Tuffers’ Ashes Heroes, page 11
I considered my best bet was to show Bay 13 early on that, as Poms go, I was all right. I felt sure I could convince them that, in another life, I could actually be one of them, their mucker, their pal. Walking over I smiled, pulled one or two cheeky faces, even gave a quick nod and a thumbs-up. In times since I’ve seen numerous TV explorers state that the worst thing you can do when faced with a predator is look it in the eye. I, however, had been raised on Animal Magic. There, Johnny Morris, masquerading as a zookeeper, would converse pleasantly with everything from elephants to tigers, all of which seemed to enjoy his engagement tremendously. From the reaction of Bay 13, however, I quickly came to realise that what Morris had presented to the children of Great Britain was mere fantasy. In reality, lions don’t want to talk about the weather, or offer their views on local seafood restaurants, they want to have your arm off, and that’s the end of it. I mean, spin it all you like, but a thousand people calling you a ‘useless Pommie bastard’ can never be classed as bonhomie.
So steeped in the art of player harassment was Bay 13 that, even when it appeared they’d had enough and slipped into a beer-drenched torpor, they were secretly plotting their next assault upon your person. The bread trick was a case in point. While you congratulated yourself on taming the hordes, behind your back they’d be quietly throwing lumps of white sliced on to the field. Next thing you knew, the entire gull population of Victoria was descending on your head. Great brutes of things with beaks like fabric scissors squawking and screeching round your face. That previous generation who got the pig treatment never knew how lucky they were.
Other times, they’d find more subtle ways to knock you off kilter, to make you lose that little bit of focus. Down on the boundary at the MCG once I heard a bloke behind me. ‘Tuffers! Goochy’s shouting at you! He says move 20 yards to your left!’ I raised my hand slightly by way of an ‘Ah right, cheers!’ Only when I arrived at my new spot – and saw a bemused Gooch signalling for me to get back to where I’d just been – did I realise I’d been on the end of another hilarious wind-up. Give me some slack here – the noise in the MCG is so ridiculously loud that it isn’t unusual for your captain’s instructions to be lost amid the bedlam. Actually, not just the MCG. At Brisbane, it was tinnies not terns that filled the sky. A highlight of the spectator experience down there was the daily battle where hundreds of booze-sodden blokes would hurl beer cans between the bays.
However, my most excruciating Aussie crowd moment came not at Melbourne or ‘Brizzy’ but the SCG after I fumbled the simplest of run outs during a day/night ODI. At 82–4 we had the Aussies on the ropes. It was then that Steve Waugh called for a single off me to Eddie Hemmings. His brother Mark didn’t fancy it and sent Steve back. Mark’s call was a little late. So late in fact that Steve was actually stood with him at the striker’s end. He actually began to remove his gloves for the walk back to the pavilion. Trouble was, as Eddie’s throw came to me, for the slightest millisecond I took my eye off the ball. Next thing I knew it had ricocheted off my hand and rolled a couple of feet from the stumps. By now, I couldn’t help noticing that Steve had set off back, and it was perhaps this that sparked an element of panic. Instead of calmly picking up the ball and whipping off the bails, I appeared to have been mentally transported to a coconut shy. I hurled the ball at the stumps, missed them by several inches, and watched, consumed by a tidal wave of nausea, as Steve arrived calmly back in his crease. He couldn’t resist adding insult to injury. ‘In!’ he said as he grounded his bat. Funnily enough, even among 40,000 jeering Australians I could still hear my skipper, Graham Gooch. ‘F*** me.’ It was the worst I’ve ever felt on a cricket field. Mess something up in normal life, smash a teacup, put a pair of red underpants in with a white wash, and there’s no witnesses. At the SCG, there were 40,000, including those on ‘The Hill’, a vast grassy bank which was essentially Sydney’s version of Bay 13. It’s been bulldozered now, a reminder of its past immortalised in the bronze statue of ‘Yabba’, an old-school heckler revered for a voice that could be heard in the stands at the MCG let alone at Sydney. His most famous bellow came during the ‘Bodyline’ series. Spotting England’s despised captain Douglas Jardine swatting away some insects, he roared, ‘Leave our flies alone, Jardine! They’re the only friends you’ve got here.’ That was old Dougie told. What Yabba would have made of my embarrassment I’m not sure, but, heading off down to fine leg at the end of the over, everyone I could see was laughing so hard that momentarily they’d even stopped drinking.
