The Enigma: Mark Ramprakash
Strictly Me
Mark Ramprakash (2009) – Strictly Me: My Life Under the Spotlight, Edinburgh: Mainstream
Not getting the most out of the talent at their disposal – or underachievement – was arguably the key recurring theme for England’s Test team in the 1990s. While errors in selection were common, most frustrating were those players who dominated at domestic level but only flickered in the international game.
Of the mid-90s England batsmen who most famously fell into this category, Mark Ramprakash appears to be the only one to have written a book, albeit several years after the end of his international career, and with the apparent aim of capitalising on an increase in public profile following his successful stint on Strictly Come Dancing in 2006.
Winning the Glitterball Trophy appears to have provided some kind of catharsis for Ramprakash, by the point of this book’s publication continuing his lengthy county stint with Surrey but still nursing regrets over an international career that ended in disappointment. He argues – perhaps a little too keenly – that thriving on a big stage, in front of a live audience, after being thrown in at the deep end on Strictly proves that those questioning his temperament on the basis of his Test career were wrong to do so.
Puzzling over a player’s lack of success at the top level invites speculation about whether the problem was more one of technique or mindset. For Graeme Hick, alongside whom Ramprakash made his England debut, the popular theory was that the problem was mental; for John Crawley, the other great unfulfilled county run-scorer of the era, attention was focused more keenly on the technical side. (1)
While drifting in and out of international cricket, threaded in between insights on Strictly and Ramprakash’s county career, Strictly Me is hardly short on detail, but those seeking an answer from the man himself as to ‘the reason’ he was never quite able to establish himself as a force in the international game are likely to be disappointed.
Like many players selected for England in the 90s, Ramprakash could have benefited from more consistency in selection and better man-management, but despite being given extended runs in the team under various coaching regimes, it all came to an end in 2002 after 52 Tests brought only two hundreds and an average in the late 20s.
Ramprakash bristles slightly at always being grouped together with Hick, and though they played together at various points in the 90s, their most consistent years in an England shirt came at different points. After a difficult start, Hick performed well in the middle-order under Mike Atherton, contributing centuries on a semi-regular basis without ever quite being the prolific batsman that his dominant county form suggested. He had been out of the team for the best part of two years before returning under Alec Stewart’s captaincy against South Africa in 1998, by which point Ramprakash was now established after finally scoring his first Test century on the tour of the West Indies the previous winter.
Ramprakash identifies this period as his best in an England shirt, pointing to a series of battling fifties at home against South Africa and away during the 1998/9 Ashes, and a Test average of over 40 during that time. When Stewart was sacked as captain the following year, Ramprakash was even interviewed as a potential replacement, although in truth he stood little chance against vice-captain Nasser Hussain, and reflects here that the whole thing was for the sake of appearances only.
However, the notion that the elusive first century would provide a breakthrough proved to be misguided, and far from freeing him up to take his game to the next level, the Ramprakash of the late 90s still seemed somewhat uptight, a gritty battler grinding out scores of 60 in the middle order rather than crafting match-winning centuries from number three.
The batting order appears to have been a point of contention throughout his career, with Mike Atherton noting in Opening Up that on his first tour as captain, Ramprakash felt uncomfortable being asked to bat up the order and stated a preference for number six. On that tour, he perhaps had a point: both Graeme Hick and Robin Smith had more experience, and success, behind them, and either seemed like a more natural fit. However, Atherton felt that Ramprakash always had a tendency to look at the negative aspects of batting in an unfamiliar position, even if it offered him a route back into the team.
Ramprakash was, no doubt, treated harshly in the aftermath of the 1999 disaster at home against New Zealand, with the collective groans from home fans that accompanied that series reaching a crescendo, if not quite the boos that rang out at its conclusion, during the third Test at Old Trafford, when recalls for Hick, Atherton and Peter Such were felt to reflect a lack of inspiration and the team crawled to a first-innings total of 199 from 109.5 overs.
It was a performance that reflected the fear and uncertainty that surrounded the England team at various points throughout the decade, when players were more worried about losing their place, or being criticised for a bad dismissal, than anything to do with the team performance. Ramprakash – who top-scored with 69* in that first innings – was probably right to feel he had done enough to keep his place, but equally it could be argued that he had been stuck at a certain level for too long and the team needed more from him.
The key question of that 90s team – and of its unfulfilled talents – was ‘why?’ What was it that prevented these players from reaching their potential? While books like this tantalise the reader with the possibility that all will be revealed in the pages within, this relies on the – perhaps unfair – assumption that the player in question can provide a definitive answer.
Ramprakash tells us what the reader likely already knows about the failings of the 90s team management, and states that he could have cracked Test cricket eventually, if given another opportunity, but otherwise focuses on detailed minutiae in a way that suggests there was, and would always be, some small obstacle in his way.
Ramprakash was nicknamed ‘Bloodaxe’ as a youngster, in recognition of an intensity that frequently bubbled over both on and off the pitch. In the same way as minor issues as an England cricketer are given a surprising amount of attention, controversial incidents during his county career are also dusted off and relitigated, with excuses offered for things that have likely been long forgotten by everyone else, an exercise that does little to show the author in a particularly sympathetic light.
Final chances came for Ramprakash, as they did for Hick and Crawley, in the early 00s under Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher. After a brief and unhappy spell as opener, an injury crisis brought a middle-order recall against the all-conquering Australians in 2001, and he responded with a fine hundred in a losing cause during the final Test at The Oval. Atherton wrote that he thought his friend was now more relaxed and had indeed ‘cracked it’ at international level, suggesting that his best years in an England shirt could still be ahead of him.
Sadly, it was not to be, with the curtain brought down for good after a double failure in the third Test against New Zealand in 2002. There was no hint of a new, relaxed Ramprakash here, and after what proved to be his final Test innings, team-mate Michael Vaughan noted, ‘He just sat there in the dressing room for about two hours with his pads still on, not moving or saying a thing. “Are you going back out there for another go?” I wondered.’
As his prolific county form for Surrey continued, romantics proposed a final recall when England had a vacancy in their batting line-up for the final Test of the 2009 Ashes with the series on the line. It might well have worked: Ramprakash had form when it came to stepping in at the last minute against Australia, with two of his best pre-century innings coming during the last Tests of the 1993 (64 at the Oval) and 1994/5 (72 in Perth) Ashes encounters.
Sensibly, though, it was resisted, with fans – and Ramprakash – left to imagine what might have been. Unlike Hick, or even Crawley, Ramprakash just never seemed comfortable at Test level, unable to find periods of fluency that the others were able to achieve, albeit intermittently. With all of the pontificating and amateur psychoanalysis put aside, the statistics sort of tell the full story: a half century of caps, across eleven years, under four coaches and four captains, and standout moments few and far between.
In the end, perhaps the failure of one player to establish a successful England career is no more significant than any other: a result of fans and media giving too much weight to the nebulous concept of ‘talent’ as separate from the other qualities required for success, rather than as part of the overall package. In the end, rather than wondering aloud about wasted potential and the tragedy of unfulfilled greatness, it might be fairer to consider that no player deserves to carry the burden of such a tag into retirement and beyond.
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Young Lions Sometimes Roar: Watching Bad Cricket (And Playing Cricket Badly) in the 90s by Ben Richards is out now.
Notes:
(1) These things are usually a little more nuanced than that: for example, Hick’s alleged timidity against fast bowling was a recurrent theme during his early-90s struggles, but his best period in an England shirt followed a technical switch, when he successfully adopted a different stance and backlift.
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