Boldest swinger in town

It is a nice walk from the first green to the second tee at the Old Head golf course near Kinsale. First a path through tall meadow grass, until you reach a clearing and the ruins of a 500-year-old lighthouse.
Around the ruins are the smaller ruins of six lighthouse keepers’ cottages. Wending your way through these ghosts of the 1500s, you marvel at the beauty of the setting and the history on this little headland in the southwest of Ireland. The guy walking two paces ahead, a golf bag hanging from his right shoulder, is Andrew Strauss, captain of the England cricket team and he, too, has history on his mind. We are in the spring of his reign and much rests on the days of summer; he’s got the Aussies, the Ashes and the onus of leadership. As the men who manned the fires of the old lighthouse might have said, someone’s got to do it.
We play 18 holes on a magical golf course, one whose magic we love but can’t figure out. It is a reintroduction to humility, slightly surprising for Strauss because he strikes the ball beautifully and plays off a five handicap.
It bothers him not at all because golf is his relaxation. Cricket, on the other hand, is his business. Into this part of his life, he pours every drop of who he is: his ambition and application, his dedication and determination but most of all, his utter belief that he can perform at the highest level. Now, the responsibilities are greater. He has to be the leader, the judge of which way the wind blows; there for the others, today an arm over a shoulder, tomorrow the hard case.
You wonder how this reasonable and mild-mannered man will survive. Captain and opening batsman, his is the scalp the Aussies will want. So you ask the kind of question Brett Lee will ask. “The captaincy came with an issue: what to do about Kevin Pietersen’s sense of having been wronged. You could have said, ‘England need Pietersen, Pietersen needs England, let’s get on with it’. Or you could have decided you and Kevin needed to talk?”
“The latter,” he says. “Kevin and I sat down and talked about it a few times, mainly when I took over from him, which was a difficult situation for him, for me and for English cricket. There is a reason he is feeling hurt and he is justified in that. He felt very strongly that he was doing what was right for English cricket and I think he felt that he had been supported by the ECB and that suddenly the support disappeared.When I took over he said, ‘Straussy, you are going to have no problems from me, all I want to do is score as many runs as I can for England. That is all I’m interested in’.
“I had no problems with Kevin in the West Indies, none at all. Considering what he had been through, he was first-rate. There was a newspaper article that made it sound like he was unhappy and causing problems. That was very far from the case. He was just being honest at the time and maybe he should have thought a little bit more about how those comments might be perceived.
“You’re losing games, you’re a long way from home, you do get frustrated but whether the whole world needs to know how you’re feeling at that moment is another matter.”
NO MATTER where you stand on the Old Head golf course, it takes no more than a slightly mishit 7-iron to send your ball swimming with the fishes. Phil Mickelson shot 88 around here and he has talent. How talented is Strauss at cricket?
“On the way up, I never thought of myself as being that talented but I never felt that was going to stop me playing Test cricket. A lot of the guys I was competing with seemed to be a long way ahead of me, they looked better than me but they weren’t getting any more runs than me.”
If any young cricketer was going to be encouraged by numbers, it was Strauss. He thinks analytically, speaks matter-of-factly and if you want to know him, imagine him at the end of his fourth summer in Australia 12 years ago. He went there as a rookie, keen to learn from the Aussies and progressing all the time until he got a place at the English academy in Melbourne, where he worked under Rod Marsh.
At their end-of-term review, Marsh told Strauss he loved his attitude, wished more of England’s better young players were like him but, technically, there were issues that would hold him back. Four summers in Australia to end up the fourth-rated batsman at the English academy: what did that tell him? He drew just one conclusion; he wasn’t going to be fast-tracked.
He was born in Johannesburg 32 years ago and moved with his family to Melbourne when he was six. Eighteen months later, another job offer for his dad brought the family to England. His dad worked in insurance, at the executive end of that business, and the young Strausses were sent to public schools in England. Integration was easier for him than his sisters; they were older and trying to make their way in boarding school, he was young, still at day-school and being good at sport, he was quickly accepted.
