The Golden Summer Of 2000

Today we welcome new writer Billy Crawford to TFT. Remember when we finally won our first Test series against the West Indies since 1969? It took all of 31 years. And Billy is here to remind us how it all unfolded …

“You wouldn’t write the script, you wouldn’t put it in a comic book!”

The voice of Mark Nicholas still echoes down the years to me since that distant and glorious summer of 2000.

It was the first summer of the new millennium and the world was awash with optimism about what the future would bring. By the autumn, English cricket too, would share this emotion. The dark days of the 1990’s had been banished, along with their grim batting collapses and the beleaguered faces of England captains explaining each crushing defeat.

I had come to the game towards the end of that time in the Spring of 1999. My interest had been awakened by the World Cup in England and, in particular, the brilliance of the South Africans and Australians. Inspiration from the England team was in short supply.

That summer ended in humiliation, with Nasser Hussain being booed on the Oval balcony after England had collapsed to a series defeat to New Zealand, a result which confirmed England’s place at the bottom of the Test rankings, officially the worst team in the world. One national newspaper published a front page of a set of burning stumps proclaiming, as had been declared in 1878, the death of English cricket.

With this in mind, the arrival of the West Indian tourists the following summer was not greeted with a great deal of optimism.

As a wide-eyed 13-year-old, I was excited to witness the talents of Brian Lara, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh for the first time. This was, of course, the days before the Sky TV takeover, when a young child with a working TV set could spend their entire summer holiday sat in front of the screen watching every ball, every ebb and flow of each Test match before running out into the garden to re-enact it all. If this sounds like a rose-tinted, idealistic recollection of the past I can assure you it truly is not. It really was that glorious a time to be a young cricket fan.

It became an even more wonderful time on a chilly Friday evening at Lord’s during the second test. England had been steamrollered by Ambrose and Walsh in the first Test at Edgbaston and had collapsed in two sessions for 134 in the first innings at Lord’s to concede a first innings deficit of 133. Another crushing defeat loomed.

Then something extraordinary happened. First, Darren Gough took a marvellous diving catch at fine leg to dismiss Sherwin Campbell. Then Andy Caddick, England’s second innings king, gave the tourists a taste of the own medicine. He peppered them with the sort of short balls that they had meted out to England over the years and the West Indians fended them all into the grateful hands of Mark Ramprakash at short leg.

By the end of the day the West Indies had been shot out for 54, yes 54 all out! It seemed scarcely believable, something that might happen on my Brian Lara Cricket PlayStation game but certainly not something that could happen to the actual Brian Lara and his team mates in real life.

The following day I was absent for the nerve shredding run chase as England attempted to chase down their target of 188u. I had tickets for the Formula 3 championship at the Castle Combe track, indulging my other passion of motor racing. This being the days before mobile internet, and having forgotten to bring my radio, I had no way of knowing how events were unfolding at Lord’s. However, arriving home in time for the evening highlights package, I sat glued to the TV as the great Walsh and Ambrose once again made mincemeat of England’s top order. It fell to the combative figure of Dominic Cork, a man who could probably start a fight in an empty room, to be the hero. His nuggety 33 not out was just enough to see England home with only two wickets left, and in Lord’s 100th Test match no less! I still have the commemorative VHS.

After a rain ruined draw at Old Trafford, notable for the Test debut of a certain Marcus Treskothick, even more remarkable events were to follow at Headingley where England wrapped up victory inside two days. After securing a first innings lead of 100, England’s two best-of-enemies, Darren Gough and Andy Caddick, took the new ball. I arrived home from the shops just in time to see Sherwin Campbell edge Gough to slip, reducing the West Indians to 21-4.

What followed next will stay with me forever. Andy Caddick may not have been the most loved of England cricketers. His slightly morose demeanour, gangling walk and rumours of being difficult to manage did not at once lend themselves to the guise of a hero. However, like my other favourite player, Steve Harmison, when everything clicked into place, my goodness, could he bowl. Here he was once again, unplayable. 4 wickets were taken in one over as batsman after batsman saw their stumps scattered by the Somerset seamer.

Mark Nicholas’ commentary seems to have sound tracked many of the best moments of my life, his “Hellooooo, Massiiiiiive!” in response to Andrew Flintoff hitting Brett Lee on to the television gantry in 2005 has lived long in the memory. However, this one may be the best. “Another one gone! 4 in the over! You wouldn’t write the script, you wouldn’t put it in a comic book!” Indeed, you wouldn’t Mark. Sometimes the truth is far more wonderful than fiction can ever be.

