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If you were so inclined, and if he would let you in, it would be quite possible to chart the approximate course of David Gower's life simply by passing the boundary of his home office into rural Hampshire. Lord Gower, as he was affectionately dubbed by Nasser Hussein decades ago, has owned the same sprawling estate for over 30 years, and it's all here.
Various artifacts and works of art related to African wildlife are scattered around. The son of a district commissioner in the Colonial Service, Gower grew up for the first six years of his life in Dar es Salaam, in what is now Tanzania. He always dreamed of becoming a game warden before settling on the consolation prize of becoming captain of the England cricket team and one of its greatest batsmen.
Of course, the study contains many objects that reference this illustrious 28-year cricketing career. Gower's overall score of 8231 places him in fifth place on the list of highest Test scores by an English player. He also holds the Test record for most consecutive deliveries without registering a duck, 27 ahead of the next man. Perhaps it's a testament to the fact that this most cheerful and taciturn batsman rarely felt pressured.
There are family photographs showing his wife Torunn, 31, and their daughters Alex and Sammy. And at the far end of the room are two shiny objects. One of these was the Bafta award given to the Sky cricket team in 2014 for excellence in Ashes coverage. Like his friend Gary Lineker, with whom he shared hero status in Leicestershire and silver fox status in Housewife, Gower's television career is so distinguished that it has almost eclipsed his playing legacy.
David and his wife Torunn in 1998. Photo: Tom Wargacki/WireImage
But the other one, a miniature cricket bat in a platinum frame, is a parting gift. It was given to him by Sky in 2019 to mark a departure after more than 20 years that Gower neither asked for nor remotely deserved. He dropped out without consideration. “I loved my time there, but when the tides changed, Sky said, 'Okay, I think it's time to take a different look at our coverage.' This happened just before Covid. I wondered if broadcasting would ever resume…” he says.
Opportunities are now “fewer and farther away”, including casual work in Pakistan, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Australasia. “Every time something happens, I say, 'Oh, yes, please.' However, more than four years later, Sky announcing his submission clearly still stings a little. “I believe the simple truth about the collision of the worlds of television and sports is that those who put sports on television have changed their stance on what they want it to look like.”
From what, to what? “Well, from old to new. There has been a great push to include women in both commentating and performance in many sports. When I started at Sky in 1999, it was a male-dominated environment and the assumption was that if you were good at your job, you could stay there for a long, long time. I think 20 years is a pretty good time. I made it clear because they always get so upset…
“I loved it, I loved it, and I’m grateful for it. But I would prefer it to continue. When they set a time for it, I thought there's so much going on in the cricket world – Test cricket, franchises, ODIs – so just give me some Test cricket to look after and we'll all be happy: I have there is a job, there is a person who understands it, and there is experience… But no, I had to succumb to what we could call “the pressure of modernity.”
He was reluctant at first: “It’s a very natural reaction if someone tells you that what you’re passionate about doing and what you’re good at will stop for the simple reason that they just want to look a little different.” ” , but the answer was negative.”
When some of his peers suffered the same fate, they were blunt about the reasons (“Well, I'm 65 and a white male, so you know…” is how Mark Lawrenson interpreted his sacking as a BBC sports pundit). , but Gower is too cool for that.
His departure from Sky in 2019, after more than 20 years, was something Gower did not even remotely ask for did not deserve. : John Walton/Pennsylvania
He won't be pontificating on any isms today for fear of blowing up the headlines, but there can be no doubt that at 66 he is still as insightful as ever. “He's a tonic and he stands out even more in today's heavy, abusive TV landscape, a cavalier in a world of roundheads,” wrote this newspaper's TV sports columnist Alan Tyers after appearing on BT Sport last year. . “By taking his sport very seriously, [Gower] reminds us that we are allowed to enjoy it too.”
Instead of emphasizing humor and playful language as Gower did, soft but glossy reporting seems to be the preference these days. “I have always been inclined to use merit as a guide when it comes to recruiting young men or women… but in cricket alone there are some men commentating on this game – my game – who are not ordinary, and also some very good ones,” he says.
For example, I still have great respect for Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussein. Such people are excellent at what they do. Of course, I won’t name the rest of the names, but there will be a few hundred left, which by definition are now crap…”
Reclining on a cream sofa, wearing a pastel open-collared shirt and chinos, his fine white hair flowing back like cigar smoke, Gower is the picture of pure, elegant calm, looking at the interviewer in much the same way he looked at the lethal fast bowlers: with absolute calm, knowing exactly when to send the sitter to the border, and also when it is wiser to let the archer scream over his head untouched.
