No Boundaries (8 page)

As well as the joy of scoring my first century, it was an education to watch Gooch at his best. He scored 205, his third double-century of the season and his third hundred in
a row. It was the first time I’d been at the other crease with a batsman playing the reverse sweep. That was impressive enough but then, when a short ball came down, he got down on one knee and improvised a shot I’d never seen anywhere before. Then he walked down the pitch, prodded it with his bat and said in that slightly high-pitched voice of his, ‘Reverse pull. If you pay attention, I’ll teach you that one day.’

I was totally in awe of the man. I had to leap out of the way when he rocketed a straight drive past me to the boundary and again he strolled up the pitch to share the moment: ‘Probably my favourite shot. It shows the bowler you are in control. Straight back past him before he can get down and stop it. Have a bit of that!’

I was getting a masterclass from one of the finest batsmen this country has ever produced. When he was in that form, the bowlers just didn’t know where to bowl and the captain couldn’t set a field to stop him. We went on to win the game by four wickets off the last ball and took over at the top of the county championship table. Days don’t get much better than that.

I
f batting with one of my heroes had made my first century memorable, the second sticks in the mind for a very different reason. I’ve always thought there was something odd about men’s urinals – a row of guys with their dicks in their hands, staring fixedly at a blank wall to convince themselves they have some privacy. So I guess it should be no surprise that one of the most bizarre moments of my life happened in a public toilet.

We were playing Middlesex at Uxbridge, one of their out grounds. It’s different from most county grounds in that the public come and go freely through the pavilion. At the end of the first day’s play, most of the lads went to the bar for a beer but Michael Kasprowicz wanted to bowl in the nets and I agreed to bat against him. I was next in the following morning and, with John Stephenson on his way back to fitness, I was happy to get as much practice as I could to keep hold of my place in the side. We had a good session, and afterwards, as Kasper went to get the dressing-room key, I popped into the toilet, which was part of the shower and
locker room area. I was still padded up and wearing spikes so I walked rather tentatively on the tiled floor, knowing it would be easy to end up in a heap on the deck.

I was making my way towards the urinals a bit like Bambi on ice when a guy shoved past me. I didn’t say anything and started to pee. But then he looked down the row and, for no reason I could tell, gave me a right gobful of abuse. Or I think it was abuse. His face was certainly screwed up as though he hated my guts but he was so drunk it was hard to make out what he was saying.

As well as teaching you to walk away from trouble whenever you can, martial arts training also gives you the confidence to handle dodgy situations. You know that if you are sober you have a much better than even chance of tackling a drunk, so I smiled and said nothing. He was still gobbing off and finally, as I zipped myself up, I said, ‘Sorry, pal, I can’t make out what you’re saying. What’s your problem?’

What happened next takes longer to describe than it did in real time. He slung a huge haymaker at me. I only saw it at the last minute and, as I turned away, my spikes slipped on the tiles. His fist whacked straight into my eye. My contact lens shot out and as it fell I stuck out a hand and caught it. At the same time I was desperately trying to keep my balance and wondering what the hell was going on.

The effort of throwing the punch put matey off balance and he went careering across the room and knocked over a tray of pint glasses left in the other side of the changing room. As I heard them smash, I thought, Oh, shit. I was off balance with one good eye, one hand clutching my contact lens and a drunken bastard was possibly about to come at me with broken glass. I’d once seen the effect of a glassing back in Bolton that had resulted in a lost eye. I had to get out of there fast.

Fortunately, at that moment Kasper came in. He’s even bigger than me and he managed to grab the drunk and bundle him out. I made my way to the dressing room, slipped my lens in my toilet bag, put on my trainers and thought, Right, I’m going to have that bastard. By the time I got outside, he was about 40 yards away being escorted towards the exit by stewards. I went after him, but some of the lads had heard what had happened and caught up with me. I heard Goochie say, ‘Leave it, Ronnie. Let the stewards handle it.’

I knew he was right. There were several people about and, if I’d thumped him, it would have become a big story with me in the wrong. I went over to the guy, put my face close to his and said, ‘What the fuck was all that about? Look what you’ve done to my eye.’

He looked bemused, as though he’d never seen me before. He just slurred ‘Whaat?’ and staggered off. Every muscle in my body longed to give him a thrashing but I turned away.

