Your 135 against South Africa at Edgbaston in August came just in time to save your place. How aware were you of all the talk about your Test future?
The thing is you don’t need the press to tell you what the situation is. Usually, it’s all doom and gloom when you read the press and they make it seem a lot worse than it really is. But on this occasion I knew exactly the situation I was in [Collingwood had scored 43 runs in his previous six Test innings] and I knew pretty much 100 per cent that if I didn’t perform in that second innings, that was going to be it for a little while. So it was a tough situation to be in but I’ve been in it before and come through it. It was amazing how it turned around, really.
You’d had a bad decision in the first Test at Lord’s, out for 7 off a bat-pad-that-wasn’t. How did you react to that?
When you’re in bad form, you can start to think everything’s against you. I’d genuinely felt probably for the first time all summer that I could make a big score. I started off pretty well; Morne Morkel was throwing some short stuff at us and I took him on right from the word go. It was the first time I felt I’d got myself into a little bit of a system – I know I didn’t score many but it was disappointing. You don’t bear a grudge against the umpire: they just got it wrong on the day.
When your Test career is on
the line, can you step back and say to yourself, ‘Well, I’m a professional cricketer, my life is actually pretty good’ and get things in perspective?
To be honest, cricket is my life. It’s very easy for people from the outside to turn round and say ‘You’ve got a great life.’ But how happy you are is down
to how you’re doing on the cricket pitch. Family life is an important part of it but our lives are cricket and playing for England and there’s a lot of pressure involved in that.
When you’re in those situations you feel as though the whole world is on top of you. And the only way to get out of it is to actually score the runs. It’s amazing that it gets to the point where it’s so bad that you think you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s so frustrating. You know you’ve still got the ability and that your technique hasn’t changed much and you know it’s only the mental side. But the ultimate thing is that you get confidence back from getting runs in the middle.
The turning point? The decision to give up the one-day captaincy, which I made the night before, the Thursday. Mentally, that was a weight off my shoulders. I didn’t actually release that decision until the Saturday night when Vaughany decided to resign the Test captaincy after we’d lost. But that was a bit of a coincidence.
I’d rang my wife up on the Thursday: I hadn’t got any runs then I’d had a bad day in the field which was very unlike me. I always tend to do a job with the ball and catch my catches. But I’d dropped a couple of catches and got panned in my two overs and it was a real case of ‘This is as low as I can get’. And I remember speaking to the wife on Thursday night and saying, ‘Listen, it’s time to give the captaincy up, the last thing I want to do is lose my place in the Test squad.’
The other crucial factor was that it was last-chance saloon. And I’ve always had the character that I’d rather go down fighting and play in my natural manner. So if I was going to get out I was going to get out attacking. And it was amazing once I’d got into that frame of mind – switching
from survival to taking the attack to the bowlers and trying to score runs.
So the one-day captaincy was a pressure for you, even during a Test series?
Of course. Captaincy doesn’t finish the day the one-day series finishes. There’s still issues behind the scenes, big decisions to make. The run out situation [against New Zealand at the Oval] was still playing on my mind. All these things mentally drain your energy.
I’ve always said that I need 100 per cent of my energy just to stay in the side and perform at the best of my ability. And the captaincy seemed to take too much energy away from my overall game.
Were you surprised at what a big deal the Grant Elliott run-out became?
I was a little surprised at some of the comments coming from parts of the press, especially people who’d played the game. Captains that I’d played under:
I knew exactly what decision they’d have made.
You’re thinking of Nasser Hussain…
I’m not naming any names. But I was a little disappointed at the time. I thought: ‘I played under you. I know what you would have done.’ It hurt us a lot. That decision and the whole reaction to it took a lot of energy out of me: that was a gut-instinct decision, that was how I felt and after all the reaction I thought: ‘If that was my gut instinct and it was so bad then…’. You start getting doubts. Are you the right captain?
I looked into it afterwards. Steve Waugh had done it in 1999 in Barbados. Apparently, Brendon Julian pretty much rugby tacked Sherwin
Campbell to the floor and then Waugh told him to eff off on the way out! So by those standards, I was quite happy with what I’d done. But Steve Waugh turned out to be a legend and a tough captain and I turned out to be… nothing.
Then you had the four-match ban for the slow over-rate. Did you feel that was harsh, that the captain should take such personal responsibility for that?
No, we know the situation. The rule’s there. As captain, you know the situation. I was on a level 2 warning from the game against India at Bristol last year. We were very slow. It happens
in the really tight games. As captain you have to give yourself more time to make decision and get your field in exactly the right place.
That game at Bristol they scored 320-odd runs: we were fetching the ball back from the stands most for the time. That was my argument. And then this game at the Oval got so close; it took a long time to get everything right. And when I came off, having had the run-out situation, I obviously wasn’t in a position to defend everything that had gone on out there. It’s funny but I think everyone thought that the ban was for the run-out.
How do you look back on your year as England one-day captain now?
It was such a hard decision to give it up. I was enjoying parts of it. Leading the boys out on the pitch is something you’re always going to miss. And the win in Sri Lanka – especially without Freddie, who plays a massive part in the balance of the side. You think, ‘Not many teams could do that.’ I honestly think we were heading in the right direction, and making strides as a team. I mean – we still are, don’t get me wrong! So I’ve got fond memories of doing it. But there’s times like the run-out situation where you look back and you’re glad it’s gone.
Being back in the ranks is a weight off your shoulders…
Course it is. I’ve grown up from being a young lad with an ambition of wanting to play cricket for England. I never really, to be honest, had ambitions to captain. When the opportunity came along, I had to take it. You can’t miss opportunities like that: I had a place in both sides and I thought it was the right time.
One odd moment of your captaincy this year was the New Zealand tour: the team stormed the Twenty20s, then suddenly looked very meek in the ODIs. What happened?
New Zealand are a funny side to play against. They have match-winners who can blow you out of the park. And Brendon McCullum was going through a real hot streak. But you’re right. They didn’t have Vettori or Oram in the T20s. Our performances were 100 per cent, from planning to performance and we looked really strong. But they missed the likes of Vettori.
They’re a dangerous side; they’re not that high up in the rankings for nothing. They gave us a cricketing lesson in how to approach one-day cricket: when you’re on top of a team, you make sure you nail them. And they pretty much did that. They stick to their plans really well. And as a team we were still developing in that direction.
Overall, do you look back on 2008 as a good year or a bad year – or a slightly strange year?
I guess it’s been a disappointing year in the fact that I resigned as captain and I didn’t score as many runs as I would have wanted. But the positives - at the back end of that summer, it was massive. I truly believe that during the 60-odd I scored – and the 20 knocking the runs off in the second innings – in the last Test against South Africa I played better than in the hundred I made in the third Test. I truly believe those last two innings of the summer were the best I’ve ever played. So to get there from where I was takes me into a new chapter, I think. So, a disappointing year – but not disastrous.
And your county, Durham, became champions – though you must have felt semi-detached from all that?
Yeah: to be honest, I had very little to do with it. The games I played I didn’t contribute too many runs. But it’s a phenomenal achievement for such a young county. I’m just so pleased for Don Robson and Geoff Cook: they had a dream and a belief in what they could build so to get that ultimate prize and to do it so soon is a great achievement.
Paul Collingwood uses Slazenger bats and equipment
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