At school I was more of a batting all-rounder, I’d bat at three and bowl a bit of medium pace. But as I got older I realised batting wasn’t as easy as the bowlers just pitching it up and me smacking it over the ropes!
My Dad (Tim – a former coach at Hampshire) had always told me if I wanted to be a professional I’d have to work on my bowling because my batting was not good enough and he was proved right, even if I hated hearing it at the time.
A late growth spurt meant I focused on my bowling and not long after getting into the Hampshire academy I made my first-class debut against New Zealand A in Portsmouth.
I got Mark Richardson out with my first ball and finished the match with six wickets – I thought this cricket lark was going to be easy!
Those first few three or four years with Hampshire are some of my happiest in the game – playing under Shane Warne was just fantastic.
He taught me so much and we had a great team – getting to a couple of Lord’s finals were highlights and Warney was a great captain. You can tell from his media stuff now – he still knows the game inside out.
I was soon on England’s radar, I played U19s and was in the ECB Academy stuff and in 2005 I made my debut in an ODI against Bangladesh. That went pretty well as well, I was only denied a hat-trick when the ball hit the bail but didn’t break the stumps.
But with the famous England attack of Matthew Hoggard, Steve Harmison et al I didn’t get a look in – even if I was with the squad for four of the five Tests in that famous 2005 Ashes summer.
But just to be around those guys was fantastic in what was an important time as English cricket got back into the headlines. Injuries, though, were already starting to rear their head in my career – I had a body that sometimes did not really like fast bowling.
I’d have liked to have played 40 or 50 Tests for England but only ended up with 12. That’s a disappointment but my body let me down and early on in my career it was hard to break into the England side.
Moving to Surrey in 2009 got me back in the selectors’ good books – I think they’d questioned my motivation and it had gone a bit stale at Hampshire. I had a great, injury-free first year at Surrey and got on the plane for the Ashes Down Under and that proved one of my career highlights.
Bowling at the WACA in that third Test was fantastic – I’d have liked to have rolled up that pitch and taken it with me for the rest of my career.
We played superb cricket that tour and getting the final wicket of the final Test to end England’s long wait for an Ashes win Down Under was amazing.
The feeling afterwards as we walked round the pitch was surreal and, to this day, I sometimes cannot quite believe I was a part of it.
Contrast that to my last trip to Australia with England that was a disaster. Strangely enough, getting picked for that 2013-14 Ashes tour remains one of my proudest moments in my career. To get back to form and fitness to earn selection after seven or eight operations was a great achievement.
But the tour soon went downhill – we got a nasty surprise in the form of Mitchell Johnson in that first Test and eventually I couldn’t wait for it to end.
The last year or two at Surrey were difficult – I struggled for motivation knowing England weren’t going to call again and in the end I didn’t want to be taking a youngster’s spot for the sake of it.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday May 6 2016
