The Sunday Mail
“YOU don’t want to play for England. You just want to mess it up the wall with your mates and have a good time.” This was the summary of Andy Flower, a multiple Ashes-winning coach and one who had taken his team to the No 1 ranking in Test cricket, delivering the news that I was to be sent home from the England Lions tour of Australia in February 2013.
It hit me like a sledgehammer.
He was so clinical. So cold.
“No. I want to play for England.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Yeah, I do.’
I went back at him a couple of times but he sounded adamant. He had come to his conclusion.
The England coach was questioning whether I would ever play for his team again, summing me up as a waste of space and sanctioning my removal from a tour involving England’s next-best players.
‘I’ll prove you wrong,’ I said, finger-wagging, as I left the hotel room in Hobart, where Flower, David Parsons, the ECB’s academy director, and Guy Jackson, the England Lions manager, had delivered the news.
There may even have been use of the F-word, I was so angry.
Andy had really riled me, made me out to be some kind of little kid, messing about with his mates. Not a serious cricketer with an international future.
I’ll show you.
Of course, as I later realised, that was exactly what Andy wanted and I confess his words that day stuck with me and always will.
Over subsequent months, playing under him for England, I came to realise he said it to be provocative, to try to make sure that I got my priorities right.
Being told I had ventured beyond my last chance proved a real shot across the bows.
The message, as I was booked on to the next flight back to the UK, was: ‘Get yourself together.’ The perception that I was just there for a mess up with my mates really stung me.
Funnily enough, the first thing (Kent bowler) Matt Coles and I did when we got to the airport for our flight home was to have a beer.
But that was irrelevant in the scheme of things, really. The impression I needed to make was in the longer term. For now, it was too late.
Matt and I were roomies on the tour. We got on well. We were part of a sociable group. We enjoyed a night out.
A feed, a few drinks, a laugh. Find me blokes in the first couple of years of their twenties who don’t. – Daily Mail
* Adapted from “Firestarter: Me, Cricket and the heat of the moment” by Ben Stokes.
