Only just caught up with this thread - the test side is shambolic. Its a test match not 20/20 ffs. Also read the Stoneman has not hit any runs so far this season whereas some other contenders have hit 100's or even double hundreds. weird.
Only just caught up with this thread - the test side is shambolic. Its a test match not 20/20 ffs. Also read the Stoneman has not hit any runs so far this season whereas some other contenders have hit 100's or even double hundreds. weird.
tbh, Stoneman didnt do badly in Oz - think his average was in thirties? which in comparison to the others wasnt bad.So they probably feel he deserves an extended run - selectors have stated that they dont want to go back to the situation in the 80's where the side choped and changed every Test.
*In the second of our extracts from James Taylor’s new autobiography, the former England batsman recalls his turbulent relationship with Kevin Pietersen - and how his Test debut in 2012 turned horribly sour.*
When the second Test against South Africa at Headingley came round, I would be England’s fifth number six of the year.
Jubilation doesn’t quite describe how it felt to receive that call-up. That’s not to say it wasn’t daunting, aged 22, to walk into a dressing room of that stature but Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann made it easier because I’d played with them at Nottinghamshire, and Matt Prior also took me under his wing.
I went out with him, Jimmy and Broady the night before the game. Somewhat foolishly, I tried to go drink for drink with them during the meal. Three or four pints was always enough for me to feel it the next day and sure enough, with South Africa batting first, as I walked onto the field, I duly noted the telltale signs – dry mouth, bit tired. I’d had a couple more than I needed to. How had I managed that?
As it turned out, I had time to recover. South Africa batted for the best part of the first two days, amassing 419. With a few rain breaks it was afternoon on day three when Ian Bell was out cheaply. Then there was that familiar flurry of activity – grabbing the gear, checking I’d got everything, people wishing me luck.
Stepping out on to the Headingley turf, I wondered what sort of reception I was going to receive. I shouldn’t have worried. The cheers of the crowd were all around me. There was also, I think, a definite acknowledgment of my height, especially the juxtaposition between my 5ft 7ins and the 6ft 4ins Kevin Pietersen who I joined at the wicket.
I touched gloves with Kev. He didn’t give me much. “Enjoy it,” he told me. “Do your thing.”
I didn’t really know KP other than as a running joke at Nottinghamshire, where he’d played a few years previously, an association that ended somewhat acrimoniously when then captain Jason Gallian threw his kit off the balcony on the last day of the season. Whenever KP’s name was mentioned in the Nottinghamshire dressing room, everybody would snigger and laugh. Mick Newell, who was at the club at the time of KP’s contract, obviously wasn’t a massive fan because of the turmoil his presence had caused.
I try not to have preconceived ideas about people and so always intended on giving KP a chance. But the early encounters hadn’t been good. When England played Sri Lanka the previous summer, I’d been called up to have a net – a chance for the coaches to see what I was about. I had a session with Graham Gooch and KP was having a net at the same time.
“Hi KP,” I said, “how are you doing?”
“What are you doing here?”
Nothing else, just that.
“I’m just here having a net with Goochy.”
He didn’t say anything else and walked off. The same thing happened at a training session with the England lads. Everyone else came up to me – “How are you doing, Titch?” KP ignored me. He said nothing. It was bizarre.
Whether he was trying to intimidate me and be the big man, or it was him feeling threatened by me, I don’t know. But this was before I’d even met him properly or shared a dressing room. He didn’t know me from a bar of soap but that was how he chose to be.
They say “never meet your heroes”, and if ever there was a classic case, KP was it. I loved the way he played. One of my goals was to play alongside him. But on both occasions I came away thinking, “What a t---.”
‘I found KP’s outburst embarrassing’
Right now, though, here in the middle at Headingley, I was more concerned with my own ability, my own character. I had always had my doubters; now was the time to shut them up, to show on the biggest stage what I was about.
The South Africans must have been thinking, “Who is this little guy? What is he doing?” I played at a wide one first up, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but any nerves were settled when I got off the mark with a textbook off drive four from the spinner Imran Tahir. That was pretty much my plan for that whole innings: be patient against the seamers if I needed to and be more attacking against the spinners.
I batted fairly cautiously as we built a partnership, reflecting the position of the game, but KP was having none of that. He provided an amazing display of hitting at the other end, awesome stroke play of a kind that only he was capable.
As the other batsman, it’s not like you can stand and stare dumbstruck and say “Oh my God!”, but make no mistake, I was enjoying watching. It was a proper fireworks display, to the extent that a little bit of me was thinking, “What are you doing, mate? We need to keep our heads down and keep batting!”
