A SUMMER so crowded with dismay and discontent was bound to cause pain. That match of it belong to the most prolific England batsman of all time, a man who played his last cricket two years ago, may seem incongruous, but Graham Gooch is prone to deep concern over the state of the game he loves. This has not changed, despite his being abruptly cast adrift by those responsible for the national team.

For the first time in many an autumn, Gooch has no clear idea what life holds. He talks purposefully of getting fitter – Gooch is always purposeful where fitness is concerned – and chuckles over his intention to play football for an Essex veterans team. `A comeback at 46 – I must be made.' The rarity of a home-based winter, though, will not stop Gooch's mind focusing readily and regularly on events in South Africa. He may be stung by rejection but he is certainly not soured.

 Gooch, along with Mike Gatting, was relieved of his duties as a selector before the final Test. As he had, anyway, been due to stand down after the tour parties were picked, it smacked of easy expedience, a salve for the bloodlust evident in some quarters. Gooch saw out the Oval Test in his nebulous role as `acting coach', fronted up for one more reprise of his despairing defeat speech – remembered with no great fondness from the last days of his captaincy in 1993– then took his leave of an England dressing-room that, in one form or another, he has served since 1975.

Was he just the convenient scapegoat, the obvious casualty because his was the gloomiest face on the dressing-room balcony? He gives that expressively mournful shrug, spreads his hands wide and professes that it is nothing new. `I've been down that road before. People on the fringe must always expect flak when the team is losing and someone has to take the fall.

`Contrary to what people have been saying, the atmosphere in the dressing-room has been pretty good this summer,' he adds, in a tacit reference to David Lloyd's claim that newcomers to the team were `traumatised'.

` Nasser has been very forthright, as in his style, but I really can't explain why we performed so badly and the disappointing thing is that I've seen it all before.

`It is a misconception that Gatt and myself wanted older players in the side, it just wasn't like that. I like to think we introduced quite a few youngsters.'

And what of the selection of Graeme Hick? In some eyes, it brought the two old warriors down; in others, it was influenced far more by the captain, Nasser Hussain. Gooch, otherwise frank, suddenly takes on the characteristics of a clam. `It was a game we needed to win and you pick the best side for the situation. In my experience, the best sides in any sport are a balance between the experience and youth.'

He exudes no bitterness over the saga but it has plainly left its mark. `It did hurt. Such things always do, because my motivation has only ever been to do my best for England and to helm them win Test matches. My involvement had to end some time but this was not the way I would have liked. You might almost say it ended in tears. We had talked about the selection panel and it's not exactly true to say I was sacked. I was happy enough to stand down to let it be done in a different way, though if people think everything is going to chance because someone new is picking the side, they are kidding themselves.'

 WE WERE sitting on a balcony at Old Trafford in the September sunshine, an Indian summer smiling on a largely empty ground. Gooch was watching the Durham openers but all morning against Lancashire. Jimmy Daley and Jon Lewis are players he has had plenty to do with in his part-time role as the country's specialist batting advisor, but his pleasure for them periodically gave way to a pained prosecution of the country game that, he is now convinced, must bear heavy responsibility for England's decline.

 Graham Gooch

`If a county is winning, the energy is all there. But if a match is tricking away, if is accepted that the game has gone and you move to the next one. It's a dangerous attitude and I believe if is reflected in our Test cricket'

Bear in mind that this is Essex Man speaking, one of the most distinguished representatives of a country whose devotion to the parochial preferences of members has often been in conflict with the welfare of the Test team. Time was when Gooch was equivocal on the domestic structure, instinctively supportive of his beloved country. Increasingly, however, he has been prone to misgivings as to the effect of the system on the international player. He is no longer in any doubt at all. `In my experience, both in the latter years of my playing career and since, if a country team is winning then the energy – that in-word – is all there between the players. But if a match is trickling away, the resilience for a rearguard action is often not there. It is accepted that the game has gone and you move on to the next one. It's a dangerous attitude and I believe it is being reflected in our Test cricket.

`The players we chose for England over the past couple of years were the best available, given their performances in the domestic game. No-one can argue with that. So what really worries me is the ability level in county cricket, because it plainly isn't high enough. Raising the standard of the domestic game is paramount but we just seem to be going round in circles.