“It’s hard to be calmer than David Gower without falling into a coma,” Frances Edmonds once remarked. This carefree attitude showed both on and off the field. Apart from this, he has always enjoyed the finer things in life and carries himself with style even when he is being naughty. In 1990, he drove a rented Opel Vectra on a frozen lake near St. Moritz at night, crashed into thin ice and sank the car to the bottom of the lake (“Not a cheap night out” was his review); The following year, he rode the ground in a Tiger Moth biplane after being dismissed during a warm-up match on the Ashes Tour in Australia.
Young Gower in 1978, shortly before making his ODI and Test debut for England. Photo: Patrick Eagar/Popperfoto
In it, John Arlott described him as hitting a ball “as if he were driving down a country road in June with a blonde in the passenger seat and a bottle of good champagne in the boot.” It is forever associated with champagne. This may have been due to his settling a libel suit against journalist Martin Johnson by accepting Krug's case and then having a drink with him. In fact, Gower prefers burgundy. He once said that his cellar contains about 800 bottles from all over the world.
In the kitchen, “DD1” and “DD2” (meaning “beloved daughters”; both live in London, Alex is 30 and teaches yoga, Sammy is 27 and works as a management consultant) are pottering around, two days after a big New Year's party in a converted barn. across the road. The Gowers of the more mature harvest almost made it to midnight. “Then we told the young people: “Okay, let’s move on to you…” In the huge garden around us, two “sort of domestic guinea fowl” were shaking restlessly. Two of their peers had previously died because of foxes.
Gower is all too aware of his reputation as a man of almost horizontal and at the same time slightly hazy: he won the Oldie of the Year at the age of 36. An old Jameson's advertisement with a black and white portrait of Gower holding a glass above the line “Old Cocktail” followed by tiny font “(and David Gower)” hangs framed in the downstairs loo. This apparent lightness attracted fans and sometimes critics.
“I would resent accusations of indifference because it is a result of the perception of style. If you're perceived as relaxed, it's a very short step from not caring,” he says. “Catch-22 is the same thing I admire. In sports it is important to have an edge, but it is equally important to be relaxed enough.”
One such critic emerged just this week. In 1986, Gower captained England to a humiliating 5-0 defeat on a tour of the West Indies. Nearly four decades later, a scathing report from the then British High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Sir Martin Berthoud, to the Foreign Office in London was opened and deposited in the National Archives at Kew.
“The England team seemed reluctant to train between matches and was barely in shape,” Berthoud wrote on May 1, 1986. “Whatever the truth may be about allegations of questionable off-field activities, including drug use.”
A parting shot was fired towards Gower. “Some point to lackadaisical leadership from the captain and somewhat less dynamic management.” The story appeared in the newspapers this week, along with a photograph of Gower on a sun lounger wearing Speedo shorts. He previously said that “everything that could go wrong did go wrong, both on and off the field. We have let ourselves down badly.” But any dips in his personal performance on tour could be attributed to the fact that his mother died of asthma-related heart problems a week before the team left.
Gower was criticized for enjoying the sun while the team performed poorly. Photo: Patrick Eagar/Popperfoto
“I have no doubts about this,” he notes in a newly released statement. “At this stage, all criticism – justified or not – has been acknowledged and addressed. But oh well, it was a slow news day. Some poor old man died [Berthoud died at the age of 90 in 2022] who was High Commissioner 40 years ago, and he left some notes. So? It won't change my outlook on life or hurt my reputation. It’s much easier to go on TV, smile at it and prove to people that you’re still alive…”
He keeps many of his cricketing memories at arm's length. “I have some regrets, but you remember that people are human and therefore fallible. So if I look back at my career, you obviously remember the good things – like Raising Ashes [in 1985] – forget a lot of the mundane stuff in the middle and remember the really bad ones. This will haunt you from time to time.
“So if you have an honest self-reflection, you say, 'Well, I could have been a lot better that day, or that week, or that month,' in terms of mental preparation or all the things that help you succeed.” . . But you remember that there were other pressures and other emotions that sometimes became too strong. There were some really terribly dark times, a whole half season where I seemed to forget how to play the game. And it can be terribly depressing. All these things are human.”
Gower's childhood was not gilded, but much more difficult than many assume. Returning to England after Tanzania was granted independence, he won a scholarship to the King's School, Canterbury, where, aged 14, he played his first cricket XI, as well as his first rugby XV, before being released from his place in the latter. due to a severe case of apathy. Then, at 16, his father died after suffering for a long time from motor neurone disease.