But he was just whacking them, playing the innings of his life. Any normal person would never have batted like that but this was KP – he did things as he wanted to do them, and he succeeded.
Contrary to the sheer wizardry of KP’s flashing bat, his conversation wasn’t quite so tantalising. As the partnership progressed, he didn’t talk down to me but was super arrogant. Facing Tahir, KP sauntered down the wicket. “I’m just debating how far to hit this next one,” he said.
We put on a 147-run partnership, which gave the initiative back to England, but I don’t think he really considered me part of it. A few days later I heard that, during the innings, he allegedly commented that I wasn’t going to be on the highlights that night.
His low opinion of me extended into the dressing room. That same day, he apparently slagged me off to other players for not being good enough and batting too slow. At the time I didn’t know anything about it. I was just interested in keeping my head down and getting on with my first Test.
In the end, the game petered out into a draw, but while the Test may have been over, the pantomime was about to start. KP was at the press conference, and he used it to deliver an almighty whine about how tough it was for him as an England cricketer and how the next Test at Lord’s could be his last. “It’s not easy being me in this dressing-room,” he said.
I was with Broady, Jimmy and Matt when his outburst appeared on the television. My instant reaction was I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and it was a reaction shared by everyone else.
That press conference should have been all about KP scoring one of the greatest knocks of all time. Instead it was all “Look at me, feel sorry for me.” It was just awful, exactly what England didn’t need. The state of our dressing room, as seen through one person’s eyes, had just been broadcast to millions.
It transpired that KP thought a spoof Twitter account in his name was being operated from within the dressing room, or with the blessing of certain players, but whatever the rights and wrongs of KP’s position, it’s an absolute given in any team that what happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room. Why would you want to air your dirty laundry in public? He clearly felt empowered by the fact he’d scored those runs, but his comments were never going to paint him in a great light. After all, there was one very obvious question that people were bound to ask: “Why are they doing this to you, Kevin? There must be a reason.”
It was hard to take in. Playing for England had been my absolute dream. Now, having done it, my overriding thoughts were utter disbelief as to how Kevin had behaved in that press conference. Put simply, I found his antics embarrassing.
'I couldn’t care less about him - I don’t respect him’
The first I heard that KP had been saying things about me was a few days later when Rhian Evans, the ECB media manager, rang me. I was driving when I saw her name come up on the dashboard.
“Hi Titch, are you all right?”
I was imagining it was just a routine call about a press interview. I was wrong.
“I just thought I’d let you know there’s going to be an article coming out claiming KP had a go at you when he came off the pitch.”
“Oh, it’s all right,’ I said. “It’ll just be the media. They’ll have made it up.”
I put the phone down and genuinely didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even read the story, I was that unbothered about it. Even if there was something in it, I didn’t care because I didn’t respect KP due to the way he’d behaved around me. The fact I didn’t seek out or read the piece illustrates where I was when it came to Kevin Pietersen.
It was inevitable, though, that I’d find out what he’d been up to. Essentially, even before the game had even started, he was telling the coaches and other players I shouldn’t be in the team, and then that continued during the game itself, despite the fact that my support at the other end had allowed him to play one of the greatest knocks of his career. It explained his attitude prior to the game. While others were welcoming me, helping me settle in, Kev was giving me nothing.
Before the game, a load of new bats arrived for me at the ground from my sponsor adidas. They were top quality, the best I’d ever had. In fact, they would be some of the better bats in the dressing room. Kevin was also sponsored by adidas. He looked at them and gave them back to me. He said nothing. He gave me nothing, full stop.
Kevin admits his opinion of me in his book. “His dad was a jockey and James is built for the same gig.” Classy.
He admits even as he was driving to the game that he rang the England coach Andy Flower and asked, “How on earth have you picked Taylor?” He justifies this opinion by stating, “The poor guy has never been seen again … so I was wrong about Taylor, was I?”
Well, yes mate, you were. And that’s where I am with Kevin Pietersen and his view of me – it makes me laugh. If Andrew Strauss had said those things about me, it would have been awful. It would have really affected me, because I had so much respect for him.
Kevin Pietersen? I couldn’t care less because I don’t respect him. Kevin is a big fish and what came out of his mouth made about as much sense.
No one in the actual England set-up ever really spoke to me about what Kevin had said and done. When it came to the players, many of whom had shared a dressing room with KP for years and knew what he was like, they had one piece of advice: “Ignore it.”
