The Sunday Telegraph today published the first of their exclusive extracts from Andrew Strauss' new book, Testing Times.
Here he describes his feelings ahead of his career-saving innings against New Zealand in Napier last March. He was without a Test century in 15 matches and had yet to pass 50 in the series.
I knew it was do or die time. My team-mates knew it. The media knew it.
Your team-mates, in those circumstances, are not sure what to say to motivate you or get you going. But I can remember one conversation in the middle of a net-practice before the game. Collingwood came down the net and said to me: "Straussy, you're not playing your game." I said: "I've been working for three months to improve." Colly said: "I know your strengths are pulls and cuts and I've hardly seen you play one all tour." In some ways those words almost underlined the point that I was in the last-chance saloon. But it was reassuring that one of my mates had taken enough interest to think about my plight and say something.
He was out for 0 in the first innings and considered himself a doomed man as he made his way out for the second.
My first priority was not to bag a pair. Once I got to 20 or so, I had the goal of getting through to close of play, by when I had reached 42. That night I felt it could have been have been all over by now - but I was still fighting and still had a chance. Realistically, it was going to take a hundred, not a fifty to keep my England career going.
The next day, I felt a mixture of hope and excitement, two feelings I hadn't experienced much in the recent past. I flashed at a wide ball early on and it went past gully, exactly where I had been caught in the first innings, and I remember thinking this could be my day.
I had to endure a couple of very spicy overs when 97 and I played and missed two or three times. Then came a wide delivery which I drove off the front foot through the covers. It was the same shot which brought up my hundred on Test debut at Lord's.
Strauss went on to score 177, his highest Test innings, and England claimed the series 2-1. Eighteen months later he lifted the Ashes urn as England captain.
great post.
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