Long Shot Summer The Year of Four England Cricket Captains 1988

In the summer of 1988 England began its Test series against the almighty West Indies with a draw at Trent Bridge. Defeated 5-0 in each of its last two series against the world's most fearsome cricket team, for England simply to avoid defeat and stand up to perhaps the greatest fast bowling attack in history seemed like a huge step in the right direction. But within days the team's captain, Mike Gatting, hero of a stunning Ashes victory in Australia just over one year earlier, had been sacked following media allegations of an assignation with a barmaid in the team's Nottingham hotel. Over the remaining four Test matches of that series, England would go through a further three captains, John Emburey, Chris Cowdrey and Graham Gooch, and select a total of 23 players in a revolving door policy which saw the team slide to a disappointing 4-0 defeat. The next twelve months would see the cancellation of a planned tour to India, a further two changes of captaincy and a humiliating home defeat to Allan Border's resurgent Australia as several of England's players, including Gatting himself, defected to the final 'rebel' tour of apartheid South Africa. Using interviews with the main protagonists held in the MCC Audio Archive at Lord's, as well as new interviews and printed resources, MCC's Research Officer Neil Robinson tells the story of that chaotic summer which led to a decade of under achievement for English cricket and asks: what was the truth behind the circumstances of Gatting's dismissal? How did the instability surrounding the team affect the players and the captains concerned? And what was the legacy of this unparallelled summer for next generation English cricketers?