I don’t know who in the England dressing room had leaked Kevin’s antics to the papers, but one thing was for sure, they did it because they’d had enough of him.
I’m not blind to how KP must have felt. I can see that it would be a horrible position for him to be in, to feel alone in the dressing room, but it was a position he’d brought on himself. His presence had long been divisive and had caused serious disjointedness to the side. Add in a tough series against South Africa, losing the first Test heavily, the lads being tired, and one massive ego stamping around in the middle of it all and it was a powder keg just waiting to be ignited.
The England dressing room at that time wasn’t in a good place. KP at that point just didn’t seem a team player. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I first experienced being in the same team as him. I couldn’t believe how he behaved or how he didn’t do anything. The scales had well and truly fallen from my eyes.
'Cut Short' by James Taylor is published on June 1 by White Owl Books, price £20.
There you go. Text from second extract in full, over two posts.
Thanks
KP might be a cock, but in a team sport you have to find a way of keeping such individuals on side. We might have better team spirit without KP, but our batting has been shocking for years now
*In the first of our exclusive extracts from his autobiography 'Cut Short', former England batsman James Taylor relives the day in April 2016 a routine pre-season match at Cambridge University ended his career - and left him fighting for his life.*
In the grand scheme of things, I would never have imagined that a University match against Cambridge would mark the end of my career and dictate my entire future life.
It was the morning of the second day, and we were going through our normal routine at Fenner’s, playing volleyball football and a few catches and throws.
I’d thrown a few balls when I started to feel a little bit anxious. My shoulder was sore – a hangover from the World Cup a year previously where it had been causing me anxiety about throwing. Now I was anxious again.
I walked off to the changing rooms. My heart was now going what felt a million miles an hour. I could actually see my chest moving, my skin expanding and contracting, fit to burst. It looked so unnatural. It made me feel sick to see it.
By the time I got into the changing rooms, I was really starting to sweat. It was a freezing cold April day but rivers were dripping from my face. I was incredibly uncomfortable, a stranger in my own skin.
I lay down on the physio bed but I was really struggling to breathe. I was gasping for air, sucking it in. I was feeling so, so sick. I made it into the toilet and stuck my head in the pan, desperately trying to vomit. Nothing would come.
Nottinghamshire physio Jon Alty dragged me out. It hadn’t been flushed and was no place for anyone to be putting their face. I was trying to tell him about my heart but I could barely breathe. I just wanted to pass out. That would be a way of escaping it. I really did think I was on the way out.
I went next door into the cold dark changing rooms and as I lay down on the hard wooden slats of the benches, Alty gave me oxygen and checked my pulse by hand and also put a pulse oximeter on the end of my finger to check my vital signs. My pulse reading was up from normal but not off the scale. But to me this wasn’t equipped to deal with whatever was happening in my body. “F--- what it says,” I said, “feel my heart!”
By lunchtime, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to play and it was thought best if I headed home with our overseas player, Jackson Bird, who wasn’t playing thtat day.
About 25 minutes out from Nottingham, I woke up with a start. “S---. I’ve got no house keys.” I rang my mum, who only lived half-an-hour away and had a spare set, and told her I’d meet her at Trent Bridge.
The only people at the ground were the office ladies, and, lovely as they were, I didn’t really feel like going to say hello to them. “Hi! I’m dying! How’s things with you?”
I just needed to get inside the pavilion and get my head down again. I curled up at the bottom of the stairs to the lunch room. As I lay there, I must have made for a piteous sight. Just a few weeks earlier I’d been scoring runs and taking miracle catches for England in South Africa. Now I was a hunched, grey, hollow figure on the verge of death.
My mum had never negotiated the corridors of the pavilion but somehow found me in a ball at the foot of those stairs. She was shocked to see how ill I was and, like any mum, her first instinct was to look after me. She took me home, just half a mile up the road, and I staggered through the door before lying down on the settee.
By 4pm, I was feeling progressively worse and getting pains down my left arm. Looking back, it’s obvious – it’s the sign of a heart attack. Not me, though. My remedy was to try to give myself a bit of a massage. It didn’t last long. I knew I had to go and be sick. I made it to the bottom of the stairs and shuffled up on my hands and knees. I crawled into the toilet and was sick repeatedly, five times.
I shouldn’t have been alive at that stage. With my body concentrating all it had on my vital organs, my stomach was already giving up. I felt so terrible – pain, nausea, my heart smashing out of my chest – that going back downstairs wasn’t an option. I crawled into bed and pulled the duvet over me.