Games come thick and fast in those ODI series Down Under. Soon be forgotten, I thought of the SCG incident. And then, blow me, if I didn’t walk out at the next match to spot a 30-foot long banner with ‘THE TUFNELL FIELDING ACADEMY’ writ large upon it. At first I was like, Oh, for f***’s sake! But then I began thinking of it a different way. It’s cricket. It’s not people trying to be nasty. It’s just them having a bit of fun. Rather than feel humiliated, or upset, the banner acted as a reminder that taking yourself too seriously is rarely a good idea. And actually that was what the Aussie crowds liked about me. I didn’t behave like a robot. I was never anything less than myself. Having someone go to the trouble of fashioning a 30-foot banner with my name all over it was testament to that fact. It was the others who didn’t have 30-foot banners that should have been disappointed! I really should have asked its creators if I could keep it. It would have looked great on the fence at the back of my house. Better than that other one I saw round about the same time – ‘PHIL TUFNEL IS A W*****!’ I mean, they could at least have spelt my name right.
Occasionally in Australia, crowd members, generally unclothed, would seek to join the players in the middle. Occurring more regularly than in England, possibly because streakers at Old Trafford ran the risk of frostbitten extremities, Aussie streakers tended to be fast and athletic. Were streaking to be allowed at the Olympics they’d be a shoo-in for the gold medal. My favourite streaker – a feature that really should be introduced in Wisden – was a chap who made it the not inconsiderable distance to the wicket at the MCG. I was bowling at the time and was just set to avert my gaze as he did the traditional Sally Gunnell-esque leg-cocked leap of the stumps, when he launched himself across the width of the pitch, taking care, considerately, not to step on a length. Mid-air he turned to me. ‘How’s it going Tuffers?’ I wished him well in his chosen task, and, on landing, he disappeared in the direction of the opposite boundary pursued by several burly stewards. They didn’t have a chance of catching him, reinforcing my view that major cricket grounds should have a crack team of streaker-ready stewards available at all times.
While there are some sights that are hard to forget, no matter how much you try, for me the most memorable part of cricket Down Under was playing under floodlights. Today, this stuff is just part of cricket across the world – T20, the IPL, it’s all about spectacle and noise. Back then, however, the one-day revolution was in its infancy, especially in a country like England where the authorities were still coming to terms with the sleeveless jumper. Floodlit cricket was so exciting, like being allowed to stay up late as a kid. The Aussie stadiums, those great bowls, with their beautiful architectural stands, looked incredible, the colours that leapt out in the day now made even more brilliant under the lights. And you were part of that collage, whites exchanged for ‘pyjamas’, each team in the Tri-Series of the time having its own strip. Every game was another ‘Wow!’ moment. Endlessly, mouth open, often swallowing a moth, I’d peer skywards and see the most magnificent stars, before looking back down at myself, part of something that as a kid I could only ever dream about. There was something else I rather liked about floodlit cricket. No need to go back to the hotel before enjoying a night out. Or before 7 a.m. for that matter (again see chapter entitled ‘Graham Gooch’).
There are times as a cricketer when you realise you’re living your best life. The crowds, and the grounds, in Australia delivered that feeling all of the time. The best place ever to play cricket. We’ve got some great arenas in England but the grounds Down Under are incredible places to play the game. When you tour Australia for the first time and all you know of these places is their names, heard in the middle of the night as a kid listening to TMS, it’s as if they have a mythical status – the MCG, the WACA, the Gabba, the Adelaide Oval, the SCG. In fact, so much have you built them up in your imagination, there’s a risk that when you actually clap eyes on them they’ll be something of a letdown. Far from it. Each ground, same as each city, had its own character. The delicate beauty of the Adelaide Oval, for instance, with its white picket boundary fences and giant ornate old scoreboard couldn’t have been further removed from the towering concrete grandstands of the MCG. As someone who soaked up atmosphere, one way or another, I loved them all. And nine times out of ten they were sunny! And you knew when you left them at the end of each day’s play you were going to have a bloody good time.
