It is champagne, perhaps, that runs most freely through his life story. When the late, great Martin Johnson, formerly of this parish, accused him, after one less-than-stellar display, of playing like a man who had undergone a “full-frontal lobotomy”, Gower was so enraged that he initiated legal action. But he settled for a more elegant compromise, arranging a visit to the John Hynard wine merchant in Leicester Market so that Johnson could say sorry with a magnum of Krug. Plus, there is the timeless description by John Arlott of Gower batting “as if he were driving down a country lane in June, with a blonde in the passenger seat and a bottle of good champagne in the boot”.
This feels an apt moment to study Gower’s reputation for insouciance. After all, the accusation most commonly levelled at this England team is that they are too loose, too seduced by their own hype, too prone to playing as though their minds are on the beach. Gower cannot resist a wry smile when I mention head coach Brendon McCullum’s remark about the team being “over-prepared”, despite being 2-0 down after two eight-wicket defeats. As England captain, he could convey the odd laissez-faire vibe himself, not least when, heading to Barbados in 1986 – and trailing 3-0 in a five-Test series against the West Indies – he used the phrase “optional nets”.
“About 15,000 had come to have a good time and watch the cricket, in either order,” he recalls. “They were rather irritated when we collapsed in a heap in three days. In the aftermath, fuelled by media reaction, the view was that we should be donning hair shirts, whipping ourselves with birch twigs, and doing nets. My view was the complete opposite, that we had to maintain a certain phlegmatic attitude. One column suggested I had been seen eating food in a restaurant. Well, starving myself to death would not have cured any of the symptoms we were experiencing.
“The main argument was, ‘Shouldn’t you be atoning for your sins by at least doing some practice?’ But the truth was the nets at the Kensington Oval were shot. They were in no condition to do anything useful. So, I came up with the term ‘optional nets’, which I thought was rather good. I’ve always believed in a little self-determination, responsibility for one’s own survival.” He pauses for a second, perhaps realising that it would be a stretch to pass this off as a public relations masterclass. “It didn’t help,” he concedes, “that I went windsurfing for a morning.”
