Aggers’ Ashes. Jonathan Agnew

personified by the virtues of hard work, steady self-improvement and composure under fire. “Back in the late 1990s, I played with Andrew in the first team at Middlesex and then spent long hours with him as coach,” remembers Mike Gatting, the last England captain to secure the Ashes on enemy territory. “You could see the sort of character he was even as a teenager. When he first came into the team, we were more comprehensive schoolboys rather than public school, so we used to chip away at him about that. But he was very good at dealing with it.”

      While Mike Atherton famously had the initials ‘FEC – ‘Future England Captain’ – scrawled on his locker, Strauss initially struggled to convince at county level. In his first game in Middlesex colours, a Sunday League match in July 1997, he made only three, bowled by Matthew Fleming. He hit 83 on his first-class debut a year later but his maiden county century did not come for a further two years. “It’s always difficult coming in from school cricket as a young up-and-coming hopeful,” says Gatting. “It takes a while to settle into the heavier stuff. Andrew worked very hard on technique and playing at that different level. He was prepared to work very hard at it and do what was needed. Importantly, he had a very good grounding at Radley. Their coach, Andy Wagner, did a great job and they gave him a sound understanding of the game. He was always a natural sportsman, too. He was a very good rugby player and had a low golf handicap. From my point of view as coach, it was a pleasure working with someone who had such a good work ethic and who clearly had such a love of cricket.”

      The young Strauss took particular note of two other men in the dressing-room, skipper Mark Ramprakash and Australian opener Justin Langer. Gatting again: “Justin was the ideal role model, not only as a fellow left-hander who Andrew could work with but as a great example in how to prepare. Langer took his cricket seriously and had a lot of passion for it. There was always that in Andrew. He was always very competitive, never liked coming second. Every time he played, every time he went in, you could see he was striving to become better.”

      In his early days as full-time England skipper – on the unsuccessful tour of the West Indies, when he appeared loath to make attacking declarations -Strauss was sometimes criticised for being too cautious and unimaginative. At that stage, the aim was to steady the ship, rather than risk steering it back on to the rocks. While he has grown a little more adventurous with time, he remains a study in careful composure. He is both stoical in defeat and calm in victory. Just as there was no panic after the crushing defeat by Australia at Headingley last summer, so there were no wild celebrations after the series-clinching win at The Oval.

      “The one key thing about Andrew is that he’s very level-headed,” explains Gatting. “He always had it very firmly in his mind what he wanted to do, how he was going to do it and how he was going to be as a person. That self-confidence feeds into his displays at the crease. While history has lain heavy on the shoulders of many unsuccessful Ashes skippers, Strauss appears capable of carrying its burden. “It’s an integral part of his success,” says Gatting. “He knows who he is. He will set his standards and he’s not one to then move from that.”

      During the 2009 Ashes, Strauss scored 474 runs at an average of 52.66, more than any other player in the series. He also hit 161 as England won their first Ashes Test at Lord’s in 75 years. His overall average with the bat as skipper is 47.34, compared to 41.04 as a humble foot soldier. This compares favourably with the record of the last England captain to win the Ashes, Michael Vaughan, who averaged a stellar 50.98 as a mere batsman but only 36.02 while in charge of the side.

      “We used to have chats about it, about making sure he does enough for himself, being able to relaxand focus on his own game as well as the captaincy,” says Gatting. “He can be a very selfless player, always thinking about the team, but sometimes you have to focus on yourself. You understand your own game as you get older, and Andrew knows his well enough to know what he has to do. A lot of it is about time management. Work out what you have to do as captain and get there early. Get your own work done and dusted so you can then watch your team. If you need a little more practice, then do it at the end. You have to be calculating.”

      Strauss has not always found Test cricket easy. Dropped in 2007 for the tour of Sri Lanka, having averaged only 27 over the previous 12 months, the then 30-year-old looked technically troubled. Stuart Clark, the leading wicket-taker in the 2006/07 Ashes, believes the Australian bowlers would target a perceived weakness on the hook and a tendency to put the front foot straight down the pitch rather than following the line of the ball. While his record against the old enemy at home is good – in 2005, Strauss was the only batsman on either side to score two centuries in the series – it is less impressive Down Under. In 2006/07, he scored only 247 runs at an average of 24.7 and a highest score of 50. Should he struggle this time, Australia’s task in wrestling back the little urn will be made a lot easier.

      What will help him, believes Gatting, is the bond formed with coach Andy Flower. “You’ve got two people now in charge who are both hard and fair but also passionate about the team doing well. Andrew is a very good communicator. He’s very honest with his players and can be hard on them but he’ll be fair. But the coach has to remember that when things are going well the captain needs to be patted on the back, too, and told he does well. The skipper will go round and tell his players they’ve done well but he needs the same from someone above him.”

      What then are the particular pressures Strauss can expect as an England skipper in Australia? And what is key to successful captaincy Down Under? “The media there will side with the home team and try to make as much of things that happen to the tourists as possible,” says Gatting. “Andrew will need to keep the side close-knit and then must make sure they don’t take too much notice of what is written or said. He will also know that if you do get on top, the Aussie press will get on top of their own team. You can see it in the reaction to Australia’s decision to pick a squad of 17 for the First Test. The Aussie media can turn very quickly.”

      Gatting points out that England have already made a good start Down Under and thus silenced a lot of the Australian critics. “If England hadn’t done so well in the state games, you would have seen a lot more about them in the sports pages. The charge hasn’t begun because the guys have started well. The focus has been on what the Aussie selectors are doing.” And Gatting has these words of wisdom for Strauss and his men: “When you get even a small chance of getting on top, hit them hard. Capitalise on your chances and never, ever take your foot off their throats.”

      DAY 21: 23 November 2010

      Today is somewhat over shadowed by a row in the papers. Ian Healy, former Australian wicketkeeper and now cricket commentator, is left ‘fuming’ by the Poms’ apparent snub of a lunchtime event he was hosting along with Sky’s Nasser Hussein, producing headlines joshing for position as the most ridiculous seen on the tour so far. The England side are criticised for their single-minded arrogance when they fail to turn up for an ‘official’ Ashes lunch. “This England side didn’t think it was important enough to attend. To me that’s bullsh**,” blasts Healy. Two things wrong with this as far as I can see: firstly, only half the Australians turn out for the lunch and it is not an ‘official Ashes lunch’ in any case. England were always scheduled to practise at the Gabba from lunchtime onwards and to the best of my knowledge no one in the England camp actually knew about the lunch.

      PONTING UNDER FIRE

      Ben Dirs | 23 November 2010

      Over the past 15 years Australia has had a great many would-be captains, probably thousands of them – and an awful lot of them have been English. They popped up in pubs and bars and on sofas, throwing their hats into the ring every time an Aussie batsman passed 100 in an Ashes Test, every time an English partnership had seen off the seamers and the ball was then tossed to Shane Warne. You could imagine them muttering under their breath: “Seriously, I could captain this side.”

      It is, of course, a vacuous statement – but not without a smidgeon of truth.

      It can quite easily be argued that Australia had in the team that humiliated England 5-0 in the last Ashes series Down Under more bona fide greats than England has produced in the last 30 or 40 years. When the actual captain Ricky Ponting called it ‘arguably the best team in any sport in the world; he was not guilty of hyperbole.