Bay 13, by the way, has been gentrified. These days they summon the gulls with sourdough.
19. Angus Fraser
Wise and wily, Frase taught me the value of playing – and staying – at the top.
When I walked out on to the field at the MCG on Boxing Day, 1990, everything was new to me. Except one thing. It was six-foot-six with a huge backside and size-13 feet. Its name? Angus Fraser.
In another life, Frase would have been a shire horse, pulling a brewery dray, or hauling coal wagons round a pit. But in this one he was a fast-medium bowler with a big heart and nagging accuracy. He was also a familiar face from Middlesex, whose socks I’d got to know intimately as we always sat next to each other in the Lord’s dressing room, and a great help and comfort to have around when making my England debut. I challenge any cricketer not to feel a little overwhelmed when trotting out on to the MCG for their first international appearance. It’s like being in a band and playing your first gig at Wembley Stadium. I needed someone to lean on a little, someone I could gaze up at and ask, ‘Excuse me mate, what the hell is going on here?’, and Frase filled that role perfectly.
Making his own bow only a year earlier, Frase had already been involved in home series against Australia and India and been on tour to the West Indies. In so doing, he’d accrued a wider perspective on what it meant to play for England, which he was keen to pass on to me. Early on in that Ashes trip he’d knocked on my hotel room door after training. ‘Fancy going up the gym on the top floor before dinner, Phil?’
‘Well,’ I contemplated, ‘I don’t know. Is that what people do when they play for England?’
I think he could see what was going through my mind – a vision of hell involving treadmills, medicine balls and weights.
‘Nothing too strenuous,’ he reassured me. ‘I just thought it would be nice to make use of the facilities.’
I was only sat in my room watching Tom and Jerry so I grabbed my shorts and a string vest and off we went. As Frase ploughed away on an exercise bike, I worked hard to maintain a comfortable position in the hot tub. To be fair, I was exhausted after carrying a bottle of wine in an ice-bucket up three flights of stairs. Eventually, Frase came over and joined me, and we sat there gazing across the South Australian capital with its lovely old buildings and avenues.
‘Just look at that, Phil,’ he said. ‘This is what it’s all about. This is what we’ve worked hard for, and so now we’re here we should make sure we enjoy it.’
I couldn’t help but think he was right. This was the top of the tree, and I wanted to stay in its upper boughs as long as possible. It was a moment when I really did start to think more about the future rather than just be amazed that I was waking up in Australia every day as an England cricketer.
Now here we were at Melbourne. I got changed next to Frase as news filtered into the dressing room that Graham Gooch had won the toss and we were batting first. The MCG’s an odd experience at the best of times, not least because the changing room is basically a bunker in the bowels of a vast concrete expanse. If you want actually to watch the game there’s a separate viewing area upstairs. I had a quick look but soon retreated to the ‘Batcave’ as we came to call it. Again and again during my England career I found that watching from the balcony was a sensory overload. Too much involvement, too much anxiety, too much mental energy. Your stomach’s churning, you’re feeling a bit sick, which is why I preferred to close my eyes and put myself out of the way until it was my turn to go have a go. Occasionally I might have a little sleep on the physio’s bench, which didn’t always go down well with Athers if he and Stewie were fending off 90 mph bouncers out in the middle. He felt, understandably, that if a teammate was sniffing the leather, the least I could do was be awake while they were doing it.
Taking the field after my short sojourn with the bat, it was then that I saw for the first time what an incredible player Frase truly was. That Melbourne Test match was notable for an extremely hot wind blowing across the ground, like holding a hairdryer six inches from your face. Somehow, in the baking heat, Frase, a big unit remember, ran in and bowled 39 overs in that Australian first innings. Within minutes he was soaked to the skin, shirt stuck to his back, sweat dripping off the end of his nose. He ran in like a human sprinkler system to take 6–82. By the time the innings was wrapped up he was absolutely shattered, although the funny thing about Frase was he always somehow looked as knackered at the start of a spell as he did at the end. He just had one of those faces.