“He had it for two or three years, at a key moment. So all he ever saw in me was a schoolboy scream. My mother took on the mantle of the supervising parent. Obviously losing a parent at any stage is difficult… My father was a better all-round athlete than me and I wonder what kind of spectator he would have been like. Nervous? Critical?”
Young Gower was told by his mother that his father had died before he quickly returned to boarding school. “Just keep going. In any case, by that time I had been gone for eight years. It was just a routine and it seemed normal. So you will do it.” He has always been a staunch defender of public schools, especially their role in cricket. “Yes, and I will continue to protect them, of course.”
I suggest that the combination of growing up overseas, being an only child, going to boarding school and losing a parent at such a crucial age can destroy or make a young person completely internalized. “Yes, I think you're right. Shyness was innate, internalism is an age-old thing that requires a lifetime of introspection to figure out how much to let out. But I overcame my shyness with the help of sports.”
He was “fairly academic”, which is putting it mildly given he was offered an interview at Oxford University, but cricket promised instant reward: £25 a week to play for Leicestershire as a junior professional. Three years later he played his first Test match for England, earning £1,000. This figure has increased in subsequent years, but still means nothing in today's salaries: England players are said to earn around £14,500 per Test, while Ben Stokes earned £1 in last year's Indian Premier League season. £6 million, Sam Curran £1.85 million and Harry Brook £1.3 million – all in addition to England signings and other sponsorships.
It is fair to say that Gower became passionate about Test cricket. The very first ball he faced in his 14-year Test career, against Pakistan in 1978, he batted four times. “Oh, what a magnificent recording,” Arlott remarked in the comments. Today, men of a certain age still glaze over and sigh deeply at the mere mention of Gower on cruise control mid-innings. It seems a crying shame that he wasn't allowed to bat in a tuxedo.
“On the best days you come out with an advantage, but you quickly settle down and have this inner buzz, this instinct. Because when you only have 0.45 seconds to do something, you don't have time to react. Your eyes are simply transmitting something to your brain: take a hit, duck, get away…”'I should exercise more, but I don't. I hate golf with an absolute passion.” Photo: Andrew Crowley
Cricket has changed in many ways over the last 30 years, not least in the amount of professional support provided to players, including psychological support. “For the most part, people like Ian [now, of course, the real Lord] Botham achieved success only through sheer self-confidence. Although even Ian admitted in private that he had moments of weakness, he never admitted it publicly, which is one of his strengths.
“In the mid-1980s, we could afford to hire a sports psychologist in Leicestershire for one week. Before that, you just had strong characters and a “pull your socks up” mentality. The battle for trust was decided by the captain. But the modern era has made it possible to monitor people just as carefully, both from their mental side and from their physical side.”
There is a lot of publicity about diversity and elitism in cricket, but Gower believes the sport allows him to meet people from all backgrounds and brings them together under the umbrella of a team. He mentions this as we move on to his work with Go Beyond, one of the Telegraph's four Christmas charities, which he has supported for decades. Gower has lived comfortably in rural Hampshire for half his life, but knows many are not so lucky.
“The idea behind the charity is so simple: there are people at home under enormous pressure, especially children and carers who have never left a city in their lives, and it gives them a week or two in the deepest, wildest English countryside possible. offer and show them for the first time a cow, or green grass, or a forest,” he says.
“It's not something I can identify with, but it's something you can pick up on very quickly and the feedback from people who have been helped by the charity is so impressive [children aged 8-13 referred to by the charity in 2022 teachers, social workers and other children's services professionals, 81 per cent said they had increased confidence as a result of their time at their centers in Cornwall and Derbyshire]. This is something that is endlessly worth supporting.”
Gower spends as much time as possible exploring nature. In addition to walking, he keeps fit by playing weekly 90-minute tennis matches. “I should exercise more, but I don’t. I hate golf with an absolute passion, and the feeling is mutual. For me, a moving ball is better.”
So Gower will continue to move – gracefully, of course. It will return to broadcast overseas later this month, which will make 2024 look clear. “I think you’ll find me browsing the Vacant Situations section of the paper,” he says. Whenever he appears on television, social media tends to be flooded with messages bemoaning his absence and demanding another spell. Sometimes he sees them. “And it’s nice. It justifies the feeling that there's still life in a not-so-old dog.”
Go Beyond is one of four charities supported by the Telegraph's Christmas Charity Appeal this year. The others are the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust, Marie Curie and Race Against Dementia. To donate, visit telegraph.co.uk/2023appeal or call 0151 284 1927
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