My girlfriend - now wife - Jose had come home by this point, and she came up to me and rang the doctor. Jose described my symptoms and he didn’t hesitate. “Take him straight to hospital. Don’t wait for an ambulance.”
Mum dropped us outside A&E and Jose and I walked up to reception. She was speaking to the receptionist, but I knew I was going to be sick again. I staggered into the toilet, and was sick repeatedly until nothing more could come.
As I came out, a doctor saw me. By this time I was grey. She immediately took me and Jose into a little assessment room. She lifted my top, put pads and wires on my chest and took a look at the screen. I didn’t see her face but I knew something fairly remarkable was happening.
More doctors were called and when they saw the results, that was it – they took me straight through to where the real action happens, a more serious set-up, a big cubicle – resus. They sat me up and immediately hooked me up to a heart monitor.
The sound it made was like nothing you’ll ever hear. A cavalcade of beeps, fast ricocheting around the room. It was the sound of my heart, charging, careering, thundering. A runaway train trapped within my ribs. The machine said it was pounding at 265 beats a minute. The doctors looked at one another. Strangely, it’s the little things you notice at a time like that, and the expression on their faces – shock, disbelief – is something I won’t forget.
The blood results came back at record speed. When the heart is under stress it releases an enzyme called troponin. Under no stress, the amount of troponin in the blood would be zero. My level was 42,000. Unsurprisingly, at that point they concluded I’d had a severe heart attack.
First priority was to get my heart out of its abnormal rhythm. “There are two options,” they told me. “We pump you full of drugs and hopefully that works, and if it doesn’t, we put you to sleep and shock you out of it.”
I didn’t like the sound of the second one. “Well, if the drugs work,” I told Jose, “there’ll be no need to shock me.” And yet after the drugs were administered, nothing happened. And all the time that awful sound of the machine in the corner racing.
In the end, they called the anaesthetist to put me to sleep but, seconds before they arrived, my heart rate plunged from 265 to 60. The machine was making just a steady ‘beep, beep, beep’. It was the best noise I’d ever heard.
And then I was sick everywhere. My heart might have been back to ‘normal’ but the rest of my body was screwed. It had put everything into saving my heart and other areas had suffered. I was a matter of seconds from my kidneys failing and my entire digestive system had pretty much stopped.
Medical personnel were swarming in from all sides to make further investigations. One of them asked, “How did you get in here?”
“We just walked in.”
“You walked in here?” I don’t think she thought we were thinking straight. “That’s impossible. You couldn’t have. Not like this.”
One of the doctors stood there open-mouthed. They asked how long I had been suffering.
“It started about half past 10 this morning.”
“What?”
It was utter astonishment. “What you’ve been through is the equivalent of running six marathons.”
My sheer fitness had saved me. Anyone else wouldn’t have had a chance.
Emotionally, I’d kept everything in check for the whole day. As I lay down to sleep, though, it all became too much. The day, my heart, the future – there were so many unanswered questions, so much to deal with. It was the first time I’d ever felt real fear. Raw unbridled fear.
Jose lay next to me and I held her close. “This isn’t good,” I whispered. “When are we going to get out of here?” She no more had the answer than I did. Her life had been tipped upside down, shaken around, and she’d come hurtling into this strange new world just the same as me.
“We’ve still got me and you,” she hugged me, “and that’s all that matters.”
'Cut Short' by James Taylor is published on June 1 by White Owl Books, price £20.
He's got a decent ghostwriter but it does feel like most of it has cone straight from him. Good insight.
I don't think KP is as big a bastard as most do, but he's undoubtedly developed a hero complex and a heightism issue (probably a manifestation of insecurity - he's indisputably tall so uses this as a weapon of defence)
Nothing I've read from Taylor has changed my opinion of KP. But then it really couldn't have got any lower anyway. The really great players have a touch of class on and off the pitch.
Andrew Strauss is taking time off while his wife, Ruth, undergoes the next stage of her cancer treatment. Hope this leads her to having a full recovery.
I've heard that next years Ashes will straddle the World Cup. Has anyone else heard this? Surely it can't be true? What a kick in the teeth for Test cricket if it is.
The ICC World Cup runs from 30th May to 14th July 2019.
The next Ashes series will kick off cricket’s long-awaited first World Test Championship next year as attempts to revitalise the game’s oldest format begin in earnest.
The ICC World Cup runs from 30th May to 14th July 2019.
The next Ashes series will kick off cricket’s long-awaited first World Test Championship next year as attempts to revitalise the game’s oldest format begin in earnest.