Certainly, smiling wasn’t Frase’s forté. While some people find a laugh and a joke gets them in the mood, Frase seemed to perform better the more pissed off he was. To see him at his best, you needed to tap him on the shoulder at the end of his run and tell him you’d just seen a gull empty itself on his windscreen in the car-park. The difference between now and Frase’s day is that back then pretty much all the rest of us were grumpy too. The modern Bazball era might be all about going out and enjoying yourself, but when it came to England in my day, the grumpier we were the better we performed. We’d have to remind each other that we could be working in the salt mines of Siberia to put a smile on our faces, although even then someone would say at least in the salt mines of Siberia they got to have a snowball fight every once in a while.
When the 1994–95 Ashes tour came round, Frase was left at home. It was around that time that people started saying he’d ‘lost his nip’. It’s funny how a label attaches itself to cricketers. Batsmen wake up one morning and out of nowhere discover the overriding opinion is they can’t face the short ball. With Frase it was his nip. His big mate Athers would say to him, ‘They’re all saying you’ve lost your nip, Gus.’ And Frase would be barking back, ‘I haven’t lost my nip! Will everyone please stop saying I’ve lost my nip? What even is my nip?’ If his nip really had gone, it was probably due to the hip injury that, as a big chap bowling hundreds of overs a season, inevitably came his way. Typical of Frase that he fought back from two years out of the Test team to record a man-of-the-match eight-wicket haul against the Aussies in his comeback Test at The Oval in 1993, England’s first Ashes win in 18 attempts and six-and-a-half years. When within minutes he’d got Mark Waugh caught behind off a lifter, England could see precisely what they’d been missing.
Frase was the first bowler on everyone’s list to head Down Under in 1994 – everyone’s list that is except England supremo Ray Illingworth who instead plumped for the raw pace of Martin McCague, Joey Benjamin and Devon Malcolm. When McCague disappeared to all corners of the ground in the first Test at Brisbane, the selection looked somewhat flawed. With Benjamin and Malcolm then coming down with chickenpox, the England management were fortunate that Frase’s reaction to missing out on selection had been to secure himself a spot playing Grade cricket for Western Suburbs in Sydney. In doing so, Frase, knowing how often fast bowlers, especially England fast bowlers, break down in Australia, had effectively selected himself.
Frase proceeded to take 15 wickets in the remaining three Tests. His six-fer at Sydney included probably the best catch of my career. Openers Michael Slater and Mark Taylor had put on 208 for the first wicket when Athers, in desperation, called a team huddle. It was an unusual initiative, but one that I was up for. In blistering heat a huddle offered a chance to lean on someone. Slater, explained the skipper, was a man who didn’t hold back on his shots. The plan was to bounce him and get him caught on the hook. Seemed a good idea to me. In fact I said as much as I turned to head back to my fielding position at mid-on. What followed was a classic ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ moment. Athers wanted me – ME! – to go down to deep backward square leg for the catch. I was just about to say I’d left my glasses in the dressing room when I remembered I didn’t wear any. Off I went, imagining nothing but total disaster, complete humiliation, were Slater to sky the ball my way. It would be the perfect ‘What happened next?’ moment as the ball bounced off my head and over the boundary for six.
A few deliveries later, Slater top-edged a short one from Gus and it was heading my way at warp speed. I’ve watched that catch back and still don’t quite know how it ended up in my grasp. The missile came over my shoulder and, with a hoppity-skip, I reached out and there it was. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s in my hands!’ I chucked it in the air and awaited the congratulations of my teammates. Any second now I’d be engulfed, like when someone scores a last-minute winner in a cup final. And then I heard it. ‘F*** me, Phil, you caught it!’ There followed nine other variations on the theme. I felt like saying, ‘Excuse me boys, but aren’t I meant to be under a pile of screaming, celebrating bodies? Shouldn’t I be signing my name on the TV camera with a felt tip?’ Frase did give me a sharp pat on the back. I returned the gesture, and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was an unpleasant squelch and then sweat exploded everywhere.
