THE YEAR OF 'THE CAT'

Remembering when flight and guile still had a prominent role in England Test teams from the likes of Phillip Clive Roderick Tufnell. Who's the next in line?

“England unearth best spinner in the world,” sounds like an April Fool’s claim, yet for a short period back in the early 1990s it was almost certainly true. That was the ‘Year of the Cat,’ not from Al Stewart but Phil Tufnell, when the cheeky chappie left-arm spinner did the business, which meant winning Test matches by taking wickets in the second innings.

My photo of Tuffers, also known as the Cat due to his ability to fall asleep any time anywhere, shows him celebrating just such a victory, this one being the first Test against New Zealand in Christchurch, January 1992. He has played a decisive role taking seven for 47 to follow the four wickets he took in the first innings and is in typical pose, fag in one hand beer in the other.

The match, played at Lancaster Park, a venue no longer used after its near destruction in the 2011 earthquake, seemed destined for a draw until Tuffers worked his magic late on the final day. Due to our mammoth first innings total of 580, New Zealand followed-on but on a sluggish pitch it had been slow going for the bowlers. We laboured with only moderate success to the point that at tea on the final day we still needed seven wickets, more than had been taken on any of the preceding days.

Not only that, John Wright, New Zealand’s doughty left-handed opener, was on 99 and looking rock solid. Pressure, though, can affect even the calm and collected if it is applied often enough and with some canny field settings from our captain, Graham Gooch, and some disciplined bowling from the Cat, Wright was kept waiting on 99 for 23 minutes.

Eventually, he’d had enough and gave Tuffers the charge, only to miss the ball which bounced awkwardly out of the footholes. Stumped for 99 is a muppet’s dismissal, though Wright was not the only New Zealander to fall on that score; Dipak Patel having run himself out for 99 in the first innings (a double muppet way to go).

Wright’s brain fade was the breach we’d been waiting for. Suddenly, anxiety spread among their batters like warm marmite. You could smell the panic especially when Tuffers despatched Mark Greatbatch and Shane Thomson for ducks in the same over. A miscue from Patel, who didn’t know whether to block or slog, and a couple of wickets for Chris Lewis whose pace was always handy at bobbing the tail and suddenly New Zealand’s last pair are together needing 18 runs to make us bat again with an hour’s play remaining.

Complicating the issue for us was that one of the remaining batters was the great Martin Crowe, who now took control, stealing the strike if and when he could. By the time three overs remained, they needed just four runs to make us bat again.

So here now was the game: Tuffers bowling, Crowe facing, except that Crowe had a dilemma. Did he and No 11 Chris Pringle continue stonewalling for the remaining 18 balls, or should he save the game by hitting a boundary, knowing that the change of innings would swallow the remaining overs so there wouldn’t be time for us to bat again?

A man of panache, Crowe decided to accept glory’s golden promise and ran down the pitch to launch Tuffers over long-on. Unhappily for him, he didn’t quite get to the pitch and the ball turned enough to sky the shot my way at mid-off. It was a bit of a swirler over my left shoulder but I clung on and a famous victory was ours.

Tuffers bowls out West Indies in 1991 at The Oval

It was Tufnell’s third consecutive five-fer in a Test, all of them won, and he was at the peak of his powers. To get back into the series, as well as to nullify him, New Zealand gambled by preparing a green seamer for the second Test in Auckland. It was so grassy that Goochie had to ask where the pitch was, so indistinct was it from the outfield. We lost the toss, got put in and made 203. But we also had a few bowlers who liked greentops and we eventually won the match to take an insurmountable lead in the series.

Tuffers still managed three wickets but got pelted by fruit thrown at him from the crowd. He did divide a crowd did Tuffers. Once, in Australia, a lone voice at the Sydney Cricket Ground bellowed: “Lend us yer brain Tufnell, I’m building an idiot.” That was later, though, when many felt he’d become higher maintenance; a frustrating time that saw him in and out of the team for the next decade.

Before that, in that golden period across 1991/92, when he took 28 wickets in five Tests, he was arguably the best spinner in Test cricket, this being just before Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan came to dominate everything spin. Unhappily for England it is a distant memory though it shouldn’t be - Tuffers Mark II, the spinner, must be out there somewhere.

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to enter the competition to win Lord’s Test match tickets