'I'm not very good at the real world'

David Gower: BSkyB anchorman © Getty Images

David Gower appears at the door carrying a tray of tea. He beckons me inside while he disappears to distribute the refreshments to some workmen. This is a former England captain at home but not in the Hello sense. The interview is interrupted more than once by his boisterous and slightly unwell dog Ollie whose intermittent barking rouses Gower from his increasingly supine position on the sofa. "At five o'clock this morning he s*** all over the kitchen floor," says Gower, divulging a tad more information than is necessary. In addition his 11-year-old daughter Alex is off school sick so Gower is playing childminder and dogminder as well as project manager for a bit of renovation work on his Hampshire home.

If you had only ever come across Gower on the BBC comedy-quiz show They Think It's All Over, you would have been persuaded to think that he was a raging toff with hordes of staff at his beck and call. That was one of the two running gags about Gower on the show. The other was that he wasn't actually very good at cricket. "I do get a sense that there are people who only know me for that. The rumour was that when Gary [Lineker] and I were shifted out of that the BBC did their usual thing with focus groups and people asked, `Why is that bloke who couldn't play cricket on with the bloke with big ears?' I thought hang on. The original premise of the show was two people who were rather good at it getting ripped apart by three people who were weren't, which is a good gag as long you understand it."

Did he enjoy being ripped apart? "It was great fun. I have huge respect for Jonathan Ross as a television animal. He's very funny, very quick-witted but once or twice it was like being hit over the head with a medieval mace for an hour - which could hurt. Most of the time it was fun to be there. And I do miss it."

Although very much in the public eye as Sky's cricket anchorman, Gower doesn't command the stage like his former team-mate and colleague Ian Botham and doesn't have the currency of the recently retired Nasser Hussain. And he isn't one for sounding off about the modern game. Indeed the stereotypical image of Gower as a dilettante, last of the great amateurs, implies a man not entirely wedded to cricket. The reality is different.

The kitchen is adorned by cricket cartoons from the likes of the Express and Mail, many featuring Gower and Botham. These are cartoons from the centre pages of the papers, indicating an era when the best English cricketers were proper household names. Above a fireplace in the study where we talk are signed England tour squad photos from every trip Gower made for his country, starting and finishing in Australia (1978-79 to 1990-91).

Gower plonks himself down on a sofa, dressed casually in a blue shirt, cuffs unbuttoned, and summery khaki trousers. Socks, no shoes. Gower's intellectual capacity has never been doubted - unlike his ability to self-analyse. But after about 15 minutes, I've only managed to ask a couple of questions. This could be a long one.

Does he miss playing? "I have no weak moments about wanting to play again. I tried for four or five years after I retired to play the odd charity game, not because I wanted to play but because they were worthy days. The more I played the more I hated them. I played enough when it was serious to last a lifetime. There's a lot of emotion involved. I just don't want to test myself. Why? I've done all this. It gives me absolutely no satisfaction in trying to vaguely remember how to do it again. In a way it belittles what's gone before. Some of these memories are still very fresh. The highs, like getting 150-something against Australia at The Oval in 1985, are so far ahead of pitching up at a charity match to see if you can get 50 before they retire you."

Crowning glory: Gower acknowledges the crowd after leading England to Ashes success in 1985 © Getty Images

Gower retired in November 1993 after 12 months of being overlooked by England. He moved seamlessly into the media, presenting Gower's Cricket Monthly for the BBC and then fronting the BBC's Test coverage until 1998 when they lost the rights to Channel 4 and Sky, for whom he has been working ever since.

How does life in the Sky box differ from life in the dressing room? "It's almost identical but the wine's more expensive," he replies. "It is slightly more grown up but the spirit is almost identical: that camaraderie, the mix of characters. Which is good because you get used to the way of life. A change of environment is the single biggest problem for any sportsman when they retire."

Gower's family situation differs slightly from many of his Sky colleagues (and former team-mates). Whereas others now have grown-up children, Gower, 47, has two daughters of school age. "On a bad day it's tough on a wife [Thorunn] who would like to see you around more." Is there pressure to do something else with his life? "This isn't the only possible, conceivable thing I could do but it works mighty well. I'm not very good at what you might call the real world, the business world. I've dabbled in things - invested money rather than time - and they don't really tend to work. I enjoy what I do, it's a good job, lucrative, there are so many things in favour. When Thorunn says, `Any chance of you getting a different job?' I say, `Well, not really'. There are times when I'm away a lot and she's running two children, the house, a dog and it's something she might like to share. But then you have three weeks in the Caribbean, three weeks in South Africa. OK, they're not exactly family holidays because I keep going off to Test matches but it ain't bad. I don't see how I can change it."

Despite being England's third leading Test run-scorer with 8,231 runs at 44.25, Gower's reputation is not untarnished. The laid-back stereotype, the laissez-faire captaincy and the beatings by West Indies and latterly Australia combine to paint an imperfect picture.

"My weakness was that I never managed the art of getting all my talent out on display on the same day consistently. That's admitting to a mental weakness because all that's down to is the drive every time you step out there, to be at your best. You can still get hundreds and not be at your best.

