“I dunno, maybe I’m just a bit of a dinosaur.” Graham Gooch is thinking out loud about England’s preparation for the forthcoming Ashes series which will consist of one match between themselves before the first Test in Perth.
“I dunno, maybe I’m just a bit of a dinosaur.” Graham Gooch is thinking out loud about England’s preparation for the forthcoming Ashes series which will consist of one match between themselves before the first Test in Perth.
Gooch accepts schedules have condensed and warm-up games fallen out of fashion since he went on four Ashes tours as a player and two as England’s batting coach but cannot comprehend why for such an important series, England are putting their faith in a one-day series in New Zealand and a game against the Lions in Perth as enough groundwork.
When England last won a series, in fact just a Test match, in Australia, back in 2010-11, they played two state sides in four-day games and one against Australia A. Gooch, a player who prided himself on his physical preparation and dedication to his batting, was part of that set-up alongside Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss.
England drew the first Test, piling up 517 for one in the second innings in Brisbane. Gooch only took one photograph on that tour and it was of the Gabba scoreboard at the end of the that innings, a visual representation of what hard work and readiness for battle can reap.
“We have a great chance this time, especially if we do well in the first Test but you need to immerse yourself in Australia-style cricket first by playing that type of hard-nosed game against sides that want to turn you over. Playing against ourselves…there is a chance they will want to give all the bowlers a bowl so you will get people coming on and off the field. For a pro it is just not a serious game. When your career record is on the line in a first-class match it means something. When you change that to glorified practice…I just don’t understand it.”
England argue the state sides are no longer strong enough to provide proper opposition, and they have won first Test matches of series in India, Pakistan (twice) and New Zealand (twice) by relying on hard practice sessions instead.
The three ODIs against New Zealand later this month will provide the bulk of the batting Test line-up with practice before fine tuning in the Lions game in Perth a week before the first Test although the fact that match is being played at Lilac Hill, a club ground, rather than the WACA is a worry. A slow club pitch will be little preparation for the surface at the Optus Stadium, which shares the fast, bouncy traits of the old WACA where England last won a Test match when Gooch was in the England side in 1978-79. England have not avoided defeat in Perth since 1986-87.
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“I don’t get why you have that New Zealand series there. You want to prepare for the Ashes. It is the Holy Grail to win down there. We’ve only won four times in 55 years, so why would you not put preparation a priority? The only mitigation I’m told is Australia’s state sides will put a second team out against you. It is just leaving it to chance.”
Of the current team, Gooch likes Ben Duckett – “I have a lot of time for Ben” – and Zak Crawley but worries about the odd technical flaw being their downfall. Duckett scores “most of his runs square of the wicket on the off side and the ball bounces more in Australia” increasing the chances of an edge early on when the Kookaburra is hard. Crawley has great talent but can he “turn the skills into numbers”, wonders Gooch. “Remember the footballer Mark Hughes? He was a scorer of great goals but not a great goalscorer,” he says. “Zak can play a stunning innings but if you take the ball in the channel and it is bouncing, I don’t know how he will get on.”
A young Joe Root played under Gooch during his final two years as batting coach with England. It is a mental challenge he faces this time. “Australia will give him hell over the lack of hundred [in Australia]. They will all be on it to try and derail him. The taxi driver, guys in bars and restaurants will be on that gig.”
And what about Harry Brook, the only other batsman other than Gooch to score a triple century for England in 60 years? “I just hope he learns that when he has his foot on the opposition throat he learns to keep it there. You are defined by the number of games you win, not by the numbers like scoring 300 or 150. It is when your contribution makes a difference in the game.”
Gooch is now 72. He still trains twice a week, despite a knee replacement in January, by walking 50 laps of the local pool and remains heavily involved at Essex as the club’s ambassador and all-round guru, revered at Chelmsford where he can be seen often alongside Keith Fletcher, a reminder of the deep knowledge the county is lucky to be call upon.