The cricket WC takes longer than the football one! I enjoyed the Champions Trophy which we hosted last year, as it was much shorter and a tighter competition as a result.
Anyone been to Lords yet this year? What is the draught bitter? Is it still Marstons? I hope so. I know the ECB have done a deal with Green King and that is the beer at The Oval now, hopefully the MCC make their own decisions and have kept Marstons.
Anyone been to Lords yet this year? What is the draught bitter? Is it still Marstons? I hope so. I know the ECB have done a deal with Green King and that is the beer at The Oval now, hopefully the MCC make their own decisions and have kept Marstons.
Doesn't the Oval also have non Greene King beer as well, as they have those little portable stalls which sell micro/craft real ale.
Currently in Paddington. Raining. Have tickets for days 1-4 although currently at work ready for the dash up the road when the start time is confirmed.
Currently in Paddington. Raining. Have tickets for days 1-4 although currently at work ready for the dash up the road when the start time is confirmed.
If I give you my seat numbers could you go and towel them dry for me, as I am in row 3 of the grandstand ;-)
There really is nothing like Lords on the first morning of a test match ..if somebody sat me in the pavilion with constant food alcohol sunshine and cricket I don't think I'd move again....ever
Anyone been to Lords yet this year? What is the draught bitter? Is it still Marstons? I hope so. I know the ECB have done a deal with Green King and that is the beer at The Oval now, hopefully the MCC make their own decisions and have kept Marstons.
Comments
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/44176355
Not good news for England.
When the second Test against South Africa at Headingley came round, I would be England’s fifth number six of the year.
Jubilation doesn’t quite describe how it felt to receive that call-up. That’s not to say it wasn’t daunting, aged 22, to walk into a dressing room of that stature but Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann made it easier because I’d played with them at Nottinghamshire, and Matt Prior also took me under his wing.
I went out with him, Jimmy and Broady the night before the game. Somewhat foolishly, I tried to go drink for drink with them during the meal. Three or four pints was always enough for me to feel it the next day and sure enough, with South Africa batting first, as I walked onto the field, I duly noted the telltale signs – dry mouth, bit tired. I’d had a couple more than I needed to. How had I managed that?
As it turned out, I had time to recover. South Africa batted for the best part of the first two days, amassing 419. With a few rain breaks it was afternoon on day three when Ian Bell was out cheaply. Then there was that familiar flurry of activity – grabbing the gear, checking I’d got everything, people wishing me luck.
Stepping out on to the Headingley turf, I wondered what sort of reception I was going to receive. I shouldn’t have worried. The cheers of the crowd were all around me. There was also, I think, a definite acknowledgment of my height, especially the juxtaposition between my 5ft 7ins and the 6ft 4ins Kevin Pietersen who I joined at the wicket.
I touched gloves with Kev. He didn’t give me much. “Enjoy it,” he told me. “Do your thing.”
I didn’t really know KP other than as a running joke at Nottinghamshire, where he’d played a few years previously, an association that ended somewhat acrimoniously when then captain Jason Gallian threw his kit off the balcony on the last day of the season. Whenever KP’s name was mentioned in the Nottinghamshire dressing room, everybody would snigger and laugh. Mick Newell, who was at the club at the time of KP’s contract, obviously wasn’t a massive fan because of the turmoil his presence had caused.
I try not to have preconceived ideas about people and so always intended on giving KP a chance. But the early encounters hadn’t been good. When England played Sri Lanka the previous summer, I’d been called up to have a net – a chance for the coaches to see what I was about. I had a session with Graham Gooch and KP was having a net at the same time.
“Hi KP,” I said, “how are you doing?”
“What are you doing here?”
Nothing else, just that.
“I’m just here having a net with Goochy.”
He didn’t say anything else and walked off. The same thing happened at a training session with the England lads. Everyone else came up to me – “How are you doing, Titch?” KP ignored me. He said nothing. It was bizarre.
Whether he was trying to intimidate me and be the big man, or it was him feeling threatened by me, I don’t know. But this was before I’d even met him properly or shared a dressing room. He didn’t know me from a bar of soap but that was how he chose to be.
They say “never meet your heroes”, and if ever there was a classic case, KP was it. I loved the way he played. One of my goals was to play alongside him. But on both occasions I came away thinking, “What a t---.”
‘I found KP’s outburst embarrassing’
Right now, though, here in the middle at Headingley, I was more concerned with my own ability, my own character. I had always had my doubters; now was the time to shut them up, to show on the biggest stage what I was about.
