How are you and what is the current situation with the back?

I'm fine. since I came back from Australia I've had the back rescanned to check that there are no major structural problems, and gone through a comprehensive period of rehabilitation. Together with fitness coaches from the ECB and Surrey, we've been trying to build up the strength in the back from the small muscle groups all the way through to overall strength in the body, and then working on combining the functional skills cricket demands. Obviously, I've gained a lot more knowledge about my back now and if I get a little pain starting, I can tell what to be concerned about and what not. For instance, if a two-hour car journey stiffens the back up I can do the appropriate exercises at the time.

What has been your fitness regime over the last few months?

I'm at the stage now where I'm back in the nets, running between the wickets and putting my body through what I would call extreme skills in one-day cricket such as diving, and stopping and starting quickly, so I'm up to a good level in my own belief. The time scale has been the crucial factor. During your career when you come out of a side you never quite know how you might struggle to get back in it, you don't want to miss too many games so you try to beat the clock. In Australia when it hit me, I realised that I had to assess properly what was happening to my career. I want to play cricket for a few more years yet.

Take us back to when the back problems first started.

It was many years ago when I first had a back spasm, but I was so much younger then and I didn't think anything of it. It happened again a couple of years later when I was about 25; I suppose there were just two or three over a six or seven-year period. I could handle that. Then in Sharjah last year I started to get more and more pain, from activity like exercising during the warm-up. I received anti-inflammatories to get me through matches; we were dealing with it. Following Sharjah I went to the West Indies and had the episode in Barbados, which was probably the first time it happened while I'd been batting.

That became quite a tough situation with so many games. I kept getting the feeling of my back giving way, and because I was trying to redistribute the weight my leg hurt through taking the strain. Again, with anti-inflammatory injections into the problem area, I carried on. But all this patching yourself up and getting yourself back out there doesn't attend to the real problem.

That's just treating the symptoms not the cause.

That's right. Then last summer I'd had a car journey to Hampshire for a Sunday League match just before the One-Day International against South Africa, and I went to throw slightly off balance in the warm-up and again it went back into spasm. I had an epidural injection to try to settle it down again. It did for about six weeks, and then there was the episode in Manchester. So the attacks were coming closer and closer together, which specialists will tell you is a typical case of weakness in the back where, due to a lack of strength, slight movements trigger off spasms. A series of scans revealed that the facet joint by the disc had become rather jagged, and I had a minor operation to smooth it down and remove a small cyst. They gave me about 6 to 8 weeks to be active.

All seemed to be fine out in Australia for the first few weeks, although managing to do all the strengthening exercises as we were going along and playing was becoming difficult. Then we had a bad flight which set the back off again and forced me to miss the Perth Test. That wasn't really a back spasm, it was just chronic back stiffness more than anything. Worse followed going down to Melbourne to play Victoria when I had this feeling of instability again and it became clear I would take no further part in the tour.

That must have been a huge blow having had the two lay-offs and started the tour so well that you recorded your highest first-class score. Has it affected your confidence?

Not really, no - not massively. Obviously the lay-off has given me time to really assess the situation and I now find myself almost starting again. You have to take a few blows in your career and you have to bounce back. With the World Cup coming up and the season ahead, this is going to be another test for me now.

The schedules and the amount of cricket I've played over 10 years won't have helped the situation but with the knowledge I've gained I hope I'll be able to manage myself better. If after the last lay-off I'd gone back and really struggled then I think my confidence may have been affected. I do find, though, that when you haven't played for ages sharpness might just take a little while to come back, which can lead to apprehension that the body will hold up and that your form will return with natural progress.

I'm raring to go. I haven't felt this way about coming back before. I've gone back to all the basics, building all the skills up, and that has been quite an exciting time, almost like I was a young kid learning everything again.

Have you had a mentor as such?

I've been under Dr Philip Bell, who has overseen things from the ECB, and a guy called Tim Laskey, who I've trained with for years and has been an inspiration. We work on the mental side and build up the body strength in isolated, invigorating conditions in Grayshott. Now cricket takes over, but I'll pay much more attention to the body mechanics in future.

I guess that being at home for Christmas must have been considerable consolation.

Oh, yes. I was very disappointed about breaking down but I have a family here who have supported me for many years - they've been fantastic - and my little boy is two. I love my cricket but my family is more important.

To ensure a World Cup place you have to prove your fitness in the Sharjah triangular just when your wife's expecting your second child. An unfortunate dilemma...