Good at sport but by no means exceptional. In his time at Radley College, he was close to the best in his year at cricket and decent at rugby but few saw it as more than that. He read economics at Durham University, played cricket for the university and Middlesex’s second XI and weighed up job offers from the City.
There was no evidence to suggest he would ever play for his country. He’d never been picked for England’s underage teams and didn’t have the benefit of elite coaching. His future had seemed written in the cheques his parents made out to Radley College and Durham University. “I was good at maths, was doing economics at university and it was all lending itself to going down that route but it wasn’t something I was excited about,” he says.
“If there was a definitive moment, it came in my last year at university. I was studying and playing for Middlesex’s second team and I’d just had a shocking season. I was a naive public schoolboy playing with a lot of hard London boys, a kid who wasn’t used to failing. It hurt me and I gave up playing rugby, got myself fit and decided I would prove myself as a cricketer.”
First to the second-teamers at Middlesex and then, with his economics degree completed, he opted to give himself one year to see what he could do. He decamped to Australia, where he was an undistinguished performer but a brilliant pupil. “I wanted to play first-grade cricket but ended up playing second and third grade. They said, ‘Make enough runs, mate, you’ll move up a grade’. They didn’t care where I’d come from, who I was, what I’d done. Runs were all that mattered.
“It forced me to think about what I was doing, how it wasn’t enough to do what everyone else was doing. I had to start to take control of my career, find out what would make me better. It made me realise the importance of hunger and desire.” That first summer he met a young Australian actress, Ruth McDonald.
“From the first day, I loved Ruth’s outlook on life,” he says.
When did he know he loved her?
“As soon as I returned to England, I thought, ‘Okay, there is definitely something here because I am really missing her’.”
They have been together ever since. “Ruth has made some huge sacrifices, leaving her family and career behind and coming over here, spending lots of time on her own when I’m away touring with England. It is an incredible sacrifice on her part that we are together.”
At Middlesex, they could see he was very serious about his cricket but with his public school background, he knew little about the ways of the street. They tell a story about the day John Buchanan, who was then the coach, broke the squad into groups of four or five and asked each to come up with a plan for how the county should play one-day cricket. Strauss was his group’s spokesman and when he began speaking in his best Radley College accent, there was audible chuckling from the wise guys.
Strauss paused and, clearly annoyed, said: “I see no reason for humour,” which in his posh voice was about the funniest thing any of those players had ever heard and they went into spasms of uncontrollable laughter. To his credit, the orator allowed himself a smile. It didn’t take him long to learn, it never would. When Angus Fraser unexpectedly retired as Middlesex captain, the 24-year-old Strauss was parachuted into his place.
Those with the capacity to learn invariably come up with answers and Strauss progressed at Middlesex; a season with an average in the low 30s was followed by one in the high 30s, then mid-40s, and suddenly his batting average was 50 and England’s selectors wanted to know more about him.
“I was fortunate to have some good senior players to learn from,” he says. “Justin Langer, in particular, epitomised a lot of what I admire in a cricketer, the determination to make the best of himself. After long days in the field, he would go out and do 100 shuttle runs. Always 100 because that’s what he was about, 100 runs. No-one told him to do those runs.” Strauss discovered what worked for him. He kept a diary of his performances; partly to clarify things in his mind but also because he realised that by getting it onto a page, he cleared it from his mind.
Writing about difficulties helped in the search for solutions and he has become an avid reader of a certain type of book. “Books about people getting the best out of themselves. Motivational, analytical books. There is a huge amount you can learn from other people, provided you don’t blindly follow. You use the bits good for you and you never look for a magic formula because there isn’t one.”
He says he doesn’t feel the need to be captain but that it is a job he can do. “It brings me out of myself, forces me to perform better and it makes me more appreciative of the overall environment. Every England captain seems to get an initial boost and then the demands wear you down. So far it has had a positive effect on my game and I’m enjoying the off-field stuff.”
His relationship with the new coach, Andy Flower, is excellent. They are similar characters; straightforward, low-key and thoughtful men who like to go about things quietly. Too alike for England’s good? “I think that is a valid point of view. Certainly two different personalities driving each other forward can work but, in an overall sense, I think the advantages of working with someone you like outweigh the disadvantages. We have seen how destructive it can be when the coach and captain are not able to work together.”