Gooch was handed a lifetime achievement award at the Professional Cricketers’ Association dinner last week for his contribution to cricket and his charitable foundation. This Saturday he will talk about his life in cricket at the Harrogate Literature Festival. The Ashes will surely be top of the conversation, for the audience at least.
“My own record against Australia was not what I would have liked it to be,” he confesses. He averaged 33 against Australia in 42 Ashes Tests compared to 44 when playing the West Indies, the dominant team for most of his career.
Gooch played in seven Ashes series, winning three, losing four. It took him 10 years to score an Ashes hundred, and three followed as captain in the run-rich late years of his career, which came after the Terry Alderman torture of 1989 when he volunteered to be left out of the side, prompting the gag about his answering machine message at home which went – so the story goes – something along the lines of “Please leave a message because we’re all out, probably lbw to Alderman.”
“Yeah that’s true,” he says. “Still is our answering machine message. For me, Australia was a different style of cricket. That really full-on competitive in-your-face cricket was not something I was brought up with. When words were exchanged in county cricket it was done with humour, not nasty or have an edge to it. But in Australia they were in your face. Things like when you got out it would be ‘back to the nets sonny’. That kind of stuff. It was just a different atmosphere. Very unlike the West Indies. They did all their talking with the ball or bat, and made very few comments. I don’t remember having any sledging from them. You felt like when you played Australia there were 11 guys bearing down on you. I was the sort of player as I got older, I quite liked the needle. It made me a better player. Australians got to know who to pick on. Sledging and verbals are all about getting you to play the person and not the ball.”
And, of course, there was one man Gooch refers to as the “master” of sledging. “Warne would always refer to me as ‘Mr Gooch’ on the field when he was talking to other people around me. It was what I call reverse sledging. He would be nice. And you’re thinking why is he being so nice to me? Why is he saying ‘Mr Gooch is not moving so well today?’ They were never comments to me, just to the other fielders but loud enough so I could hear.”
Gooch would go on to have a decent record facing Warne, averaging over 60 against him. Warne would rate him the best England batsman he faced. But Warne’s emergence coincided with Gooch’s captaincy of England and they were never able to live with that Australian side.
“When I came across him I’d played most of my career. I had great teachers of how to play spin bowling. Keith Fletcher was No 1, Geoffrey Boycott and Alan Knott. Knott taught me how to sweep a ball because he was brilliant at it. He taught me different types of sweep, where you put your foot, how you manoeuvre the ball around. In my early days you played on wet wickets if you did not lap or sweep you were not going to score many runs. Playing with a straight bat when the ball is turning square is not easy so I was lucky that when I came across Warne I had a game for spin. You have to be confident in your mind and technique, both defence and attack. If you can’t defend you only have one option, to attack. It is dangerous to attack every ball and that is this England’s failing. We got 800 on a flat one in Pakistan last year but when they made it turn we were all over the place. You need the all-round game.”
Gooch won his first Ashes tour in 1978-79, England triumphant 5-1 against a team shorn of its Packer players. Now it is the forgotten Ashes, erased from memory, although England too had lost players to World Series Cricket. “A modern team would be very proud of a 5-1 result. Nothing took away from the victory for us,” he says.
He missed the 1982-83 Ashes through his ban for going on a rebel tour to South Africa and pulled out of the 1986-87 winning trip for personal reasons. His next Ashes tour was as captain in 1990-91 and last in 1994-95 as a player under Mike Atherton. “We were always capable of winning matches in that era but not winning series. We could not put a consistent run together. If we had Australia on the ropes they would find a way to fight their way out of it whereas we did not handle that well. We would collapse. We had an eggshell exterior. We had good cricketers but we were not tough enough.”
We will learn over the next couple of months whether the eggshell exterior remains.
- Graham Gooch is appearing at Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival on October 18. To book visit harrogateinternationalfestivals.com
Category: General Sports