The South Africans must have been thinking, “Who is this little guy? What is he doing?” I played at a wide one first up, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but any nerves were settled when I got off the mark with a textbook off drive four from the spinner Imran Tahir. That was pretty much my plan for that whole innings: be patient against the seamers if I needed to and be more attacking against the spinners.
I batted fairly cautiously as we built a partnership, reflecting the position of the game, but KP was having none of that. He provided an amazing display of hitting at the other end, awesome stroke play of a kind that only he was capable.
As the other batsman, it’s not like you can stand and stare dumbstruck and say “Oh my God!”, but make no mistake, I was enjoying watching. It was a proper fireworks display, to the extent that a little bit of me was thinking, “What are you doing, mate? We need to keep our heads down and keep batting!”
But he was just whacking them, playing the innings of his life. Any normal person would never have batted like that but this was KP – he did things as he wanted to do them, and he succeeded.
Contrary to the sheer wizardry of KP’s flashing bat, his conversation wasn’t quite so tantalising. As the partnership progressed, he didn’t talk down to me but was super arrogant. Facing Tahir, KP sauntered down the wicket. “I’m just debating how far to hit this next one,” he said.
We put on a 147-run partnership, which gave the initiative back to England, but I don’t think he really considered me part of it. A few days later I heard that, during the innings, he allegedly commented that I wasn’t going to be on the highlights that night.
His low opinion of me extended into the dressing room. That same day, he apparently slagged me off to other players for not being good enough and batting too slow. At the time I didn’t know anything about it. I was just interested in keeping my head down and getting on with my first Test.
In the end, the game petered out into a draw, but while the Test may have been over, the pantomime was about to start. KP was at the press conference, and he used it to deliver an almighty whine about how tough it was for him as an England cricketer and how the next Test at Lord’s could be his last. “It’s not easy being me in this dressing-room,” he said.
I was with Broady, Jimmy and Matt when his outburst appeared on the television. My instant reaction was I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and it was a reaction shared by everyone else.
That press conference should have been all about KP scoring one of the greatest knocks of all time. Instead it was all “Look at me, feel sorry for me.” It was just awful, exactly what England didn’t need. The state of our dressing room, as seen through one person’s eyes, had just been broadcast to millions.
It transpired that KP thought a spoof Twitter account in his name was being operated from within the dressing room, or with the blessing of certain players, but whatever the rights and wrongs of KP’s position, it’s an absolute given in any team that what happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room. Why would you want to air your dirty laundry in public? He clearly felt empowered by the fact he’d scored those runs, but his comments were never going to paint him in a great light. After all, there was one very obvious question that people were bound to ask: “Why are they doing this to you, Kevin? There must be a reason.”
It was hard to take in. Playing for England had been my absolute dream. Now, having done it, my overriding thoughts were utter disbelief as to how Kevin had behaved in that press conference. Put simply, I found his antics embarrassing.
The first I heard that KP had been saying things about me was a few days later when Rhian Evans, the ECB media manager, rang me. I was driving when I saw her name come up on the dashboard.
“Hi Titch, are you all right?”
I was imagining it was just a routine call about a press interview. I was wrong.
“I just thought I’d let you know there’s going to be an article coming out claiming KP had a go at you when he came off the pitch.”
“Oh, it’s all right,’ I said. “It’ll just be the media. They’ll have made it up.”
I put the phone down and genuinely didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even read the story, I was that unbothered about it. Even if there was something in it, I didn’t care because I didn’t respect KP due to the way he’d behaved around me. The fact I didn’t seek out or read the piece illustrates where I was when it came to Kevin Pietersen.
It was inevitable, though, that I’d find out what he’d been up to. Essentially, even before the game had even started, he was telling the coaches and other players I shouldn’t be in the team, and then that continued during the game itself, despite the fact that my support at the other end had allowed him to play one of the greatest knocks of his career. It explained his attitude prior to the game. While others were welcoming me, helping me settle in, Kev was giving me nothing.
Before the game, a load of new bats arrived for me at the ground from my sponsor adidas. They were top quality, the best I’d ever had. In fact, they would be some of the better bats in the dressing room. Kevin was also sponsored by adidas. He looked at them and gave them back to me. He said nothing. He gave me nothing, full stop.
Kevin admits his opinion of me in his book. “His dad was a jockey and James is built for the same gig.” Classy.
He admits even as he was driving to the game that he rang the England coach Andy Flower and asked, “How on earth have you picked Taylor?” He justifies this opinion by stating, “The poor guy has never been seen again … so I was wrong about Taylor, was I?”