I went for an x-ray and fortunately the cheekbone wasn’t broken, but I spent the rest of the evening icing away the bruising and spitting blood. When I woke the next morning, I couldn’t see out of the eye and had to start icing it again. It hurt like hell but I was determined I was going to bat. My eye was still sore when I went to the crease and there was no disguising the big black bruise. Being the gentleman he is, Phil Tufnell kept bowling the ball up high, forcing me to squint into the sun. There was nothing much I could do except kick them away but eventually I adjusted, started to pick them up and went on to score a hundred.

The drunk received a caution from the police and wrote me a letter saying how sorry he was. I rang him up and he was full of apologies. He swore he would never do anything like that again and I said, ‘Well, at least you were big and brave
enough to admit you were wrong. Not everyone would have done that.’

Generally, life at Essex was good. I particularly enjoyed a half-century against Lancashire when I had to concentrate hard on a Chelmsford pitch that for once gave the seamers plenty of help. It was only July and I’d already played more games for Essex than I had in all my years at Old Trafford. Effort and form counted for something at Chelmsford in a way they hadn’t at Lancashire. My first trip back to Old Trafford didn’t come until the following season. It felt a bit strange, not at all like ‘going home’. There were still many of the familiar faces I felt had not given me a chance and even my former second-team-mates were now determined I wouldn’t shine on the day. Warren Hegg was the only person who went out of his way to make me welcome. But things were very different when I went out to bat. The members and crowd gave me a terrific reception all the way to the crease and I was relieved that they at least understood how much I had wanted to play for Lancashire and why I had to leave.

I was also settling in well domestically in Essex. After a period of driving to and from Aylesbury, I’d finally persuaded Lorraine that we’d be better able to save to get married if I wasn’t spending a fortune on petrol. Of course, my motives had nothing to do with a dislike of ironing or, perish the thought, lustful intentions, I was just doing what I could to hasten the day when I could afford to make an honest woman of her. Incredibly, she agreed to move in with me.

I finished off the 1994 season in good nick. I’d played 18 county championship matches and scored just under a thousand runs at an average of almost 42 and taken 28 wickets costing less than 30 each. I had a relaxing winter and looked forward to my second season at my new home.

This was the period when I should have kicked on, especially with my bowling, but I started to get a nagging pain in my back. I had some physio which partly eased the problem, but I knew I’d lost a bit of pace and was stiffening up after a day’s play and finding it harder to warm up in the morning. I didn’t realise it at the time but I’d picked up a stress fracture in my back. I carried on playing through the pain and did well enough, compensating for the slight loss of pace with more accuracy, enthusiasm and bloody-minded determination. But, looking back, this was a key period and, if I’d sorted it out then, it would have saved me a lot of problems later.

We had a new captain at Essex in 1995. Graham Gooch had stepped down, although he carried on playing for another couple of seasons, and Paul Prichard took up the reins. While I was disappointed not to have another season under Graham, I’d come to realise that Prich was Essex through and through and I had no problem about him taking over. One or two people at the club weren’t as sure because he liked to have a drink and a laugh after a day’s play, and I know that Nasser was among those who felt he wouldn’t be a good influence on the younger players. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, Prich can boast that we won two Lord’s finals while he was in charge.

My averages weren’t quite so good in my second season but I’d still done well and people in the national media were beginning to take notice of me. It was particularly pleasing to pick up the
Daily Mirror
towards the end of the campaign and read Ian Botham’s column, in which he urged the England selectors to take an all-rounder on the winter tour to South Africa, adding, ‘Let’s give Ronnie Irani, the best young all-rounder in the country, a chance at the top level.’ Later in
the same article he said, ‘From all that I’ve seen and heard of him, he is strong and aggressive. He hates losing and plays his cricket with real bravado. He has that touch of arrogance that you need at the top. Going for Irani would galvanise Darren Gough and Dominic Cork. They would both respond to the competition from a young thruster like Irani.’

Now I have never believed most of the stuff written about me in newspapers, good and bad, but when someone like Ian Botham writes something like that you do rather feel like buying all the copies, opening them up at the appropriate page and leaving them where everyone can read it. It gave me a tremendous boost and, even though I got quite a lot of stick in the dressing room along the lines of ‘Look out, here comes the thruster,’ it was worth it.