"With me there was a lot of instinct involved but then good players train their instinct so that when the bowling gets quicker and the spinners get loopier your instinct is able to cope with it. As soon as you have to think you've run out of time. The more you practise, the more you hone the instinct. Your total ability is the sum of whatever god-given ability you have plus whatever is in your brain that allows you to get better, that allows you to perform when the pressure is at its greatest. The toughest cricket I played was against West Indies in the mid-1980s."

Gower in typical form © Getty Images

In 19 Tests against West Indies Gower scored 1,149 runs at 32.82. On the 1985-86 `blackwash' tour when no England batsman made a Test hundred he averaged 37, almost 10 runs more than the next best Graham Gooch.

"Pace of that nature takes some playing because it's incessant. I got more runs over there than here but only one hundred. You take your hat off to someone like Lamby who got half a dozen."

Given his phenomenal success against West Indies, why did Allan Lamb not average more than 36.09 in all Tests? "Lamby should have had a better career record than he did. Somewhere within the recesses of AJ's brain he will wonder why he didn't get more, likewise in Graeme Hick's brain, and there's part of me which says why didn't I get more."

So, does Gower think he should have done better? "Yeah, yeah. If I'm being harsh on myself it's should have done better, if I'm being gentle it's could have done better. I won't say I'm unhappy with what I did for 15 years or so and I'm mighty proud of the best of it." Gower gives an example of failure. "We played New Zealand at Headingley in 1983 where in the first innings I knew I wasn't `there'. This wasn't against Garner, Marshall, Croft. This was against Lance Cairns who ain't gonna frighten you. He'll bowl big away-swingers to a left-hander of which you'll leave 85%. It was the first innings of a Test match, the prime time to be there and I wasn't. I got a hundred in the second innings which doesn't really help." Gower made nine in the first innings and New Zealand won their first Test on English soil.

"Your ultimate - and Graham [Gooch] did this remarkably well in part two of his career - is to be switched on with all batteries attached every time you walk out there. It's a very hard trick to pull off. Your psychological ultimate is: drive plus relaxation equals productivity. Something which allows you to be fully motivated and fully relaxed so you can allow your instinct to do what it's meant to do.

"There was a day at Perth in 1982-83 when I got 70 or 80 as sharp as you like. I wanted to bat, I wanted to get runs. If ever there was a day when I should have got 200 that was it. The first mistake I made was a bit of a chip, good catch at midwicket, end of that. Up until then it felt sublime. You don't get days like that very often. If you have that extra cussedness - call it professionalism if you like - then you can turn bad days into good ones."

Gower fell out with Gooch famously and publicly on the 1990-91 tour of Australia after he and John Morris flew a pair of Tiger Moths over the ground where England were playing Queensland. Gower further enraged his captain in the fourth Test at Adelaide when he chipped the last ball before lunch straight to long leg, one of three players set back for the shot.

Gower in the Tiger Moth during the 1990-91 Australia tour © Getty Images

What's his relationship with Gooch like now? "Graham's around. I've seen him at functions and we've sat together over dinner which people might find hard to believe after a very public disagreement all those years ago. But we've softened. I'm not one to bear a grudge and Graham certainly isn't. We'd both say we could have done things differently. He could have softened his attitude I could have upped my training."

So what really happened with Gooch? "There was the simplest set of rules and if you didn't fit into that then there was a problem. My theory of captaincy is that you give responsibility to every man. Your job as captain isn't just to think up a simple set of rules. One so-called motivational team-talk on the third morning at Sydney was such a load of bollocks. Welling up inside me was this feeling of `Can we just get on? We'll go and bat, all right'."

Probably against his better judgement, Gower becomes heated and animated. "Here's an example. The Tiger Moth was the catalyst for the rapid degeneration of our relationship because it seemed to offend the management, it hurt their pride. They thought I was taking the piss. I wasn't, I was just having a bit of fun. I was in the dock the following morning at 8 o'clock. `Why did you do it?' `Bit of fun'. That could have been a nice short conversation. But it turned into an hour of motivation, psychology and ambition. I thought, `Hang on. We've played three Test matches on this tour, which has been notable for its lack of success but personally I've top-scored in both innings at Brisbane, made a hundred at Melbourne and a hundred at Sydney. I was ahead of my personal ambitions for the tour (I wanted to average 50) and here I am on the carpet being told I'm upsetting the team. Of all the people you have to worry about how about the other 14 who haven't scored the runs or taken the wickets?

"You are always going to have people from different backgrounds and increasingly now people from different religions. This should be the art of captaincy. If you are going to be a captain in the fullest sense then you have to work out a way of dealing with everyone and you can't do that by imposing the simplest set of rules."

How would Gower fit in to current team? "Central contracts would have suited me down to the ground. The key thing is having a coach who understands the way the modern player operates." He thinks Duncan Fletcher does and that Ray Illingworth, who was Gower's mentor in his early career at Leicestershire, would have done had he been made England coach in the 1980s rather than the 1990s.

Gower was picked for England in 1978 with a Championship average of 21, a selection that bears the hallmark of a Fletcher-style hunch. And despite Fletcher's public image, the England team is less po-faced than during the Gooch-Stewart era. So Gower might well have fitted in just fine.

He fits in fine with the commentary box chummery too. And with Sky's new deal there are no signs yet that he'll have to get a proper job. I ask him if he'd ever go on I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here. He says he views it as a last resort. Let it never come to that.