Coming Back To Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick. Marcus Trescothick
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1,000 runs for the season and a possible England A tour place at the end of it. And I told them so.
When Micky Stewart, who had just stood down as senior England coach to be succeeded by Keith Fletcher but was still heavily involved in the set-up, came down to Taunton to discuss the issue and asked if any of those present in the room among the Under-19s squad would rather be playing for their clubs, of the nine in our squad who had played first-class cricket, I was the only one in the room who said yes and why. ‘I just think I’ll learn more playing senior cricket than against players my own age,’ I said.
It didn’t work. After making 15 and 92 on my return to county cricket against Essex, it was off to the second Under-19 Test where I hit 140 in our second innings, and with another 64 runs under my belt against Northants, on 8 and 9 September, in the third and final Under-19 Test at Edgbaston, I took out my frustration at having to miss a third championship match, against Kent at Canterbury, on the Indian attack. After a rain delayed start we slumped to 27 for five at the end of the first day, of which I had made 11 not out. The next day we finished up 381 all out, with me making 206 from 233 deliveries.
Starting the final championship match of the season, against Derbyshire at Taunton I needed 127 runs to reach the magic 1,000.
Rain washed out play until after lunch on the third day so, realistically, I had to make them all in one go. I scored 51 in our first innings, edging to 924, only 76 away, and spent the rest of the rain-ruined match cursing the fact that playing for England Under-19s had cost me a probable six innings in which I would only have had to average 15.81 to become, at 18 and a half, the youngest Somerset player ever to make 1,000 runs in a season.
Not that I’m bitter but, to cap it all, England then picked Vaughany ahead of me for the A tour to India and Bangladesh, while they gave me the runners-up prize, captaining the Under-19s in West Indies that winter. On second thoughts …
I consoled myself by passing my driving test, at the second attempt, not before nearly wiping myself out in a scene reminiscent of the final moments of the original Italian Job, starring Michael Caine, when their getaway coach is teetering on the edge of a 1,000 foot drop on an Alpine road. Practising my reversing and three-point turns in a private road running left-to-right halfway up a hill and parallel to the ground, I attempted to reverse uphill into a driveway, got my left and right hands confused, reversed down the hill, and back wheels first, over a four foot sheer drop and smashed the rear of the car into a concrete post. There I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my Ford Sierra staring straight ahead at the sky above me. I jumped out, took one look at the car and realized that if the post hadn’t stopped the car dead it would almost certainly have rolled backwards all the way down the hill and quite probably into the stream at the bottom. The RAC had to come and rescue the car. The undercarriage was totally wrecked. I was lucky I wasn’t.
I duly skippered the Under-19s in the Caribbean, with David Lloyd as coach and Freddie as all-rounder. Alex Morris of Yorkshire and later Hampshire provided the musical talent – his dad Chris had had a couple of UK hits in the 1960s under the name Lance Fortune, the best-known being ‘When Will You Be Mine’ which became our unofficial tour anthem, though nobody ever sang it or knew any of the words, not even ‘Almo’. The name Lance Fortune had been dreamed up by his manager, Larry Parnes, who liked it so much that when Fortune’s fame dried up, Parnes simply recycled it, giving it to another act he managed, a bloke called Clive Powell, who later became the sixties pop icon Georgie Fame. Despite my disappointment at being overlooked for the A tour, and after the usual early tour shakes, I had an incredible time as one of 15 young blokes playing cricket in the Caribbean, all expenses paid. I made a century in the first Test in mid-January, 106 not out, out of 199 for four declared to set West Indies a target, and batted quite well throughout. At the end of it I organized a bumper end of tour dinner in Port of Spain, Trinidad at which I ate only bangers, of course, washed down with litres of fizzy soft drinks. It really is a wonder I have any of my own teeth left.
When I came back to Somerset I negotiated a pay rise to £12,000 per year from 1995 and that was about as good as it got for quite some time. What happened next? I flat-lined.
Everyone’s heard about second season syndrome; what happens when the county bowling fraternity have absorbed the lessons of bowling to a new batsman, identify a weakness to attack and pile on the pressure in his second season. My second season syndrome seemed to last longer than usual – about four seasons in total.
I had my good moments. I made a third championship ton in 1995, against Northants, but scored only 373 runs in total and though I cashed in against South Africa Under-19s, featuring Kallis again alongside Makhaya Ntini, Boeta Dippenaar and Mark Boucher, by now I was well aware that the pros had worked me out. They knew exactly where to bowl to me, just short of a length and just outside off stump and I couldn’t help myself. I went after them time after time, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the ball and consequently I just couldn’t stop getting out caught behind, in the slips or the covers, or just playing and missing. Some days I didn’t look as if I could bat to save my life.
Same again in 1996, though with all the upheavals going on at the club that season I’m not sure too many people actually noticed. Our form was unsatisfactory all round and, as time went on, the captain Andy Hayhurst appeared to let his own poor form affect his captaincy and the burden of captaincy affect his form. There were rumours that Caddick was looking to move on, that the committee weren’t happy with the way things were being run on and off the field and that Peter Bowler, the experienced Australian who had joined us from Derbyshire, was keen to take over the reins. Brian Rose, a club stalwart, England batsman and supporting act in the side that included Ian Botham, Viv Richards, Joel Garner, Peter Roebuck and Vic Marks which filled the previously empty trophy cabinet in the 1980s, was brought back to the club as chairman of the cricket committee, though he carried on his full-time job in the paper industry.
On 1 August, an hour before our championship match with Hampshire was due to start, a funny thing happened on the way to the scrapheap.
I had struggled all season with the same technical problem that had scuppered me in ’95. But Rose had decided that the way things were going the best way forward for the club was to back the young players through thick and thin. When Rose rang Peter Anderson at 10 a.m. that day from his office in Watchet, and the club secretary read out the team Andy Hayhurst had selected to take with him into battle, with me not in it, Rose’s response was swift and decisive and, to some, quite barmy.
‘Sorry, Brian,’ Anderson said. ‘I’m not sure I quite got that. You want me to do what?’
‘Peter, let me say it again,’ Rose replied. ‘I want you to go into the dressing-room and tell Hayhurst he’s dropped, bring in Marcus Trescothick in his place and ask Peter Bowler to take over the captaincy.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Anderson said. ‘Tell the captain he’s dropped? He won’t be happy with that. Why can’t you do it?’
‘Because I’m stuck at work and won’t be able to get there until lunch.’
‘You’re sure this is what you want me to do. If this goes wrong the press will have a field day.’
‘Sod the press. I’m chairman of the cricket committee. It’s my decision. I’ll take full responsibility.’
Peter Anderson tells the story that by the time this conversation ended Andy Hayhurst had not only made it to the middle to toss up with the Hampshire skipper John Stephenson, but that the coin was already in the air.
Even allowing for Anderson’s poetic licence, Hayhurst was obviously rather taken aback to receive the news that he had been effectively sacked as captain by the chairman of the cricket committee. As for me, instead of heading off for a 2nd XI match, I was back in the 1sts.
Rose arrived at the ground at lunchtime, preparing to face the local press and talk his way out of a tricky situation. Andy was a top bloke and very popular in these parts, and what had happened and how and when it had happened would take some explaining. Anderson saw Rose’s car pull into the car park and ran out to try and head him off.
‘What’s