Yes, it's slap bang in the middle of the schedule and there won't be any chance of me coming back as the trip is only three weeks. We couldn't have timed it worse really! It's been a tough decision. I'd love to be there, but we've had to look at the overall picture.

Have the problems necessitated any change in your technique?

Posture is something you usually don't pay any attention to, but it's important. It's tough when you're batting for long periods of time and get a little tired; the batting position is not a perfect one for our bodies.

It's good that I've had all these nets to get through the initial twinges of pain and tiredness, the tense muscles and tightness. I'm quite confident I can take all this forward and, hopefully, I'll have a good period of time where I'm out there consistently. It's unsettling when you play and then have time off injured. You have to be able to fight back and be philosophical about a bit of adversity.

A lot of people had written you off.

Yes, that spurs me on. I'm going to have a lot of fun coming back. The press annoy me, it's more sensationalism than anything else. I feel that I've still got a lot to offer and just want to get back out there and enjoy it.

What about about fielding in the slips? Could hours of crouching be a problem?

We have this theory in England that you can only field in one position which is an unfortunate way of thinking. I'm sure you have to have your best fielders in the right position but I think that you should practise in other areas as well. I'd like to get my legs running a bit more to keep the body a little warmer. Being stuck in the same position for long periods of time probably added to the stress.

For England supporters there's something very reassuring about your presence when you walk out to bat. Like the fastest gun in town, you always seem coolness personnified. Is that an act?

It's more a case of concentration when you go to the crease. You try to focus, there's quite a lot going on out there, with a noisy crowd etc. I try to just break it down to the real situation which is bowler versus batsman. That's the skill of the game, to try to keep it quite simple.

There's quite a psychological warfare out there at times and body language is very important.

Oh yes. Bowlers sometimes might give a little bit more away but as a batter you have to try not to be distracted, try to bring the 'blood level' down. I try to ignore the sledging, but if I think the bowler might be getting affected himself, I might have to play the game a little bit. I've played a lot of football, where a bloke taps you on the shoulder in the first minute and says he's going to break your leg. The thought of a set of studs coming through the back of your leg is a little more threatening than a cricket ball from 22 yards.

How do you occupy yourself before going out to bat. Do you have a regular routine?

If I'm batting at five I might just watch the first few overs go down, to see what the pitch is doing, and then try to relax maybe read a book. When a wicket goes down, I get padded up and pay more attention and watch the game and soak up the atmosphere. There's always nerves as well: not ridiculous, never a shaking wreck, but once you get over the rope, that's the best feeling because you're in control of the situation.

What did you make of England's performance in the Ashes series?

I only watched bits of it. I'm not a particularly good watcher of cricket; I won't do it on my days off. What with a two-year-old who gets me up at 7 o'clock in the morning wanting to do jigsaw puzzles, plus three or four days a week training I had my hands full.

But, I thought it was pretty typical of England every time we play away. We sometimes play brilliantly but like a lot of teams we are searching for that consistency in our game. I think it's bred out of our domestic system in this modern era. Towards the end of the one-day series it was very hard. During a tour you work and fight, but at the end, especially one that has gone on for four months, the capabilities to fight back in adversity become harder. Maybe the belief goes slightly towards the end. I just saw a pattern of inconsistency which we are always talking about and constantly striving to eradicate.

Yet again there were too many of those dreadful middle/late-order collapses that happen so often with England.

There are some pretty ruthless bowlers around the world who will expose the tail, and if our tail is starting at 7 or 8 we're all pretty aware that nine times out of 10 we're not going to get massive scores out of them, which puts a lot more emphasis on the guys up the top of the order to score. The reality is our tail over a period of say 10 innings might wag a couple of times; it's not for the lack of trying but after a couple of bumpers in the right area they are struggling technically to survive.

How difficult has it been being a member of the England side in the last few years when the press and media have been on the team's back?

It hurts when anything is personal. I'm open to the belief that if someone should criticise me or any of the team professionally then that's a part of the job that we're in. But I think only if it gets very personal would I approach a reporter. I was much quieter when I first started, I just played and got on with it. Now I'm more understanding of what the press want; they have a job to do just like we do. As long as you've got a few people who love and care for you then you can forget about those who are having a little stab at you.

You must know Alec Stewart as well as anyone. How do you think he's coping with the England captaincy?

