbean, all expenses paid. I made a century in the first Test in mid-January, 106 not out, out of 199 for four declared to set West Indies a target, and batted quite well throughout. At the end of it I organized a bumper end of tour dinner in Port of Spain, Trinidad at which I ate only bangers, of course, washed down with litres of fizzy soft drinks. It really is a wonder I have any of my own teeth left.

When I came back to Somerset I negotiated a pay rise to £12,000 per year from 1995 and that was about as good as it got for quite some time. What happened next? I flat-lined.

Everyone’s heard about second season syndrome; what happens when the county bowling fraternity have absorbed the lessons of bowling to a new batsman, identify a weakness to attack and pile on the pressure in his second season. My second season syndrome seemed to last longer than usual – about four seasons in total.

I had my good moments. I made a third championship ton in 1995, against Northants, but scored only 373 runs in total and though I cashed in against South Africa Under-19s, featuring Kallis again alongside Makhaya 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.