As it is, he can't get a place in the England team, which wouldn't matter if all there was to the man had been described above. However, we are discussing our best spin bowler, who has not been picked for the England team since the Test in Adelaide last year. In that time the spin bowling has been left to cricketers with barely an 'aporth of Tufnell's talent. He has the ability to win a match when the pitch is helpful and to bowl line and length with teasing flight when it isn't. During a period when the performance of the England team is most charitably described as disappointing he hasn't had a sniff, despite currently being the top English spinner in the first-class averages.
Raymond Illingworth put it most delicately: ``He is a good bowler who finds it difficult to fit into a team plan.'' Graham Gooch observed: ``His carefree flippancy had me seething. Phil has a marvellous talent as a bowler but his mental toughness seems suspect The contrast between Gooch, the ultimate professional, and the maver- ick bowler caused the former England captain to ask Ian Chappell how to get the best out of Tufnell. The Australian said: ``Bowl him more often. That way, at least he won't be fielding.''
A former team-mate said: ``He is talented, aggres- sive and entertaining. He can also be a pain in the back- side. There have been signs in the past 12 months he is maturing. My own view is he must be encouraged and given every chance to show he has changed. He is, when all is said and done, a mar- vellous bowler.''
He was fined in 1994 for assaulting his former fiancee, and was beaten up by the girl's father.
The prejudice against Phil Tufnell is deep-seated. His tantrums on the field, particularly during five overseas tours, would have been bad enough, but he also troubled police as well as umpires. He was fined in 1994 for assaulting his former fiancee, and was beaten up by the girl's father. He was for- given by the selectors and chosen to tour Australia but admits, with hindsight, he would have been better off staying at home. ``That was the most terrible time of my life. I was stressed and worrying all the time. I hadn't seen my daughter for a year or so. I wasn't up to touring and should have realised it at the time,'' he said.
Since returning from Australia, apart from one game as 12th man, nothing. Not being picked to go to South Africa hurt him. Turning 30 made him think. He says it changed him overnight. ``I just woke up and felt different. If I think about it then obviously I am happier in myself. I have a new wife who really cares for me. I spend more time at garden centres than down the pub. Tufnell among the petunias. There'll be one or two of my team-mates raise an eyebrow at that. Then Ernie [John Emburey] leaving made me think more about my game. He was my mate and my teacher and I miss him. But when he left it meant I had to take more responsibility and I've enjoyed it.''
Tufnell cannot remember a time when he didn't play cricket. At the age of nine he was opening the bowling and the batting for his club's junior team. As someone who eventually batted below Devon Malcolm for England it can be assumed his bowling developed much more than his batting. He bowled medium pace until he was 13, when a coach showed him how to grip the ball for a leg-break and he found he could spin with ease.
When he was 14 his mother died and he gave up cricket for two or three years. When I asked why he first said: ``I was a bit of a teenager I suppose, trying to get into pubs under- age and all that.'' Then, later on, he said: ``When something like that happens in a family things fall apart. When mum died, going for a practice on a Tuesday night and being shouted at by a load of blokes wasn't what I wanted.''
``I was soldering up a carving trolley when dad said: 'What you doing sitting in here breathing in these fumes when you could be playing cricket. Get your arse down to Lord's.
THE troubled teenager was expelled from school and started work with his father, a silversmith. ``I was soldering up a carving trolley when dad said: 'What you doing sitting in here breathing in these fumes when you could be playing cricket. Get your arse down to Lord's.' So I joined the groundstaff and I thought: 'Hold on, this is a nice job wearing a blazer and all that'.''
He was 17. The next 13 years were eventful. Looking back he acknowledges he wasn't a saint but asks who was. He says whenever he let himself down he did so because he was annoyed at his own performance. If he bowled badly he would lie awake at night worrying. He envied Emburey who, if he bowled a bad ball, shrugged and got on with the job of making sure the next delivery was a good one. He recalls that when he took his first Test wicket he was criticised for not shaking hands with his captain. ``Didn't see him. I was too busy celebrat- ing the fact that my epitaph would not read: 'He never got a Test wicket'. It used to give me nightmares.''
I asked him if he felt he deserved his reputation as an awkward customer. ``I think I have let myself down but I also think I've been unfairly judged at times. A bit of both. On the other hand, I know I've learned a lot from my bad experiences. I've had an up-and-down sort of life but I'm happy now and feel relaxed about everything. I try to be level-headed about being ignored by the selectors. I'm not big-headed about playing. I haven't got a right to be in the side. All I am saying is that if they stuck with me through the bad times, and they did, then maybe they ought to consider me in the good times when I have calmed down. I would like to repay their patience.''
He wants to be selected for the coming tour to Zim- babwe and New Zealand. I put it to him his reputation as a poor tourist was such it might be unlikely. ``But I don't agree I am a bad tourist. If I was, why have I been on five tours? Sixteen of my 22 Tests have been abroad. I think I'm a good tour- ist. I am one of the bubblier ones, always geeing the lads up in the dressing room,'' he said.
He bridled at the reservations about his bowling. ``I spin it as much as any finger spinner in the game and nowadays I am a lot cannier.
I told him that more practical reasons for the selectors' indifference might be a feeling he wasn't spinning the ball like he once did and his poor batting and ordinary fielding made him a luxury in the view of the current management. He said he worked hard at his fielding and his batting had im- proved although there was not much danger he would score a ton.
He bridled at the reservations about his bowling. ``I spin it as much as any finger spinner in the game and nowadays I am a lot cannier. I know the game better. You have to under- stand cricket if you are a spin bowler. If a bloke is bowling at 90mph and another at 10 who do you think the batsman is going to tuck into?
``When I tell people I'd like to stay in the game as a coach or something they laugh. You can see them going nudge nudge, wink wink. But I'd be good at man-management because I know what it's like to be an awkward sod and understand that what is often thought of as a bad attitude is sometimes simply an attitude to win.''
What he wants more than anything is to re-establish himself as part of the England squad. There is little doubt they are less accomplished and more drab without him. He could be forgiven for thinking that there is a plot to keep him out.
``I have the feeling that somehow I'm the bogeyman not to be sat next to, that the theory is we can't pick him be- cause he's banned from touring. I imagine them fearing I might poison the tea-lady or knife the gateman or run on to the mid- dle at Lord's with my trousers down,'' he said. He wasn't getting paranoic was he? ``A bit maybe, but I always remember my dad tel- ling me when I was a nipper I was the kind of person who had to do twice as much as everyone else to convince people I was any good.'' Only now does Phil Tufnell fully understand the truth of what his father told him.