Test Profile (Part 1) 1978-1985.
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England had been waiting for a new young batsman for several despairing
years when David Gower, a teenager with golden curls from the King's
School in Canterbury started scoring runs with effortless grace for
Leicestershire in the mid 1970s. Even the carefree Gower wanted to make a
good impression. His mother sent him to his first training session in a
suit. That he had natural style was evident from the moment he pulled
his first ball in Test cricket for 4. In the summer of 1978 he scored
438 runs in six Tests at an average of 54, scoring 111 against New
Zealand at the Oval. He went to Australia with Brearley on successive
winter tours, scoring 98 not out against Australia at Sydney on the
second. He also plundered 200 not out from India in 1979 and made a
match saving 154 not out in Jamaica in 1981. His easy style seemed to
lead to equally easy dismissals and on a number of occasions selectors
lost patience and dropped him. He was at his peak on Bob Willis' Ashes
tour of 1982-83, when he consciously tried to drive straight down the
ground and made 150 in an ODI v New Zealand. On two occasions he
deputised as captain for Willis. During the tour of Pakistan in 1983-84
his batting - 152 in one match, 173 not out in the next - and tactical
grasp was enough to get him the captaincy, unsuccessfully in successive
series against the West Indies, but triumphant when he won the Ashes in
1985, making 86 at Lord's, 215 at Edgbaston and 157 at the Oval. He
played in the 1979 World Cup Final and in 1983 made 130 in the cup-tie
against Sri Lanka at Taunton. (Bob Harragan).
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Stuart Franklin's photo of England's Davis Gower was taken on Thursday 2nd. July 1992.
Test Profile (Part 2) 1986-1992.
| David Gower had survived two maulings by the West Indies machine, but a
third in 1986 made sure his heroics of 1985 were soon forgotten. He made
90 in Antigua but, back in England, found himself replaced as captain
by Mike Gatting after one Test against India. Back in the ranks he made
131 against New Zealand at the Oval and contributed 136 in Perth towards
the Ashes win that winter. Against Pakistan in 1987 his top score was
61 and despite 88 not out against West Indies at Trent Bridge the
following year he was dropped when Graham Gooch assumed the captaincy
for the last two Tests. The rest of his career was to be dogged by the
public's inability to persuade the Gooch regime, built on training and
fitness, that England could not do without their most talented batsman.
Time and again Gower would be left out of the team until necessity
called, then re-instated. He had one brief year back in charge, plucked
out of the blue to retake the captaincy in the 1989 Ashes series. He
made 106 at Lord's but England were overwhelmed by the best Australian
team for years. Gower returned under Gooch in 1990, scoring 157 not out
at the Oval against India and then went on to Australia. He made superb
100s at Melbourne and Sydney, but people preferred to carp about his
failures and loose strokes. Humourless officialdom over-reacted wildly
when he hired a Tiger Moth plane to buzz his team-mates during an
up-country match. Gower was axed for the 1991 West Indies series in
England and it was not until the 3rd Test of the following summer that
he made an all to brief return to the International arena, scoring 150
runs at an average of 50 in 3 Tests against Pakistan. David did not make
the squad for the India tour that winter and thus the most exciting
English batsman of his generation ended his Test career far too
prematurely. (Bob Harragan) |