Mike Gatting OBE (England)
 | This hard-hitting, elegant batsman captained England just eight years after starting his career in 1977/78. He is one of only three English captains to win the Ashes in the last 20 years. Mike is president of the Lord’s Taverners, which donated 1.6 million pounds last year, and participates in many charity games and fund-raisers. |
Interview with Mike Gatting
Former England Test captain Mike Gatting generously gave of his time to be interviewed by phone by the Tyler Foundation 1st June 2006. Here is the edited text:
Tyler Foundation (TF): What have you been doing since you retired from cricket?
Mike Gatting (Gatt): When I finished playing, I started coaching for a couple of years at Middlesex as the first team coach. I left from there and started doing PR stuff with Npower who are the Test sponsors. I’m also on the MCC Committee… the general committee. Also, a cricket foundation. I was President of PCA, which is the Professional Cricketers Association. I also was working for a company called Belgravia Group. Also working for a thing called Red Letter Days, doing days around Lords. And I work for a company called Grand Cru travel which does cricket tours. So, I’ve kept myself busy. I also do work for BBC through Test Match Special and write a bit for the Sunday Observer.
TF: Wow! So you don’t have much going on these days??!!!
Gatt: (Laughs) Nothing much at all! And in between this, I play some cricket for the Taverners and do a few other things.
TF: Can you tell us a bit about the Lord Taverners?
Gatt: Indeed, they raise about 2 million pounds per year. We give away a lot to disadvantaged children who want to play sport… like those in wheel chairs. We have a big green bus – the Taverners Bus, and we give away one every week of the year. I’ve been playing with Taverners for the last 2 to 2 ½ years. I should come to the end of my term this April.
TF: So you enjoy doing work for charity?
Gatt: Yes, I found out that I want to try and put something back into the game. With the Cricket Foundation, for example, we’re doing a thing called “Chance to Shine”, and we’re trying to raise 25 million pounds at the moment, over a 5-year period, which the government is prepared to match. And this is all tied in with the ECB [English Cricket Board]. We’re trying to get cricket back into state schools. And what we’re doing is actually tying up 100 clubs each year with 6 schools, and those 6 schools will be tied up with that one club. Over a 10 year period, we’re hoping to get 1,000 clubs and 6,000 schools all tied up together to try to get cricket back into the state school system.
TF: Excellent! Speaking of your illustrious career, what are some of your most memorable moments?
Gatt: I think walking out at Lords for the first time. When you talk about playing cricket as a youngster, you go to Lords and watch the game, and all of a sudden I had a chance to play myself! Just being around the place is absolutely fabulous. Also walking out there for the first time and playing for Middlesex. Then captaining England at Lords. All those sorts of things. Actually phenomenal playing in an Ashes series obviously. Being captain and winning over in Australia. Playing against some great sides in cricket. Getting a first 100 in Bombay in 1985, which was a long time coming. All those sorts of things really.
TF: Those are great milestones! As a batsman, who were the bowlers that you had the most respect for or fear of? Looking on the Internet earlier, there was an article on vicious bowling, and they mentioned the Malcolm Marshall incident where you took one from him in 85/86!
Gatt: That’s right, and it was also a vicious pitch! They did have some vicious bowlers, though and some very fine bowlers. Sylvester Clark was probably one of the worst to face. Colin Croft was also very awkward, with that action he had. People like Michael Holding just for the pace. Allan Donald. Imran Kahn. Malcolm Marshall, Richard Hadlee. There were loads of them…. Patrick Patterson, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner… You can go through a whole list of about 20 or 30. It was a challenge really. You obviously had to have your wits about you. But once you got in, it was a great contest.
TF: And what about spinners?
Gatt: Well, with spinners again, I played against some very fine ones. Richie Benaud was a fine spinner. And people like Bedi and Chandrasekhar, Gleeson, Mushtaq. But I think probably again, we’ve been lucky through the 80’s and 90’s. I can’t believe there were better bowlers than Abdul Qadir, Shane Warne, Saqlain, Muralitharan.
Spinners… there’ve been some great ones around through the years we’ve been playing. And you’d have to say Shane Warne is probably the best of the lot. Abdul Qadir came close. Round about now Muralitharan is the only finger spinner who is causing a great deal of problems. Leg spin is just a totally different art. Left arm finger spin is a challenge and Bedi was one of the best along with Gleeson. Those guys were in a league of their own, and a challenge in a different way when you’ve got 2, 3, or 4 people around the bat. Especially in India when there were a lot of people appealing… it was quite a different challenge.
TF: On to captaincy. Your batting average when you weren’t captain was 32 and when you were captain was 44. How did captaincy affect your game?
Gatt: I had a good period 1985 through 1987. What I was doing before that was about 20 something, and I managed to get it up to sort of 40 at one stage and then the last few test matches which I played in 1993 through 1995 went back down to about 36 or 35. And I was captain 1986 through 1988.
TF: And great captains you’ve played against, or under, who comes to mind?
Gatt: Mike Brearley without doubt was the best captain I ever played with or against … Alan Border was learning at the time and was becoming a great captain. Sunil Gavaskar was captain of India when I played…. Imran Kahn with Pakistan… I did 3 trips to New Zealand and they had a different captain each time.
TF: Clive Lloyd?
