Darren Gough (2001) – Dazzler: The Autobiography, London: Penguin

The search for the next Ian Botham was one of a number of fairly unhelpful preoccupations that gripped English cricket in the 90s. At his best, Botham was many things rolled into one: not just a hard-hitting number six batsman, match-winning fast-medium bowler and talented slip fielder, but also a charismatic personality capable of charming the public and bamboozling the opposition with deeds of unlikely heroism.

The Test team in the 90s could only dream of a player who possessed those qualities. There were some who could both bat and bowl, and who were able to perform with variable degrees of success in either discipline – Craig White, Ronnie Irani and Mark Ealham, to name but a few – but despite fitting the playing profile, they failed to attract any serious talk of being the great all-rounder’s replacement.(1)

Excitement was more easily aroused by the performances of two other players who burst onto the scene in the mid-90s: Darren Gough and Dominic Cork.

Neither was in Botham’s all-rounder mould, really, with each attracting attention through chirpy tail-end cameos that supplemented their bowling, but in an era where players seemed burdened by the responsibilities of playing for England, especially when the team was struggling, their exuberance and apparent joy in representing their country, and having the character to deliver on the big stage, was sufficient to capture the imagination of the public.

That excitement was brief, however: almost as soon as Gough had come to prominence during the 1994/5 Ashes series in Australia, he had been injured, then dropped and forgotten as Cork took the spotlight the following summer against the West Indies.

It was this writer’s first experience of a player being built up and torn down in real time, and the fickle and brutal nature of the English sporting spotlight was further illustrated when Cork – having endured for slightly longer, while shouldering a heavy responsibility and workload – also fell from favour.

Dazzler is at its most insightful when recounting Gough’s whirlwind rise to the top and swift return to earth, highlighting the qualities required as a young man to overcome the drudgery of the county grind, with its poor weather, minimal attendances and heavy boozing doing little to encourage a developing fast bowler eyeing the bigger stage.

Spurred on by a stint as 12th man during the 1993 Headingley Test, during which Martin McCague, Mark Ilott, Andy Caddick and Martin Bicknell were thumped around the ground as Australia amassed over 600 (Gough: ‘I thought, “I’m as good as you lot.”’) and encouraged by Yorkshire overseas pro Richie Richardson, Gough soon earned an international call-up and made an immediate impact against New Zealand and South Africa in 1994, before starring with bat and ball during the winter’s Ashes.

A foot injury ended his tour early, spurring talk from media sages that his bowling action needed adjustment to prevent a reoccurrence. A dip in form and a spell out of the team followed, as his ex-U19 colleague and close friend Cork took his place. Gough bristles at the apparent desire to change what had made him successful, as well as the media hypocrisy of excessive attention heaped upon a young player quickly curdling to snide whispers about arrogance and ego.

On this point Gough is swift to defend Cork, who attracted negative headlines after arriving in New Zealand in 1997 while going through a divorce and apparently in no position to be playing Test cricket. While acknowledging Cork’s difficult behaviour, Gough struggles to accept the glee with which his team-mate’s turnaround in fortunes was greeted.

The additional pressures of playing for Yorkshire and dealing with the toxic spectres of former greats also receive some attention: from Fred Trueman apparently claiming credit for Gough’s career, then telling him off for bowling rubbish, before finally accusing him of throwing, to suggestions from Yorkshire members that his limited county appearances, following the ECB’s introduction of central contracts, represented some kind of unforgiveable treachery.(2)

Most eye-catching are the references to then-Yorkshire captain, David Byas, referred to only as ‘Byas’, particularly the summing up of their relationship thus:

‘We often lock horns. Byas probably thinks I’m a big-headed, arrogant show-off. I know he’s an above-average county cricketer who can’t understand why he hasn’t represented England.’ (3)

Gough appears to recognise his county’s peculiarities for what they are, treading the fine line between proud Yorkshireman and a cricketer wary of the politics associated with its cricket club. All-rounder hype extinguished, not least by a complete lack of form with the bat, Gough was able to recover and re-establish himself as the first-choice new ball bowler for England during the late 90s, his appearances limited only by injury.

Reflecting on the changing expectations of cricketers and the dressing-room culture when he first started playing for Yorkshire, Gough tells a cautionary tale of his immediate predecessor for club and country, Paul Jarvis, a skiddy seamer last seen in an England shirt during the ill-fated tour of India and Sri Lanka in 1993:

‘I remember when [Jarvis] had first become an England player and one of his main challenges for the next season was to see if he could drink 1,000 pints. Every pint of lager was marked down and the target was reached by the end of July. When I saw him last winter, he informed me that the total had passed 1,500 by the end of the summer.’ (4)

As with many players of the 90s, central contracts may have arrived too late to protect Gough during his peak years, but his later success was hard-earned. His career could easily have gone another way instead, withering away under the harsh spotlight of media attention or lost to the drudgery and cynicism of county cricket. His star quality and strength of character – two Botham-esque qualities – ensured it did not.

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Notes:

(1) Irani did briefly earn the public media sponsorship of Botham himself, although this support largely fell away after the 1996/7 tours of Zimbabwe and New Zealand.

(2) Never mind that Gough, along with many other England fast bowlers of the era, had already hobbled himself on numerous occasions – including in the middle of the 1997 Ashes – by fulfilling county duties, before central contracts were introduced.

(3) Byas got close, in 1995, during the ‘let’s try this bloke out’ peak of the Ray Illingworth era.

(4) Upon reflection, some rudimentary calculations suggest that this can’t possibly be true, although I’m prepared to be corrected.

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Young Lions Sometimes Roar