And so to The Oval and a chance for England to win a Test series against the West Indies for the first time in 31 years. By now the new school year had started. However, the wonders of being home-schooled meant that if I got up early enough, and if I could drag my mother/ teacher up at the crack of dawn, then I could get all my schoolwork done before the first ball was bowled at 11am. Being the cricket obsessive that I was, I was determined to get up even earlier on that Thursday morning so that I could be finished in time to see the toss.

It is just as well that I was ready for the start of play as I will never forget Mike Atherton and Marcus Treskothick batting through the first half hour of play, without a run being scored. In these days of constant excitement and the whizz-bang of T20 it seems almost impossible to imagine a passage of play as riveting as this. The Oval held its breath while England’s openers defied everything those two great champions, Ambrose and Walsh, could throw at them. When the first run was eventually scored, the roar from the crowd was akin to a goal being scored in a cup final. England’s diligence was rewarded, with the openers eventually putting on a stand of 159. How many of the current team would have that sort of patience I wonder?

Atherton’s second innings century set up a magical final day where thousands were locked out of the famous old ground as England bid for victory in front of a raucous full house. The Wisden Trophy was eventually secured just after tea when Dominic Cork trapped Courtney Walsh lbw. The great Ambrose and Walsh left an English field for the last time arm in arm, perhaps recalling better days. Nasser Hussain lifted the Wisden Trophy as the crowd basked in the September sunshine.

There are so many great memories I have of that wonderful summer but perhaps my favourite is one moment on the morning after the Headingley Test. Channel 4’s Saturday cricket roadshow was trying to make sense of the events of the previous evening. Mark Nicholas walked into the home dressing room and there in one corner sat a very hungover young man with a floppy, boyband fringe, nursing a cup of coffee.

That young man, surprised by the cameras, was Michael Vaughan, and this was the summer when he established himself in the England side. 5 years later, he would go on to lead his country through an even more glorious summer, perhaps the greatest English cricket has ever seen. The seeds for that triumph were sown during that first, wonderful season of the new millennium. Heady days indeed.

Billy Crawford

8 comments

  • I got seriously into cricket in the mid 1980s, and I too remember that 2000 series, and then the two away series wins that followed, to confirm that it had not been a false dawn. It was the first spell of sustained success for an England team that I got to witness.

  • Disappointing that a fondness for the 2000 series has to be justified by repeating the misleading myth about England being totally useless in the 1990s. England in fact had drawn both the preceding the home series against the West Indies 2-2. Before the 1999 defeat against NZ England only lost home series that decade against an all-time great Australia side and against Pakistan. England’s batting and seam bowling options during the decade were as good, if not better, than some we’ve seen in the 2010s, only the spin department was a real weakness. The real difference between the 1990s and now was the strength in depth of opposition teams around the world.

    The myth about the 1990s isn’t a harmless one, it’s designed to glorify the achievements of the post-2000 ECB/Sky model of running England.

  • 1999 was by any standard a low point. But Simon H has done well to peel away the mythical basis for the ECB story of managed success.

  • I think that most people agree that it was one tour too many for several West indies stars, and that this – more than the quality of England – explained the result. Walsh had an excellent series, albeit helped by the wickets, but was 37 at the time and would have been even more threatening 5 years earlier. Ambrose was clearly past his best at 36, whilst Rose and King – the 3rd and 4th quickies – were never the same quality. Perhaps it is best to see 2000 as the point at which the era of Windies quick bowling dominance ended rather than as the start of anything other than a very gentle England revival.

  • Don’t remember feeling as elated as the author as the Windies were clearly on the wane, despite the efforts of Ambrose and Walsh. However as has been mentioned we had some decent potential matchwinners with bat and ball, who were not in their mid to late 30’s. Before the series I felt if we could keep Ambrose at bay we had a great chance as their batting always looked ropey. For decades they hadn’t had to score big runs to win test matches as they consistently rolled the opposition over for less than 300, often less than 200.

  • We’re ‘celebrating’ 25 years of Test cricket without West Indies winning even a single away series in places other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. And for the blabbering how important West Indies to Test cricket, talk is cheap. And we have had plenty of talk, and no real action to turn things around. While that is partly due to the wrangles in CWI (the former WICB), it cannot be wholly separated from the governance deficit within the ICC.

    And while obviously, England seemed to have turned a corner in 2000 (which was confirmed a few series later with some excellent results in Asia), much of the gruondwork was laid already in the 1990s (and England were really not as bad as people think).

    The drop of quality in Test cricket from non-Big 3 teams makes many of the achievements of the present hardly noteworthy. Even the Zimbabwe side of the 1990s had more quality than most of the sides being in existence in the present.