Gatt: Lloydy! Every captain would have loved to have the team that Clive Lloyd had, or the bowling attack that Clive Lloyd had… It was like he threw one of them the ball and said “Right, you two bowl for an hour, and then we’ll change over and you two come on and bowl for an hour!!” He had no spinners of any real significance. I would say, when you speak of great captains, what Clive Lloyd had was a great team. What he was also very good at doing was motivating that team to stick together, because the West Indies are always a bit fragmented and I think one great thing that Clive Lloyd did was hold the team together … playing for the West Indies as a team. There was always a bit of infighting… And I think that made him a great captain. He had a great team, and as all captains will tell you, unless you’ve got a team, doesn’t matter how great a captain you are, you aren’t going to be able to do much if you’re playing against better teams.
TF: So what did Mike Brearley really do which distinguished him?
Gatt: Mike Brearley was a very good captain, and the thing is that he did have a very good team I have to say during the 70’s at Middlesex. And the other thing was he had a very young Ian Botham when he was around, and there were a lot of good cricketers around at the time. And if you look at his captaincy for England, it was great. I mean, his own batting form wasn’t great, but his captaincy of England was. He managed to get the respect of people like ‘Both’ [Ian Botham] who was a young tear away and also at the same time I think the rest of team because he actually treated people like human beings. He was very much a man of… he would go by a hunch occasionally. He would say, ‘I actually feel I want to do this’, and he wouldn’t be afraid to. He would break away from the usual stock standard field placings and try to do something different, or he would try to outthink someone…
Also, he did things, for example, involving myself. I was a very young man and I was probably looking a bit bored in the field and losing interest, or not concentrating as much as I should, and Mike Brearley said to me, “Gatt, what do you think we should do about the bowling?” I went “What?” And I thought “Crikey!” And, I had to think quickly!! All of a sudden, just in case Mike Brearley asked me again, I was concentrating on the game, But at the same time I’m thinking, “Crikey, he just asked me, a 19-year old, what we should be doing’. And he actually got me thinking I’m part of the team, and all of a sudden you get a different person playing for you. He was very good at doing that.
TF: Good story. And the upcoming Ashes series, what are your thoughts on that?
Gatt: I think England is going to do very well. I think if all our guys are fit, we will go down there and win again. We’ve got a couple of youngsters playing at the moment, Plunkett and Mahmood, who have done extremely well against Sri Lanka. …And we’re sort of building up a much broader, deeper pool of players, and I think we’ve probably got a better bunch of bowlers than the Australians have at the moment. And I think that’s what you need to win test matches.
TF: We noticed that a tremendous amount of interest has been generated through ticket sales today. It must be good to see that happening in test cricket?
Gatt: Apparently there were 170,000 tickets sold in the first hour when the Australians released them. And I think everybody wants to see this test series. It’s going to be quite phenomenal.
TF: Will you be going there?
Gatt: Yes, I’m going for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th test matches, with my travel company Grand Cru.
TF: Have you been to Japan before?
Gatt: No I haven’t. Obviously you read a lot about it, and it’s gonna be an interesting trip, just to see the wonderful culture they have over there. I’ve just been very interested to see just how different it is…. Better do some studying of what you should and shouldn’t do in Japan!! I think there are different sorts of rituals when you meet people and when you do business with people. It all seems quite interesting.
TF: We’ve been here over 10 years, and we’re still trying to figure it out!!
Gatt: (laughs)
TF: You were in Afghanistan recently with the MCC?
Gatt: No, we weren’t in Afghanistan. We actually played an Afghanistan team in Mumbai. We played at the Police Gymkhana ground and they had some very good cricketers indeed.
TF: Going on to umpiring, how do you think it’s changed in the modern game? What are your thoughts on umpiring at this point?
Gatt: I think the umpires in the modern game are under a huge amount of pressure and I think they are increasingly doing well. … They can always look at videos and see exactly what they need to, whereas before the umpires never used to watch videos, nor did cricketers. But all of a sudden, the video has come on board, and whereas batsmen can dissect their own game and can dissect others, the umpires can actually take a look at some of the decisions they’ve made during the day, and their own thoughts at the time, and actually look at the replays, and they can test themselves by taking footage from different matches. There are a lot of good things that have come out of it.
I think 2 things that have taken a lot of spice out of the game, are run outs and stumpings. I think they used to cause a huge amount of ‘Was it out? Wasn’t it out’? Now, they are very clear cut, or should I say 99.5% of the time they’re clear cut. Even a 3rd umpire sometimes get it wrong, I don’t know how they do it, but they do. But generally speaking I think the umpiring is good. The only thing I think I’d like to see is on the no-balls. Because I think it could be a bit more consistent. Some umpires are keen on no balling and some aren’t. But generally speaking, there is always room to improve and I think if somebody misses a few, they should get told, and have to smarten their act up.
TF: You know, we’ve got a really good group of players coming out to Japan including Clive Rice, from South Africa. What are your thoughts on him? He never played so much test cricket, but I think you played against him quite a lot when he was at Nottinghamshire?
Gatt: I think Ricey is a tremendous cricketer, I really do. He was one of those guys… When I played the centenary test match with MCC, he was in my side. Having someone like Clive Rice in your side … he was a very talented… There are so many great cricketers that unfortunately didn’t make the stage of test cricket but should have done. You look at people like Richards, Pollock, Barlow… you can keep going on and on, can’t you? Cricketers that we actually saw in the UK but you never saw in the test arena. So, from my point of view, Ricey would have been in there. He was probably a better batsman than a bowler. People like Ricey were great to play against because they were aggressive, and talented. He was the sort of cricketer that would help somebody if he wanted to improve. He didn’t give anything away, he was a pretty tough character, and he enjoyed his cricket.
TF: Well, Gatt, thanks for your thoughts and we look forward to seeing you in Japan!
Gatt: Thanks!