The Botham Report. Ian Botham
because of his class and experience and no one was happier than I was when his big hundred at the Oval against the Indians justified his inclusion … I still have total respect for him as a player. Yet we don’t see eye to eye on what I expect from a senior player. I need a lot more from him than just seeing his immense talent flower on occasions in a Test match … To me his lethargic attitude can rub off on some of the others, those who admired and respected him.’
Gower put his side of things in his autobiography: ‘There were elements of truth in my feeling uncomfortable with the way the team was now being run, but in broad terms I was willing to fit in with almost anything to carry on playing Test cricket. I certainly felt under pressure when the tour party gathered at the initial fitness training, partly because I had not managed to drag myself onto the roads five times a day, and would not quite be up to the sort of gruelling routines I knew they had in mind, and partly because I felt that the hierarchy would be fascinated to see how I performed there. I didn’t do too badly, without looking the picture of happiness throughout it all, and the gentleman appointed to put us through our paces did manage to get a certain amount of vomit from me on the football field. I blew up at him more than once, although this again could have been perceived wrongly in that I’ve always needed a certain amount of anger to drive me on through hard physical exercise. The mission down under did not get off to the best of starts, either in terms of performance or team morale. You can defend the work ethic in terms of what you put in, you tend to get out, and Graham is the best example I’ve ever played with who would leave nothing to chance, either physically or technically. It does not suit everyone, however, and there was a lot of early niggling about the way we were preparing. Days off appeared to be out of the question, and a non-playing day seemed to follow a regimented pattern; down to the training ground, a longish session of physical fitness training, followed by nets, middle practice, and back to the hotel some time in mid-afternoon. Where the build-up was going wrong was the management’s attitude of telling everyone what to do. The more you relieve people of individual responsibility, the more master-slave the relationship becomes and the more resentment creeps in. The thing was being run like a puppet show. No one expects to be handed a questionnaire to fill in every morning. What would you like to do today? How do you want your eggs done? What time would you like a net, sir? I’m not saying that at all. There has to be a basic team discipline, and indeed conformity. But each touring side develops an atmosphere. Get the emphasis right, and it will be a good one; get it wrong, and it won’t.’
There had to be some common ground, and Gower was worth making the extra effort for, but I simply don’t believe Gooch did enough. Instead, he hid behind the parade-ground mentality that he and Micky Stewart had developed, and battered away at Gower until even after it became obvious it was a pointless and futile exercise.
What also did not help team morale was Gooch’s insistence on referring back to the team spirit that he had engendered in the West Indies the previous winter. More than one player told me how much those who had not been in the Caribbean resented being told by those who had, how much better things had been there. This was the ‘in my day’ syndrome being taken to a ridiculous degree. After all the ‘in my day’ in question was less than 365 days previously. I believe Gooch became obsessed with the Gower situation and he allowed it to cloud his judgement in many issues. To him, there seemed to be a right way of doing things and a wrong way and nothing in-between. He was right, Gower was wrong and that was that.
Even when Gooch tried to have it out with Gower when the squad moved on to New Zealand for a series of one day internationals after the Ashes series was over, the tenor of their conversation was very much along the lines of how Gower had failed to give Gooch what he wanted. Gower couldn’t really accept what he was hearing. After all he had given his captain two Test hundreds, as well as highest score in England’s first Test match in Brisbane, 61 out of a paltry first innings of 194 and 27 out of an even more paltry 114 in the second.
Gooch was not helped on that tour by an injury to himself which meant he missed the first Test at the Gabba where defeat set the tone for the series. But I believe he would surely have had better success had he understood and accepted from the start that Gower was not going to be bossed around by him and that rather than trying to impose his will on the left-handed batsman, he should accept him for what he was, and just let him play.
It’s quite extraordinary to think now that Gower’s record of 407 Test runs in five matches at an average of 45.22 including those two hundreds counted for nothing when Gooch started to consider his plans for the following summer series against the West Indies in 1991.
To my mind one explanation for Gooch’s treatment of Gower lay in the captain’s close relationship with a certain Geoffrey Boycott. Boycott had grown closer and closer to Gooch over the years. When Boycs shouted, Gooch jumped and he was grateful to the Yorshireman for his help in fine-tuning his batting technique. But their closeness extended to a distrust of Gower. Some observers believe that the real reason behind Boycott’s negative attitude to Gower was that he feared for the safety of his Test batting record.
In fact, following England’s return from Australia, Gower didn’t play Test cricket again for more than a year, when he made his belated comeback at Old Trafford in July 1992, making his 115th Test appearance, passing Colin Cowdrey’s England record, and then overhauling Boycott’s record England aggregate of 8,114 Test runs with an exquisite cover drive to the boundary, a fitting shot to make him England’s most prolific run scorer.
Gower made his comeback almost exactly eighteen months after that ill-fated Tiger Moth expedition. An awful lot of time in the wilderness and an awful waste of time. By that stage I had made my own return to the international arena, and had seen at first hand precisely the kind of things Gower was up against.
My dealings with the Gooch/Stewart regime left me about as impressed as Gower had been. Having been omitted from the party for the previous two winter tours and with no immediate prospects of a change of heart, I had decided to make my own arrangements for the winter of 1991–92, and this included a season of pantomime. I hadn’t been one of those placed on a year’s contract to secure my exclusive playing services and there had been no concrete commitment by the England selectors that I would be recalled, so I decided I had to be open to commercial offers for the sake of myself and my family rather than wait until September to see if I’d be picked for the tour.
Although I made a return to the Test side for the final match of the series against the West Indies at The Oval it was not until after the end of that match that Gooch indicated he wanted me on board for the 1992 World Cup the following February. Gooch said he wanted me in New Zealand for at least a part of the first section of England’s winter plans, and after negotiations BBC television agreed to reschedule recording dates for a series of A Question of Sport programmes which would allow me to make it out there in time.
It was not envisaged that I would take part in the Test series against New Zealand although I eventually did as a result of injuries, but I needed no encouragement to get myself fit for the tournament. To give Gooch and Micky Stewart their due, we had at least come up with a plan for our World Cup strategy, something that was sadly lacking in 1996, namely, that I should be used in what later became known as the ‘pinch-hitter’ role. And Gooch and Micky, were sensible enough to give me a certain amount of leeway when it came to getting myself fit for the job in hand. But there’s no doubt in my mind that England lost the World Cup that year because we simply ran out of steam.
Gooch’s insistence on nets and physical training that Gower had come across in Australia on the tour of 1990–91 was very much in evidence when England toured New Zealand prior to the World Cup and this perpetual grind took its toll. What is more I don’t recall a single day off in the entire tournament. As soon as the New Zealand series had been completed what we should have done was go off to the Gold coast or some other resort for a week of rest and relaxation in order to repair the minor injuries that had been collected against the Kiwis, recharge the batteries and take our minds off cricket.
Instead we all trolled over to Sydney for a week of nets and mickey-mouse practice matches against each other. By the time the crucial games came at the end of the tournament, although we were the best team on show, we were physically incapable of raising our game and this became obvious in our final defeat by Pakistan