No Boundaries (10 page)

T
hree of my closest friendships started on this tour, and thank God they did, because, without Darren Gough, Graham Thorpe and the maverick known as Phil Tufnell, I don't think I would have got through it.

The tour was set to last four months, first in Zimbabwe for a warm-up series and Christmas, then down to New Zealand and a Test and ODI series. Fitness was obviously going to be a major consideration and the whole squad was taken for a pre-tour training session at the Barrington Centre on the Algarve. It was a great time for me and that's where the four of us hit it off big time. We all knew what was at stake because this was the build-up to an Ashes series in England the following summer and we all wanted to be part of that.

Goughie is a tough Yorkie, a top-class fast bowler with his county's traditional grit and a heart that fills his stuck-out chest. He has become a great mate and eventually joined me at Essex while I briefly joined him on
Strictly Come Dancing.
You know all you need to know about Graham from the fact that, although naturally right-handed, he he became a
left-
handed
batsman as a kid because the boundary in his garden at home was shorter on a southpaw's leg side and it gave him an edge over his brothers. He was a great batsman and, despite his problems later on, he was the kind of guy you would want in the trenches with you. This was a particularly tough tour for him because his wife gave birth just before we left and he was torn about being away from home.

It is impossible to speak about Tuffers without smiling. I find it a little strange that one of the greatest left-arm spinners produced by England is better known for being ‘King of the Jungle' and making people laugh on
A
Question
of Sport
, because, make no mistake, Tufnell was a terrific bowler. Left-arm, orthodox, he was streetwise and cagey, with great variation. He had a lovely loop, produced plenty of revs and hardly ever bowled a bad ball. And he loved his cricket with a passion. In any other country he would have been worshipped for his knowledge but such is cricket in England, he is ignored because he is a bit of a character and wouldn't play the establishment game. He'd occasionally have a beer or six too many, or be caught round the corner having a quick fag. He couldn't be relied on to pass the port in the right direction or to tug his forelock to some petty official, yet, used properly, he could have helped produce a new generation of great spin bowlers.

I was rooming with Tuffers and managed to shock him early on. One of the tips I'd picked up in New Zealand was to take an ice-cold bath after exercise to get rid of the lactic acid that causes stiffness. It wasn't something I told many people about because I knew I'd get stick, so I waited until Phil was out of the way then ordered some ice to be brought up to the room. The waiter brought one ice bucket. ‘No, I need a lot more than that. At least five or six that size.'

The guy raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘I didn't think athletes drank that much in the middle of the day,' but he brought the ice and I poured it in the bath. I was just about to run the cold water when Tuffers returned.

He took one look at the bath full of ice and said, ‘Reggie! I knew you were going to be a great roomy. Where's the beers?' (He'd picked up on the fact that some of the Essex lads called me Reggie, as in Reggie and Ronnie Kray.)

‘What beers?'

‘For the bath. What a great idea. I'd never thought of it.'

‘No, it's not for beer,' I explained. ‘I'm going to get in it.'

I think he would've been less shocked if I'd told him that I'd just had a sex-change operation.

‘Fuck me,' he said. ‘What a waste.'

As I took my bath, I heard him on the phone to my
team-mates
: ‘You'll never guess what this daft tosser's doing,' he said. ‘The hairy-arsed bugger's getting in a bath full of ice!'

I think it's fair to say I was the butt of most of the jokes that night.

Tuffers hated the Algarve. ‘Reggie,' he'd say, ‘this place is doing my fucking head in. There's nothing to do. It's driving me nuts.' He'd wake me up in the middle of the night and say, ‘Reg, I can't sleep. It's too fucking quiet. Talk to me, Reggie.'

He was right: there wasn't much beyond a golf course, a swimming pool and training, but physio Wayne Morton and fitness coach Dean Riddle were working us hard in training so I was quite content just to sit and chat between sessions and let my body recover.

I'd been keeping myself fit since I was 14 years old and it had become as much a part of my life as eating and looking for the Manchester United result. I even used to go out for a run every Christmas Day just to get an edge on the other guy. 
As I ran, I would imagine all my rivals stuffing themselves with Christmas pudding and piling several pounds on to their waistline while I was putting a bit more stamina in the reserve tank. It was more psychological than physical but it worked for me.

As long as I wasn't struggling with injury, no coach could push me harder than I would push myself and on this trip I was feeling great. This was a chance to show Atherton and Lloyd they should never have dropped me at Trent Bridge and that, if I got my way, they would never get the chance to leave me out again. Chris Silverwood was renowned on the circuit for his fitness and I was up with him in almost every activity. He and I teamed up for the triathlon – swimming in the pool, cycling and running – and we won it comfortably. I was flying.

As a junior member of the squad, you are always keen to impress and hope that nothing is going to come up to put you into direct conflict with the management. You are bound to disagree from time to time but mostly you just accept that it's their job to make the decisions and you bite your tongue. The problem comes when they make a decision you disagree with and then make the mistake of asking your opinion. In those circumstances you have a straight choice between lying through your teeth to please them or telling them what you think and risk being tagged a rebel. We had one of those situations towards the end of the Algarve trip.

Apparently, the previous year's tour of South Africa had been a bit of a nightmare in terms of players' wives, even down to the England team bus being kept waiting to go back to the hotel after a match because a couple of wives were finishing their drinks. To me that smacked of poor management – either hire two buses or do what any sensible
person would do, leave them behind to get a taxi. But the recently divorced Lloyd and unmarried Atherton had thought it over and announced at a team meeting that wives would be banned from this tour.

‘We want to concentrate on the cricket, no distractions at all,' Bumble said. There was a murmur of complaint but it would probably have just stayed as something the players moaned about among themselves if he hadn't uttered those fateful words: ‘What do you think?'