    Drawing a series against the West Indies was a good result in the 1980s, no matter who you were or where you were playing. Nowadays it is considered a bad result to even draw a series in the West Indies, unless you are Ireland or Afghanistan, and just about acceptable if you are Bangladesh. The same applies to South Africa, Sri Lanka, and a few other teams these days. Not that any of the pundits even care to think about it – they are nothing short but cheerleading hagiographers.

    • Some good points but a bit OTT. The current New Zealand team (and recent ones) is at least as good as those in the 90s, and the 1990s Zimbabwe, whilst better than the current shambles, was not a patch on the current teams from NZ, SA or Pakistan. Just because they had some decent players does not mean they were that good as a team (no strength in depth). I will be interested to see what becomes of SA over the next 5 years. It is a bit unrealistic to expect them to be on a par with teams which had players like Donald, Kallis, Pollock, Cronje and (a bit later) Smith. But they have some decent new players (Van Der Dussen, Nortje) to build on along with De Kock.

      • Some decent players, sure. No experience though. South Africa will make it appear as if the decline of the West Indies was hardly noticeable. They will crash and burn that badly.

        Rabada will be the only pacer left to represent South Africa with more than 6 caps. Likewise de Kock will be partnered with Bavuma to be the only batsman with more than 20 caps. Markram has twenty now, and the rest are all in single digits. I really don’t think that is a basis for much optimism with regards to the future of South African cricket. Especially not since the domestic batsmen will not be facing quality bowlers, since they are all playing abroad now. And we have seen plenty of batsmen averaging 40+ in domestic cricket struggling to even get to average 20 in Test cricket (de Bruyn, Hamza, Kuhn, Malan, van Zyl, but the latter is Kolpakked anyway).

        Never mind the fact that barely averaging 30 is good enough for Bavuma to get chance after chance. A specialist batsman with an average in the low 30s, who refuses to score tons. Sounds like Buttler, and I don’t think you are too thrilled to have him in the England side. And yet he is apparently (/ will be after Faf and Elgar retire) the second best batsman on offer in South Africa these days. If your second best batsman in Test cricket is just as good as Buttler, you have a massive problem on your hands. Hell, even if your second worst batsman in Test cricket is as bad as Buttler, you used to have a massive problem on your hands.

        van der Dussen is already 31. A late bloomer, and he actually stuck it out in domestic cricket in South Africa. A lot of talent has relocated to New Zealand, and are now / shortly in contention for Test spots representing New Zealand.

        and never mind that the way the global game is structured it is much more worthwhile for South African players to become T20 specialists. So why should South African batsman be bothered to:
        a) keep playing for peanuts in South Africa?
        b) keep playing for peanuts representing South Africa?
        Chris Morris will make more for an over he bowls in IPL than he would make monthly on the most generous central contract CSA can offer.
        Never mind all the strife and conflict in the domestic (cricket) arena in South Africa, and you certainly have a great recipe for success ….

        And even when Faf and Elgar were playing, South Africa have breached 300 just 3 times in 28 innings (twice against Pakistan in South Africa), and only once in the last 18. Some real quality there – and have been more often 25/4, than 200/4 in those 28 innings. Real cause for optimism there. This is statistically just about PAR compared to the South African teams of the 19th century. And those players had excuses such as the state of the pitch and all that.

        Zimbabwe in the 90s managed to win a Test series in Pakistan. Sure they were a bit lucky and all that, but for South Africa it is currently an achievement not to be whitewashed at home. Hell, even Sri Lanka managed to whitewash South Africa, and we all know that Sri Lanka are not exactly blessed at the moment. It is only thanks to the bowlers in the first Test that they managed to avoid that brilliant feat against England, and lucking out with a massive epidemic in the England camp. I will still maintain that Zim-90s would have beaten Sri Lanka, would have beaten this South Africa side, would have beaten the current West Indies side, and also easily dispose of Ireland and Afghanistan, and of course the current Zimbabwe side as well. That is already half the cricketing world! Pakistan currently don’t have much of a middle order, so they might be vulnerable as well, and Bangladesh seem to have regressed a bit in the last few years (after showing some improvement) – so those two might be toss ups. So that leaves four teams that are clear favourites against Zim-90, three of which have looted World Cricket, and New Zealand, which has done reasonably well, probably because of reasonably good governance being in place..

        New Zealand have not declined. True. What a cause for optimism with regards to the global game! Have you looked at the fixtures they are given? They are treated just as crappily as South Africa were in the day the latter bothered to play cricket.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

copywriter copywriting