Of course, the England selectors took not the slightest notice of Beefy’s advice but they did select me to go on the A tour to Pakistan under the captaincy of Nasser Hussain and with my pal from Lancashire, Jason Gallian. I had to take double doses of painkillers to deaden the pain in my back but it was still a terrific experience, despite picking up a duck in my first match. I went on to achieve a career-best 5-19 in one of the build-up matches and scored two half-centuries in the four-dayers against Pakistan A.

We returned home just before Christmas and I thought, if I could start the season well, there might just be a chance that I’d finally make the step up to the full England team. They’d had a torrid time in South Africa and failed in the World Cup that followed in India and Pakistan. My former Lancashire coach David Lloyd had been drafted in as team manager to try to pick up the pieces. He’d always seemed to rate me when I was in the second team and I know he’d often pushed my case with Neil Fairbrother.

I rested up for a couple of months, going for regular sessions with Laurence Sandum, a martial arts expert and fitness trainer, and by pre-season I was raring to go. I was soon playing well and again the media were linking me with the England team. In those days no one from the England set-up phoned and said you were selected – you had to listen to the radio when you knew an announcement was going to be made. Finally, I heard the magic words: ‘Ronnie Irani has been chosen in England’s one-day squad to play India at the Oval.’

The next few days were a bit manic – fielding loads of phone calls congratulating me and asking for tickets, and trying to make sure I was well prepared physically and mentally. But the match itself turned out to be something of an anti-climax. I batted seven and made 11 and I never got the ball in hand because the Indian innings lasted only 17 overs because of rain. I was then promptly dropped for the next two ODIs. Little did I realise but this was the start of what proved to be something of a trend.

I went back to Essex feeling a bit perplexed and wondering if I was going to be a one-match wonder. However, our first game was the perfect opportunity to give the selectors another nudge – we were playing the tourists at Chelmsford. I kicked the door as hard as I could. I picked up four wickets in their first innings, including their new wonderkids Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly, and did OK with the bat. It worked. The next thing I heard was that I was in the squad for the first Test, to be played at Edgbaston the following week. I was finally about to achieve a dream I’d had since first making my way at Heaton as a kid.

I joined up with the squad in Birmingham on the Monday but it wasn’t until Wednesday, the day before the match, that
I knew I was in the team. I’d expected some kind of announcement in a team meeting but I happened to bump into Mike Atherton in the lift after lunch and he just said, ‘By the way, you’re picked tomorrow. Good luck.’ It was somehow typical of him. We’d never hit it off at Lancashire and he’d not been particularly welcoming when I made my ODI debut, and now his ‘good luck’ sounded more like it should have been followed by ‘you’re going to need it’ than wishing me a successful first Test. I’d always found him dour and, while I thought he was a fine batsman, his leadership skills left a lot to be desired.

There’s a tradition that a player making his debut sits next to the chairman of selectors at dinner the night before the match. I was a bit apprehensive because I’d heard a lot of tales about Raymond Illingworth and most of them were negative. I knew he had been a great cricketer – captain of England in two Ashes-winning series – but from what I’d heard he could be a bit of a Tartar. The rumours from the tour of South Africa were that there had been quite a lot of friction between him and Atherton. I wasn’t looking forward to what might be a couple of uncomfortable hours where I’d have to watch everything I said in case I put my foot in it. But then I realised I was being daft, creating problems in my mind before they really existed. I remembered Fil Mercer’s advice to take people as you find them and not on their reputation and once again he was spot on. It turned out to be a most enjoyable meal.

I shook his hand and said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mr Illingworth.’

‘No, lad. Call me Ray.’

I wasn’t sure I felt comfortable doing that, so we settled on ‘Chairman’.

He turned out to have a passion for all sports and had a fund of entertaining stories. Being from Pudsey in Yorkshire, he had lots of tales about the great Leeds United team built by Don Revie and especially their England centre-half Jack Charlton. I also discovered that Ray was a former team-mate of John Savage, who had been so helpful to me as
second-team
coach at Lancashire. And we talked endlessly about our mutual passion for league cricket. Despite all his success as a player and an administrator, Ray had always kept in touch with his local club sides and I understand that until very recently he was still mowing the pitch at Farsley Cricket Club ready for their Bradford League matches.

I had a great time and was sorry when the coffee came round. As we got up to go, he said, ‘Good luck tomorrow, Ronnie. You come highly recommended by people in the game whose judgement I trust. I like your attitude and the way you play the game. Just go out and enjoy it. Be yourself and, most of all, don’t be afraid. Go for it.’