Andrew Strauss enjoyed a dream start to his international career before a nightmare 2007 saw him jettisoned from the England side. Having battled back and regained his place at the top of the batting order, Andy Afford asked the Middlesex man a question: if his journey started at St. John’s Wood, aboard a train on the city’s Jubilee line, where was he now?
Article originally published in AOC 47, September 2008

I don’t think AOC has ever had an easier interview to set up than this one. Especially with it being on the eve of the Test series decider at Trent Bridge against New Zealand. The story is that Andrew Strauss rang the office in order to add his comments to some programme notes on behalf of Middlesex’s upcoming Twenty20 season, where at its conclusion the notion of a feature was dropped into the conversation. Now here we are, two days later at ‘Harts’, the team hotel in Nottingham’s Ropewalk area.

The venue is described these days as a boutique hotel – translated for the layperson as ‘small but nice’. So bijou in fact that England and its retinue of backroom staff fill all of the guest rooms when the cricketers are in town. It has a vibrant bar area, a lovely restaurant across the road and an elongated and thin entrance lobby. And it is from here that Strauss steps out of the lift.

The ease at which this interview has been organised reflects a man newly at peace with the world. I’ve texted his room upon my arrival, and he’s replied that he’ll be down in five minutes, referring to me by adding a cheery ‘big lad’ as the sign-off to the message. We appear to be off on the right foot. And why wouldn’t we be – Strauss was ‘down with the dead men’ three months ago – and here he is now, on the verge of being named England’s man of the series. If anyone is the big lad, it’s him.

I’ve interviewed Andrew Strauss a lot over the past couple of years. I’ve passed comment that he has a loud – a blowing out windows sort of loud – sonic boom of a voice. I’ve stated that I felt others players were better choices with regards England’s captaincy and I’ve also written at some length that I thought his method of playing had regressed since his debut.

But making calls and observations about technique is the easiest way to lose a subject. If they disagree with you, the game is over. Any credibility is instantly lost. But get it right and it lifts the conversation to a different level, and down a path where the player’s voice is its most natural and vulnerable. We are in the realms of discussing how a player does it, not what he’s done or why. Technical examination and a willingness to review it is only truly the preserve of the self-aware. And there are fewer more considered technicians than England’s opener.

I couldn’t have missed by a mile in my previous assessments, because after three months of appraisal road testing and adaptation, he looks back to his best again. He is now more inclined to play forward in defence, further to the offside to negate slip catches and open up the legside, and more judicious in his selection of the trademark Strauss scything cut shot. I’m not saying ‘I told you so’ about Andrew Strauss, but adjustments have been made that were needed, as he says himself.

Twelve months ago, Andrew Strauss was playing badly for England. His method had changed, all linked to his mindset and motivation. After the home series against Pakistan in 2006, a summer in which Strauss captained England to Test victory and to a five-nil defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka in the one-dayers, his eye was off the ball.

Assured of his place in the side and lobbying gently for the captaincy in the absence of Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff, Strauss was thrown a curve ball that few would have foreseen. Marcus Trescothick stopped playing for England.

A bad thing in its own right, but doubly bad, as it proved, for Andrew Strauss. Charged now with forging an opening partnership with the less attack-minded and considerably greener Alastair Cook, the Strauss approach turned from passive-aggressive to something more aligned to the ‘if it’s up it’s off’ philosophy. Talking now, Strauss recalls himself “playing a couple of shots during a Test last summer and thinking to myself, ‘what are you doing?’”

As his scores over that time suggest, he was correct in his assumption that the attacking mentality was far from a winner. Good length balls, aimed across his boughs were being poked into gully’s hands; back foot slashes ended up in the slips; tramline wide balls were being collected, off the edge, by the wicketkeeper.

A series against a bowling-impoverished West Indies brought a top score of 77, when England’s batsmen were pulverising the opposition. A best of 96 in three Tests against India at the back end of last summer, and Strauss had played himself out of the side. Burnout was cited by team-mates and management, but upon reflection Strauss concedes,  “I’m sure I did get a bit carried away with the whole ‘dominate the bowler’ thing. It’s right for some people, but not necessarily me. Now, if the bowler bowls me a good over, but doesn’t get me out, then I’m okay with that. I think that’s equally well played.

“When you’re desperate to score runs and are clutching at anything to score those runs, you play with the motivation of having only to score those runs – there was no sense of enjoyment. Conversely, when you are in nick and enjoying it you do score quicker – you play within your little bubble and it’s all really easy – it’s nice to have that feeling again.”

Napier, New Zealand, March 2008. Back in the side after not being selected for England’s tour to Sri Lanka – where Strauss’ excellent catching in the slips was missed as much as his runs – and with scores in New Zealand from number three of 43, 2, 8, 44 and 0, he takes guard in England’s second innings, the final innings of the tour. In Strauss’ words, it is most definitely make or break time. And not just in the match situation. “I did know that the knives were out for me [in the media]. I do a column for the Sunday Telegraph and prior to that Test they said, ‘we want you to do a piece about your place in the team and how you feel about it’. For them to say that, I just knew the blades were out everywhere.”

Strauss reflects further on the situation in which he found himself, before adding with a broad grin: “It’s a real personal achievement to get the press off your back. To send them searching elsewhere for a story.”

In that second innings, Strauss stayed at the crease to see his side add 424 runs, 177 of which were his own. A career-best score under the most exacting pressure must have felt incredibly rewarding. “In New Zealand,” he recalls, “I did go into the winter series feeling good about my game. But having said that, even though I scored a few runs leading up to it, the last Test at Napier I knew that I had to score runs – a hundred in fact. Nothing else would do. I could feel it in the middle – the pressure of not doing well previously – everyone must feel that.

“When it’s going badly, those first 30 or 40 runs seem particularly tough. But as I got in and got going, the need to get a really big score proved a real motivation. Given my position in the team, I knew I had to keep churning them out and that hundred ended up being 177.

“What I would say is that as much as anything, it’s nice to feel comfortable at the wicket again after a tough year. It certainly makes you appreciate the good days.”

And the runs haven’t stopped since. A fifty at Lord’s and England’s only half-century and hundred in the come-from-behind win at Old Trafford, I put it to the Middlesex man that the Black Caps must think he’s the best player in the world. “Judging from the comments I’ve received from the New Zealand fielders around the bat, I definitely don’t think that’s the case! But what can I say, it’s gone well of late and I’m enjoying playing for England again.”

One final question before Strauss heads for the bar to find his team-mates for a drink. Picking up on the meaningless management-speak that occasionally emanates from the England dressing room – the phoney world of ‘journeys’ seemingly without destinations, of ‘opportunities’ infinitely offered but with no end point, of ‘challenges’ thrown down – none of which ever manifest themselves as problems. Facetiously and finally, I ask the question that if Strauss himself is on a ‘journey’, having climbed aboard Peter Moores’ metaphorical train at St. John’s Wood station – where was he now and, more importantly, was he headed? Smiling for a final time and speaking as he rises from his seat in the hotel reception area, “After getting on the Jubilee at St. John’s Wood. I reckon I’ve been on the District and Circle for a bit. I was definitely on the wrong train. But now I’m back on the right one and heading for Central London.” Pick the bones out of that, if you will.