David Gower Quotes & Trivia

Quotes

As a player you are always made to feel welcome, but at the same time, there is too much pressure.

As you grow older, you begin to question, you demand more from your captain. Those two, Brearley and Illingworth, were great to have early on in my career.

Brearley was the cleverer of the two, while Illingworth had a lot of cricketing commonsense and intuition.

He is a very positive captain; he is proactive as well as reactive. He is keen to read the game, to get in there, and he never stops thinking about the game, the situation, and trying to turn it to his advantage. He has been very good for the game.

It is merely a question of how quickly you adapt to the atmosphere of cricket in India, with its enthusiastic crowds.

It was a question of helping a man prepare in the way that suits him best. The theory is if you give a man responsibility for his own actions, then it is up to him to accept that responsibility.

Nasser Hussain is brilliant. I am very impressed with him. With no disrespect to the current players, he has had to work with material which is not of the highest quality.

People are talking of his susceptibility to the rising delivery, but let me tell you that when you are out of form, every ball looks like a hand grenade.

So much depends on the performance, and here you are also tied up in the emotion the game evokes.

The double hundred Fowler hit in the Madras Test was an absolute beauty.

The one major disappointment I have is that I didn't get a hundred against India in India. I got lots of runs against India in England including a double hundred I am very proud of.

The team pulled together very well, whatever we tried worked.

The way the tour has developed has been as good an example of that as you would like to see.

There are programmes on Channel 5?

They have an understanding regime; they work hard and get results, they are a happy team.

To be out of form is a soul-destroying experience. The whole of India is on his back, in one sense or the other. You need your friends and family around you at times like this, and you need to maintain your self-belief.

You can make plans but if the opposition plays well, then all your plans become worthless.

You cannot separate the two entirely. Sport is about competition, and the striving of individuals to be the best. It is all about standing standards.

Trivia

A graceful left-handed batsman, who captained England in 32 test matches. He scored over 8000 runs in 117 test matches. He played county cricket for Leicestershire and Hampshire between 1975 and 1993, before commencing a successful broadcasting career.