Bless Athers. Interesting take. Probably good sense too...
Lord’s, last week. Typical corporate function. The Long Room. Two hundred people. Andrew Strauss and Graeme Swann, the guests. Dinner, ask them a few questions, polite conversation, decent folk at the table. Job done. Nice and easy.
Beforehand, a question from a guest as we take pre-dinner drinks in the bar. Can we have a look at the England dressing room? Sure, no problem. Nip up the two flights of stairs, past the portraits of Gooch, Vaughan, Stewart. Through the door that says admittance by permission of the captain only, and into the hallowed place.
Save for the honours board that marks the Lord’s dressing room as special, it is like any other. Seats around the perimeter. Pegs for clothes. Huge table in the middle for autographs, sandwiches, coffee, tea. A physio’s table. Washbasin in the corner. Nothing else. Bit cramped. I point out my old chair, next to where the Big Cheese, Matt Prior, once put his bat through a window. Used to sit there. OK, he says. We leave. I sense he’s disappointed.
It’s what people always want to see at Lord’s. Not the Long Room. Not the media centre. Not the restaurants or bars. Not the MCC committee room or the library. The dressing room. The England dressing room. What’s it like, they say? Just like any other dressing room, I say. Uh? Oh.
What they really want to know, of course, is what goes on in the dressing room. What goes on in the middle of a Test match? How do people behave? What’s it like? Ah, that’s different. It ain’t normal. There’s a reason why the cameras aren’t allowed in there. There’s a reason there’s a notice on the door saying admission at the permission of the captain only. It’s a private place. A place for people to let off steam.
You see, it’s not like a normal working environment, not like a normal office. You want normal? Become an accountant. What’s it like? Here’s Kevin Pietersen during the first Test of the 2013-14 Ashes series in Brisbane, page 244 of his autobiography: “Lunch, no thanks. I was sitting there thinking: I could die here in the f***ing Gabbatoir.” Mitchell Johnson bowling at 95mph; 45,000 Australians baying for blood; Michael Clarke baying for blood. It’s not like sitting in an office with the year-end results.
No surprise, then, that cricketers occasionally lose the plot in there. That’s why the ECB tries to put in a confidentiality clause in players’ central contracts. That’s why Sir Clive Woodward got his rugby World Cup-winning squad to agree not to dish the dirt on each other. Not because revealing every little detail paints an accurate picture of what goes on, but because it does precisely the opposite. The juicy bits, the fights, the arguments — they all happen, inevitably, and they are memorable, but without the rest or without context they can paint a totally inaccurate picture of what goes on.
I’m not a violent man. One day, after a tight quarter-final defeat for Lancashire, I took my bat to a brick bath in a changing room after the game. Tried to destroy it, brick by brick. Destroyed my bat in doing so, too. What was I doing? I can’t explain what drove me to do it, except that we lost a game we should have won. Out of the cup. Out of order. Immature. Ridiculous. But it happened and I’m not a violent man.
I’m not a fighter. Never thrown a punch in my life. Never got into a fight. Probably a bit yellow if truth be told. One day, in the Lancashire dressing room, I had to be separated from another England player just as I was about to throw a punch. Lucky for me. He would have nailed me to the floor. The man who did the separating had the bridge of his nose cut by a bat being used as a weapon. This happened, but I am not a fighter.
I don’t rant and rave. Mild-mannered most of the time. One day, just outside the England dressing room, I grabbed an England bowler by the scruff of his neck, and let rip. He was twice my size and, by rights, should have floored me. Out of order, totally out of order. I’m a mild-mannered man, honest.
Want more? I’ve seen players destroy showers, break mirrors, kick fridges, smash lockers, hurl abuse at each other, throw kit around. I’ve seen them frozen with fear, nauseous with nerves, exhausted, bitter, angry, tearful and mad. And you know what? For most of the time, the dressing rooms I was a part of were great places to be, full of fun and laughter and joy. Terrific. If I only told you tales in isolation you would think I was stark raving mad. A lunatic. I’m not, I promise.
Andy Flower, the sourpuss, apparently walked around the England changing room towards the end of the last Ashes tour with a face like thunder. You know what? England were losing, getting hammered, thrashed, their arses kicked all over Australia. People were laughing at them. Whitewashed. Flower cared about that.
Maybe England supporters want a coach and captain who appear unconcerned about looking like a rabble. India’s captain didn’t appear to be too concerned about losing a Test in three days this summer. Said he was happy for the extra days off. Just another game. I don’t think England supporters want that.
I’m not sure, either, they want to see bowlers shouting and screaming out on the field when a fielder makes a mistake. Out in the middle. Everything visible. Stay tight, united, disciplined instead. Flower and Strauss and Alastair Cook spoke about that. The dressing room is the place to wash the dirty laundry, not out in the middle. The dressing room. Something needs to be said, that’s the place to do it. To each other’s face, not through social media. I repeat that I have sympathy for Pietersen’s critique of the parody Twitter account and the behaviour of some bowlers towards certain fielders when mistakes were made in the field.
But a bullying culture in the dressing room? This place to let off steam, to rant and rave. This fun place, joyful place, caring place; this tearful place, tough place. “A tough environment, it was dog eat dog,” said Ajmal Shahzad, a veteran of one Test and 11 one-day internationals. Welcome to international sport, Ajmal. Soon enough, if the gory details continue to be told, but only the gory details, coaches will ask for someone to minute what goes on in a dressing room. Want a normal environment? Try accountancy.
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