Well, yes mate, you were. And that’s where I am with Kevin Pietersen and his view of me – it makes me laugh. If Andrew Strauss had said those things about me, it would have been awful. It would have really affected me, because I had so much respect for him.
Kevin Pietersen? I couldn’t care less because I don’t respect him. Kevin is a big fish and what came out of his mouth made about as much sense.
No one in the actual England set-up ever really spoke to me about what Kevin had said and done. When it came to the players, many of whom had shared a dressing room with KP for years and knew what he was like, they had one piece of advice: “Ignore it.”
I don’t know who in the England dressing room had leaked Kevin’s antics to the papers, but one thing was for sure, they did it because they’d had enough of him.
I’m not blind to how KP must have felt. I can see that it would be a horrible position for him to be in, to feel alone in the dressing room, but it was a position he’d brought on himself. His presence had long been divisive and had caused serious disjointedness to the side. Add in a tough series against South Africa, losing the first Test heavily, the lads being tired, and one massive ego stamping around in the middle of it all and it was a powder keg just waiting to be ignited.
The England dressing room at that time wasn’t in a good place. KP at that point just didn’t seem a team player. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I first experienced being in the same team as him. I couldn’t believe how he behaved or how he didn’t do anything. The scales had well and truly fallen from my eyes.
'Cut Short' by James Taylor is published on June 1 by White Owl Books, price £20.
KP might be a cock, but in a team sport you have to find a way of keeping such individuals on side. We might have better team spirit without KP, but our batting has been shocking for years now
*In the first of our exclusive extracts from his autobiography 'Cut Short', former England batsman James Taylor relives the day in April 2016 a routine pre-season match at Cambridge University ended his career - and left him fighting for his life.*
In the grand scheme of things, I would never have imagined that a University match against Cambridge would mark the end of my career and dictate my entire future life.
It was the morning of the second day, and we were going through our normal routine at Fenner’s, playing volleyball football and a few catches and throws.
I’d thrown a few balls when I started to feel a little bit anxious. My shoulder was sore – a hangover from the World Cup a year previously where it had been causing me anxiety about throwing. Now I was anxious again.
I walked off to the changing rooms. My heart was now going what felt a million miles an hour. I could actually see my chest moving, my skin expanding and contracting, fit to burst. It looked so unnatural. It made me feel sick to see it.
By the time I got into the changing rooms, I was really starting to sweat. It was a freezing cold April day but rivers were dripping from my face. I was incredibly uncomfortable, a stranger in my own skin.
I lay down on the physio bed but I was really struggling to breathe. I was gasping for air, sucking it in. I was feeling so, so sick. I made it into the toilet and stuck my head in the pan, desperately trying to vomit. Nothing would come.
Nottinghamshire physio Jon Alty dragged me out. It hadn’t been flushed and was no place for anyone to be putting their face. I was trying to tell him about my heart but I could barely breathe. I just wanted to pass out. That would be a way of escaping it. I really did think I was on the way out.
I went next door into the cold dark changing rooms and as I lay down on the hard wooden slats of the benches, Alty gave me oxygen and checked my pulse by hand and also put a pulse oximeter on the end of my finger to check my vital signs. My pulse reading was up from normal but not off the scale. But to me this wasn’t equipped to deal with whatever was happening in my body. “F--- what it says,” I said, “feel my heart!”
By lunchtime, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to play and it was thought best if I headed home with our overseas player, Jackson Bird, who wasn’t playing thtat day.
About 25 minutes out from Nottingham, I woke up with a start. “S---. I’ve got no house keys.” I rang my mum, who only lived half-an-hour away and had a spare set, and told her I’d meet her at Trent Bridge.
The only people at the ground were the office ladies, and, lovely as they were, I didn’t really feel like going to say hello to them. “Hi! I’m dying! How’s things with you?”
I just needed to get inside the pavilion and get my head down again. I curled up at the bottom of the stairs to the lunch room. As I lay there, I must have made for a piteous sight. Just a few weeks earlier I’d been scoring runs and taking miracle catches for England in South Africa. Now I was a hunched, grey, hollow figure on the verge of death.
My mum had never negotiated the corridors of the pavilion but somehow found me in a ball at the foot of those stairs. She was shocked to see how ill I was and, like any mum, her first instinct was to look after me. She took me home, just half a mile up the road, and I staggered through the door before lying down on the settee.