It's been tough for him and considering the length of time he's been playing and the number of roles he's undertaken it's incredible what he's doing. Alec is a remarkable cricketer in many ways: he's strong and is very dedicated to his cricket, and makes massive sacrifices to all of us. The longer he goes on the more he amazes people around him. I'm slightly more philosophical about life.

The job carries so much baggage now

The hour after the game he is having to talk to the press. Why do the press need to be spoken to every day during a Test match? I mean the guys have been watching the game, surely they can just report on the match. Maybe they need to speak to someone who has scored a hundred, to add a little juice to it, but every day… it's bizarre.

Do you have any aspirations as far as captaincy is concerned? Strangely, your name never seems to come up.

I do as time's gone on. I captained a few games for Surrey in 1994 when Alec was away, just after the West Indies tour and the New Zealand series, and I enjoyed it. But once I got back in the England side it didn't seem that I would have a role like that with Surrey, being away so much. If you're not a county captain or vice-captain people automatically think perhaps he doesn't want to do it, that there must be a lack of ambition there. But on the contrary, with the amount of knowledge I've gained on the field and in the dressing-room I'd like to be able to have a go. I'm not going to go and chase it but if someone thought I could do the job I certainly wouldn't back away from it.

How do you rate our chances in the World Cup, and who are the main threats, given the conditions in England?

I think we have a fabulous chance. Minds will be clear after the winter. You have to be able to draw lines during your life and put things completely behind you. We all know what the conditions are going to be like at that time of year in our country and we have to use that knowledge in our tactics. I see us definitely in the top three, with South Africa probably favourites. Their record and ratio of wins over the last four or five years is awesome and they showed last year that they were capable of winning in England. Australia also, but we need to remind ourselves of what we did to them early in the season in '97: we beat them and we beat them quite easily. At that time of the year some of the West Indies bowlers could be a handful, and New Zealand are a capable one-day side as well.

Are you happier facing pace rather than spin?

I think you have to be able to cope with both at the highest level. If our batsmen have a weakness it is to top quality leg-spin for the simple reason we don't face it enough to be able to work out a consistent plan to it.

Are there any particular bowlers you have problems with?

Every country seems to have two or three fantastic quick bowlers backed up by a very able leg-spinner. I think the best ones are the ones who get in close to the stumps and bowl wicket to wicket like Glenn McGrath, Curtly Ambrose or Shaun Pollock. They're the hardest to work out and play against. The minute you make a slight error, bang you're gone.

As for spinners: it depends what wicket you're playing on. I really enjoy the contests against someone like Shane Warne. You work out your own way of playing him; likewise Anil Kumble, who is a different prospect on the subcontinent. Watching Saqlain purvey the off-spinner's art at Surrey last summer was a real eye-opener.

How do you entertain the idea of ECB contracts, assuming you are offered one?

Whether this current generation will benefit from it massively I don't know. For English cricket to go forward we must be more professional. For instance, our bowlers are over-bowled. You don't really see the great quicks around the world playing the amount of domestic cricket our guys do. It looks hard enough for someone like Glenn McGrath, who's probably mainly playing international cricket, and the workload that entails; throw in everything our guys have to do at domestic level and it becomes a completely different ball game.

I do believe the ECB has got to look after the roots of the sport, but look after the cream as well because that is what people focus on. If the cream isn't successful then you're not encouraging people from the bottom to follow you.

How important is county cricket to you after all these years?

It's still important because cricket is your career and they're the ones who are handing you your contract every year. I don't think anyone who plays county cricket will ever scoff at what they've been given. But if you are seeking to protect the best and trying to establish a pyramid system then I think ECB contracts are going to be imperative to the game. Obviously, though, the structure underneath it has to be right first.

You're 29. Providing you stay fit what ambitions do you now have?

In view of what's happened to me, I just want to make sure I play with enjoyment instead of going through the motions. There should always be a sense of purpose there. I don't have massive targets, just playing and winning tournaments with England and trophies with Surrey.

You're not a stats man as such?

I was when I was younger. In the cricket world we're brought up and brainwashed about averages and career stats, but that tends to encourage you to do well as an individual.

Being coached as a youngster in football you don't operate like that, it has to be more of a team effort. Likewise a cricket team have to gel together to produce a winning formula.

I'm not going to sit down and look at my own figures when I retire. I want to win more trophies, that's more important. That's the main aim I have. And to win the World Cup would be a brilliant start to what is effectively the second half of my career.