At the beginning of this Ashes summer, are the team in the same place at the same point as they were four years ago?
“It is nice that you put it so politely. No, we’re definitely not. That is the reality. We’ve had a pretty tumultuous 12 months. There has been a huge upheaval. We don’t have that huge momentum going into the series that we had in 2005 but that doesn’t mean there is any less chance of us winning the Ashes.”
How come?
“If you were facing the 2005 Australian team, you would be more concerned but Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Langer and Hayden are all gone. I don’t want to knock the replacements because they have done well but with those five guys, Australia’s aura of invincibility went as well. They’re still a very good side, we’ll need to play very well and make use of our conditions to beat them but it is not unattainable, not by any means unattainable.”
You ask about England heroes from the 2005 team who are still playing but for one reason or another are not now in the squad. Ian Bell, Steve Harmison, Michael Vaughan.
“It is dangerous to live in the past, and I think it is one thing we have been guilty of since 2005. ‘Get those 11 players on the pitch and everything will be fine’. That’s just not the reality. What you’re hoping is that Steve bowls a lot of overs for Durham and takes lots of wickets, that Ian and Michael get lots of runs for their counties. It’s always up to the players themselves.”
This need for each player to take control of his own career is, perhaps, the most fundamental of Strauss’s principles. “I want the England players to be responsible for their own games, and for decisions they take out on the pitch, so that when we win, it is not about the captain or the coach. The more responsibility taken by the players, the healthier it is for the team.”
WE WERE dolefully reminiscing in the locker room about the severity of the beating inflicted by the Old Head on our respective golf games. In his entire life he had never lost so many balls. “You know,” he said, “I think we would have been much better if we’d had caddies.”
And what, I thought, about players taking responsibility for their own performance, not looking for excuses. Thought about it but remained silent.
His relationship with the new coach, Andy Flower, is excellent. They are similar characters; straightforward, low-key and thoughtful men who like to go about things quietly. Too alike for England’s good? “I think that is a valid point of view. Certainly two different personalities driving each other forward can work but, in an overall sense, I think the advantages of working with someone you like outweigh the disadvantages. We have seen how destructive it can be when the coach and captain are not able to work together.”
At the beginning of this Ashes summer, are the team in the same place at the same point as they were four years ago?
“It is nice that you put it so politely. No, we’re definitely not. That is the reality. We’ve had a pretty tumultuous 12 months. There has been a huge upheaval. We don’t have that huge momentum going into the series that we had in 2005 but that doesn’t mean there is any less chance of us winning the Ashes.”
How come?
“If you were facing the 2005 Australian team, you would be more concerned but Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Langer and Hayden are all gone. I don’t want to knock the replacements because they have done well but with those five guys, Australia’s aura of invincibility went as well. They’re still a very good side, we’ll need to play very well and make use of our conditions to beat them but it is not unattainable, not by any means unattainable.”
You ask about England heroes from the 2005 team who are still playing but for one reason or another are not now in the squad. Ian Bell, Steve Harmison, Michael Vaughan.
“It is dangerous to live in the past, and I think it is one thing we have been guilty of since 2005. ‘Get those 11 players on the pitch and everything will be fine’. That’s just not the reality. What you’re hoping is that Steve bowls a lot of overs for Durham and takes lots of wickets, that Ian and Michael get lots of runs for their counties. It’s always up to the players themselves.”
This need for each player to take control of his own career is, perhaps, the most fundamental of Strauss’s principles. “I want the England players to be responsible for their own games, and for decisions they take out on the pitch, so that when we win, it is not about the captain or the coach. The more responsibility taken by the players, the healthier it is for the team.”
WE WERE dolefully reminiscing in the locker room about the severity of the beating inflicted by the Old Head on our respective golf games. In his entire life he had never lost so many balls. “You know,” he said, “I think we would have been much better if we’d had caddies.”
And what, I thought, about players taking responsibility for their own performance, not looking for excuses. Thought about it but remained silent.
Source:The times