No one was anxious to put forward their point of view.

‘Come on, what do you think? I want to hear from all of you.'

Most of the lads sat on the fence, especially when it became clear that any counter-argument was met with Lloyd or Atherton saying, ‘I understand your point of view but we want to make sure we can concentrate 100 per cent on the cricket.'

Then it reached Goughie – if I remember rightly, the recently married Goughie. He spoke like he bowled, straight and hard: ‘It's a fucking joke. You are completely wrong. Do you know how high the divorce rate is among cricketers? And it's mainly because we spend so much time away from home. I've just got married and, if I'm away for four months without seeing our lass, I'll need someone to introduce us all over again.'

‘But, Darren, we want to focus on the cricket.'

‘I'll focus on my cricket. I always focus on my fucking cricket. I can still do that
and
see my wife. We do it other times – what's so different about a bloody tour?'

Then it came to my turn. I was technically still single but I certainly didn't relish the thought of going four months without seeing Lorraine. I realised that nothing we would say
would change their minds but I felt I had to say what I thought. ‘I agree with Darren,' I said. ‘He's got a good point and, if things are organised right, I don't see that having wives out there with us would make any difference to the way we play.'

It was a lost cause and the outcome was that a number of marriages suffered after that tour. It was bound to happen. Situations crop up when you are apart for that length of time and it's impossible to sort them out together. It's hard for players to pick up the routine of home life again after a long spell away in hotels with a bunch of blokes, and it's hard for their wives, who have had to cope with everything while they are away, to suddenly go back to having someone around who expects to be part of the decision-making process. People say, ‘What about the forces?' and I agree it must be even tougher for them to handle but the difference is that, while it is impossible to take a wife into a war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan, there is absolutely no reason why she shouldn't be with her husband when he's taking part in nothing more dangerous than a cricket match.

It was a bad decision. There are lots of tedious times on tour, especially when you are not playing, and having families there would have helped that situation. As it was, we were a group of guys together and as a result we probably all drank a little too much that tour. I probably did more than my fair share, just because of the way things turned out while we were away, and I came back with the makings of a drink problem.

The other commandment handed down from the management was that we were not to fraternise with the enemy. Sorry, that should be opposition. But the mistake is easily made because David Lloyd certainly seemed to see this trip as some kind of military operation. I'm all for a ‘never
say die' attitude on the field, with no quarter given to your opponents, but I remembered that Viv Richards had told me I should always have a beer with them afterwards and, if it was good enough for Sir Viv, it was good enough for me. I was twelfth man in the first warm-up match and while my team-mates were in the field there was no one else to talk to, so I chatted to David Houghton and some of the other Zimbabwe lads, and great guys they were too.

I played in the second warm-up game and was pushing myself hard to bowl fast on a flat track when I felt my back go. A searing pain shot through me as though someone had plugged me into the electric mains. I walked straight off to the dressing room and knew it was bad. Wayne Morton asked what was wrong and I simply said, ‘My back's gone. I'm fucked.'

‘You can't say that. It may not be as bad as you think.'

He examined me thoroughly and, while he didn't say so, he obviously thought I was right because he advised the management to send for a replacement and Craig White was flown out from an England A tour. Craig was a good player, a bit quicker than me as a bowler but I always thought I had him covered as a batsman and I reckoned there was still a long way to go on the tour, so, if I could get my back sorted out, I could probably still get my place in the team. I told Wayne that I'd had the problem before and it had been sorted out by an injection straight into the L5 vertebra. He wasn't keen and told me it was risky but I begged him. ‘Wayne, this is my big chance to play for England. If I don't take it this time, it may never come round again. Please, mate, it's worked before, it could work again. Please set it up. If it doesn't work, I'll go back to Essex and start again, but I have to give it a shot.'

Finally he agreed. We went to a hospital in Bulawayo but it was very basic and Wayne wasn't comfortable there. They kept us hanging around for a couple of hours before anyone came to see us and, after finally talking to the doctor, Wayne decided we would pass. ‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘I've heard of a specialist in Harare. We'll go and see her.' There was no plane scheduled for the next few days, so I pushed Wayne into driving. It took five hours and was agony most of the way despite the painkillers. Wayne insisted on playing Fine Young Cannibals tracks most of the way. ‘She Drives me Crazy' almost drove me crazy but I was willing to put up with even that – I was that desperate to get it sorted out.

The hospital in Harare was in complete contrast to the one in Bulawayo, very modern and with all the latest equipment. The specialist gave me the injection and I could feel straight away that she'd hit the spot. The pain eased immediately and so did my concerns about my future on the tour. We had managed to book on a flight back and Wayne drove like Starsky and Hutch to get to the airport on time but when we reached the gate they told us the flight had been cancelled. They gave no reason and, with the sun shining from a clear sky, it certainly wasn't the weather.

‘Why has it been cancelled?' Wayne demanded.

‘It just has,' came the unconcerned reply. A little more clarity or even an apology might have prevented Wayne blowing his top, but I doubt it.

‘You can't just cancel a flight for no reason,' he stormed. ‘What kind of country is this? I want to see the boss. I want to see the man who decided to cancel our flight. We've got a big international cricket match coming up. Robert Mugabe will be at the ground. What do you think he will say when I tell him how you treated us?'

That seemed to strike a chord. We were led through to the back office where this huge guy sat behind a desk that must have left a clearing in the forest big enough to build a small village when they cut down the trees to make it. He looked as though he could handle himself and had two
broad-shouldered
minders just outside the door of his office. I started to get concerned that if we cut up too rough we could find ourselves beaten up and slung in jail. The words ‘rubber glove' jumped into my mind. I whispered my doubts to Wayne.