The Ashes Legends: Mike Gatting on top Down Under

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.