The Ashes Legends: Mike Gatting on top Down Under

Mike Gatting, 1984

As a youngster growing up in the 90s, the two most indelible memories are Australia whipping England every time they came up against each other, home and away, and Shane Warne‘s ball of the century. 2005 was a long way off and it was hard to even expect an English team to compete, let alone entertain thoughts of winning.

You would associate Mike Gatting with the Shakoor Rana streetfight, the rebel tour to South Africa or the aforementioned leg break which pitched outside leg to clip his off-stump. You would not think of him as an Ashes-winning captain in the mould of Brearley, Vaughan or Strauss. You would be surprised to find out that he was the last of England’s victorious leaders in Ashes campaigns in the last millennium – and that too in the lion’s den itself.

A batting average of 35.55 does not suggest so but Gatting was a natural with the bat. He loved taking on the Aussies too – 4 of his 10 Test centuries were against the old enemy. In England, he averaged 42.92 against them, thanks to the 1985 Ashes where he scored a half century or more in all of the first 5 Tests and finished the series with 527 runs at an average of 87.83 with 2 centuries. This after he had taken 7 years and 54 innings to get to his first Test century.

But Gatting was not done yet. After the ’85 Ashes, England were to go through a lean period where they played 11 Tests, losing 8 and winning none. A change of “Gower-ed” was required and Gatting was found to be the best in line. Not that Australia was the then best team of the world, but even in the Battle for the Wooden Spoon, England were considered to be second-best.

What England needed at that point of time was a streetsmart captain on the lines of Javed Miandad, who would take the battle to the opposition with his limited resources. And they got one in Michael William Gatting. Although it would be technically wrong to say they had limited resources in a lineup which consisted of the likes of Botham, Gower, Lamb and Edmonds.

What followed then was history – the last bit of good history England would have against Australia for a long, long time. Under the potent leadership skills of Gatting and Mickey Stewart (Alec’s father and England’s first official coach) and driven by early losses against state teams, tabloid teasers and taunts of being a team who could “only do three things wrong – bat, bowl and field”, England combined into a powerful close knit unit. If it was Botham’s power hitting in the first match along with the metronomic bowling skills of Dilley and Emburey which won them the five days, it was the opening pair of Broad and Athey who set the pace in the drawn second Test. In the third Test, Gatting scored his only century of the series – an even 100 – to add to his two fifties in the first two Test matches as England countered Australia’s total of 500 plus in the first innings. England were 1-0 up after three Tests but a lot could have happened in the two Tests to follow.

And the start was definitely not auspicious. Botham was already playing with an injury and 20 minutes before the toss on the first day of the 4^th Test, Dilley pulled up with a sore knee. The first choice to fill up Dilley’s slot was Neil Foster – a fast bowler with a prolific outswinger and the skill to swing the ball both ways. He was the only man to have snared Javed Miandad and Viv Richards for a duck in Test cricket and had taken 11 wickets on a subcontinental track in Madras to set up a rare series win for England in India two seasons back. The second choice was Gladstone Small – a Barbadian without a prominent neck who made it through the registration committee of Lord’s simply because they thought he was good enough never to play Test cricket. Not at all fast, the only thing Small did regularly was bowl no-balls. He had made a low-key debut against New Zealand four months back and, in better times for England, would actually have never played Test cricket.

Ian Botham

Much like Joginder Sharma should never have bowled that last over against Pakistan, Gatting took the big decision of choosing Small and the rest, as they say is, history. Small and a half-fit Botham took fifers in the first innings to effectively knock Australia out of the match and the series. Defeat in the last match (although an ominous portent of things to come over the next couple of decades) and the fact that he missed out on a second hundred were minor irritants for Gatting in what had otherwise been his best series in Australia – both as a captain and a batsman.

However, Shakoor Rana and the rebel series to South Africa were to follow and Gatting never touched the heady days of Down Under ever again. His Ashes form particularly suffered as he accumulated only 308 runs in his last 9 Tests against Australia at an average of 19.25. He did score a century though at Adelaide – his only score in double figures in that series – in what would be his penultimate Test match before signing off at Perth.

Gatting’s Ashes career could be summed up as a particularly good example of “what goes around comes around”. Stung by the series loss in ’86, Australia, under Border, began rebuilding as the likes of Dean Jones, David Boon, Geoff Marsh, Bruce Reid, Steve Waugh and Shane Warne stood up to be counted. It was fitting then, that the “ball of the century” – Warne’s first ball of the Ashes – took out Gatting.