By 4pm, I was feeling progressively worse and getting pains down my left arm. Looking back, it’s obvious – it’s the sign of a heart attack. Not me, though. My remedy was to try to give myself a bit of a massage. It didn’t last long. I knew I had to go and be sick. I made it to the bottom of the stairs and shuffled up on my hands and knees. I crawled into the toilet and was sick repeatedly, five times.
I shouldn’t have been alive at that stage. With my body concentrating all it had on my vital organs, my stomach was already giving up. I felt so terrible – pain, nausea, my heart smashing out of my chest – that going back downstairs wasn’t an option. I crawled into bed and pulled the duvet over me.
My girlfriend - now wife - Jose had come home by this point, and she came up to me and rang the doctor. Jose described my symptoms and he didn’t hesitate. “Take him straight to hospital. Don’t wait for an ambulance.”
Mum dropped us outside A&E and Jose and I walked up to reception. She was speaking to the receptionist, but I knew I was going to be sick again. I staggered into the toilet, and was sick repeatedly until nothing more could come.
As I came out, a doctor saw me. By this time I was grey. She immediately took me and Jose into a little assessment room. She lifted my top, put pads and wires on my chest and took a look at the screen. I didn’t see her face but I knew something fairly remarkable was happening.
More doctors were called and when they saw the results, that was it – they took me straight through to where the real action happens, a more serious set-up, a big cubicle – resus. They sat me up and immediately hooked me up to a heart monitor.
The sound it made was like nothing you’ll ever hear. A cavalcade of beeps, fast ricocheting around the room. It was the sound of my heart, charging, careering, thundering. A runaway train trapped within my ribs. The machine said it was pounding at 265 beats a minute. The doctors looked at one another. Strangely, it’s the little things you notice at a time like that, and the expression on their faces – shock, disbelief – is something I won’t forget.
The blood results came back at record speed. When the heart is under stress it releases an enzyme called troponin. Under no stress, the amount of troponin in the blood would be zero. My level was 42,000. Unsurprisingly, at that point they concluded I’d had a severe heart attack.
First priority was to get my heart out of its abnormal rhythm. “There are two options,” they told me. “We pump you full of drugs and hopefully that works, and if it doesn’t, we put you to sleep and shock you out of it.”
I didn’t like the sound of the second one. “Well, if the drugs work,” I told Jose, “there’ll be no need to shock me.” And yet after the drugs were administered, nothing happened. And all the time that awful sound of the machine in the corner racing.
In the end, they called the anaesthetist to put me to sleep but, seconds before they arrived, my heart rate plunged from 265 to 60. The machine was making just a steady ‘beep, beep, beep’. It was the best noise I’d ever heard.
And then I was sick everywhere. My heart might have been back to ‘normal’ but the rest of my body was screwed. It had put everything into saving my heart and other areas had suffered. I was a matter of seconds from my kidneys failing and my entire digestive system had pretty much stopped.
Medical personnel were swarming in from all sides to make further investigations. One of them asked, “How did you get in here?”
“We just walked in.”
“You walked in here?” I don’t think she thought we were thinking straight. “That’s impossible. You couldn’t have. Not like this.”
One of the doctors stood there open-mouthed. They asked how long I had been suffering.
“It started about half past 10 this morning.”
“What?”
It was utter astonishment. “What you’ve been through is the equivalent of running six marathons.”
Emotionally, I’d kept everything in check for the whole day. As I lay down to sleep, though, it all became too much. The day, my heart, the future – there were so many unanswered questions, so much to deal with. It was the first time I’d ever felt real fear. Raw unbridled fear.
Jose lay next to me and I held her close. “This isn’t good,” I whispered. “When are we going to get out of here?” She no more had the answer than I did. Her life had been tipped upside down, shaken around, and she’d come hurtling into this strange new world just the same as me.
“We’ve still got me and you,” she hugged me, “and that’s all that matters.”
'Cut Short' by James Taylor is published on June 1 by White Owl Books, price £20.
I don't think KP is as big a bastard as most do, but he's undoubtedly developed a hero complex and a heightism issue (probably a manifestation of insecurity - he's indisputably tall so uses this as a weapon of defence)
The next Ashes series will kick off cricket’s long-awaited first World Test Championship next year as attempts to revitalise the game’s oldest format begin in earnest.
The Ashes, which will be played later next summer after the World Cup, will begin a two-year cycle that will culminate in a final expected to be played at Lord’s.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2018/05/01/2019-ashes-series-will-kick-inaugural-world-test-championship/
checked weather yesterday - band of showers due across London thurs from mid morning. Lovely.
If we win the toss I would bowl - great conditions for English bowlers these and not the sort of conditions Pakistan would relish