`If the people who control the game – and that's the 18 counties, the way things are – really want to have a strong Test side, everything else has to be designed to bring that about. Yet we have had several instances down the years when changes, possibly improvements, have been passed through all the committees, then been voted down when it came to the crunch. That gets us nowhere and it makes other countries laugh at us.

`I get so disappointed at the state of our game because I always played not only to win matches but to gain respect for our cricket. The Australians have never respected us – they think the cricket here is weak and the attitude is not what it should be – and I hate to hear them joke about how nothing will ever change.'

There are those eager to mock Gooch for his down-cast demeanour, his shambling gait. Generally, they misjudge his motivation, underestimate the depth of his feelings. `I do feel very passionate about this,' he says. `We have had four England coaches and four captains in the past seven years but the performances have not really altered so it should be obvious to anyone that the problem is something more deep-rooted.

`You could pick on a lot of things about our Test cricket but the main one is that we don't make big scores. We simply don't get enough hundreds. We scored two Test centuries in a year and Australia made three against us in the first match in Brisbane last winter. I don't want to lambast our players in public because I'm still here to support them but is clear that the domestic cricket they are playing is inadequate for their needs.'

 Gooch has some hope that the two-division Championship will bring an improvement –`it is already having an effect, giving all the mid-table sides this year a lot more to play for'– but he is not kidded that it can be the panacea on its own. `The key is to have fewer players on county staffs. Only the best should get a game, I'm convinced of that. Until they have to fight and compete for a place at domestic level, in a way that will prepare them better and make them tougher for Test cricket, we won't get anywhere.

`The back-up available to our Test players now is equal to anything that Australia and South Africa provide. But because it hasn't improved results, some people will now say it was better the old way, when we turned up for a Test match on a Wednesday afternoon and just had Alec Bedser standing behind the net. Eventually, of course, it's down to the players.

`Maybe there are now too many shoulders around for the players to lean on. Maybe life has become a bit too comfortable for when the time comes for them to stand up alone. A player has to know what he wants and how he's going to get it. I'm proud that I played at a good level to a much older age than most but I always wanted to be judged, and to judge myself, on my performances. Once they began to fall off, I packed up.'

 NINE MONTHS ago, Gooch was a power in the dressing-room. He was tour manager in Australia but also a man to whom batsmen with any nous would gravitate for wisdom and advice. Many thought he would take over as coach when David Lloyd stood aside but some believed he was halfway there already, an assertion that caused him a rare degree of resentment.

`I was very disappointed by some of the things that were written, especially when Bob Willis suggested I interfered with Bumble's [ Lloyd's] running of the team. I'm old enough and wise enough to let most things pass over my head but that upset me because it just wasn't true. I did everything Bumble wanted me to do with the team and no more,' he said – an assertion, incidentally, with which Lloyd himself concurs.

When a new coach was sought in the spring, Gooch was indeed, approached. `I was asked about the job and I declined, he said, `I didn't think I was a sufficiently experienced coach to take it on. I need to put in more yards yet, probably to work with a country full-time if the opportunity comes up.'

 Gooch's successes, to date, are on a one-to-one level. He has been an enduring aid to Hussain and can take great credit from his maturing, albeit belatedly, as a Test player and character. He has also worked assiduously with Chris Adams and Darren Maddy– at the instigation of the two players – and there was a certain irony in their inclusion in a tour party to which Gooch was permitted no input.

`It's folly to believe you can influence all 11 players in any team. I've been trying to give players the benefit of my experience but they have got to want to hear it and some are much more receptive than others. Anyway, I learned early on as a coach that if a player makes runs, he's playing well, but if he does badly, you are telling him wrong.'

He laughs, though not especially heartily.

Whatever else may be said about him, Gooch's commitment to English cricket is fervent. He is feeling the draught of exclusion keenly. I honestly don't know what the future holds,' he said. `But I have learned the real frustration of being a coach. When I was playing, I knew exactly where I was going and what I wanted. It was all in my control. Now it's not in my control at all, and that's the thing I find difficult.'

`You could pick on a lot of things about our cricket but the main one is that we don't make big scores': Graham Thorpe was one of the batsmen who underperformed this summer

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