Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by me.   Sorry, I have so many questions to ask – feel free to miss some or take your time.

 

Q – I just noticed that you were born in Malaga, Spain.   Did you live in Spain throughout your childhood – when did you come over to England and how did you get involved in playing the game?

 

My father (Mike Barnett) is English and my mother is Spanish and they met in Spain. Their first three children (three boys including me) were born there.  I lived in Spain for my first seven years, moving to London around 1977 after my parents decided it was time for a change. My sister was born here. A couple of years after moving to the UK, my father started netting with a West Indian friend of his (I think his name was Sam) and I came along one day to find out what this cricket thing was all about.

My dad used to play as a youngster (at school), was big cricket fan and was a useful left hand batsman, so as my interest in the game developed he encouraged me to join a local club. We settled on Brondesbury School cricket was non existent for me (they just didn’t do it at my primary school, Primrose Hill), at least until secondary school (William Ellis – they were big into rugby which I also played) but even then the school cricket was very occasional.  In retrospect, Brondesbury was a great choice. It had a very strong colts set up with close ties to Middlesex. I was selected for trials for the Middlesex Under 11s. In those days I was a left arm opening bowler and crap batsman. The latter was true for most of my cricketing career. Don Wilson converted me into a left arm spinner after seeing me mess around at the Lords nets once, and I never looked back. I later moved to play for Hampstead to get more exposure in the 1^st eleven of the adults side, which I wasn’t getting at Brondesbury.

 

Q – Did you ever consider playing cricket for Spain? 

 

Nope.

 

Q – I noticed your brother Michael had an opportunity in the Middlesex 2^nd XI in 1990 – he played one game batting at no 10 and was run out for 1 – he didn’t bowl.  Did you run him out and were the team desperate for players to make up a team as it looked like he didn’t really have an opportunity to demonstrate his talent?

 

My brother Michael was getting looked at as left arm seam bowler. He was playing for Middlesex colts at the time and was progressing well. He wasn’t quick, but he was accurate and swung it. Unfortunately, soon after this game he injured his left shoulder and never really got back to his previous form.

 

Q – You come from an interesting cricket dynasty – your great uncle Charlie Barnett played for Gloucs and England (20 test matches).  He also had a brother and an uncle who played first class cricket.   Were they an influence on you? 

 

My biggest influence was my father. I knew of Charlie Barnett and met him a couple of years before his death, but didn’t meet his brother or uncle. Although my father never played county cricket, he knew a great deal about the game and later trained to coach, for which he had a natural talent.  I think if he had the opportunities I had, my father could have been very handy – he had a great eye. He coached the colts at Brondesbury and got involved with the Middlesex colts coaching program too.  Dad was always there for guidance and advice during the games I played. Another big influence was Don Wilson. He was head of MCC coaching and left arm spinner for Yorkshire and England in his playing days. We spent a lot of time in the nets at Lords. Don was brilliant in providing tactical advice (field settings, attacking vs. defensive fields, etc.). He was an attacking left arm spinner and this approach rubbed off on me. Don Bennett was also a key figure in my early Middlesex career, providing me early opportunities for the seconds (he gave me my first 2XI game when I was 15). Clive Radley was the team manager in my first few years at the Middlesex squad.  I learnt a great deal from him in those years.

 

Q – You played for England Young Cricketers (U19) in 1989/90 – tell us about your experiences – who did you play with and how did you perform?  Did you think that any of your fellow team-mates would make it?   Did anyone surprise you?

 

I played two series for the Young Lions as we were known. Pakistan at home and Australia away. Our team included Darren Gough (already know as twinkle toes in those days – really!), John Crawley, Dominic Cork and Ronnie Irani, who all went on to play for the full England side. We won the series against Pakistan in a nail biting final test after the first two were drawn. Cork was the hero of that game, a typically dogged knock to see us to victory. Moin Kahn was the skipper of the opposition; he went on to keep for the Pakistani full side (and skipper a few games if I remember correctly).

 

We knew the tour to Australia the following winter (1990) was going to be tough, but we had a confident and talented side. Besides those already mentioned, we had other possible England stars on the tour: Mathew Keech, Wayne Noon, Aftab Habib, Keith Butler, Toby Radford, Piran Holloway, Paul Grayson, Jeremy Hallett, Andrew Robson, and Jeremy Batty.

 

On the Aussie side, Damien Martyn, Justin Langer and Jason Gallian. Again, we came into the final test at Perth after drawing the first two. I remember that the Aussies kept telling us ‘wait till Perth’ during the series. They weren’t wrong. We batted first on the bounciest pitch any of us had ever seen and found ourselves 45-7 or something similar by lunch. Good length balls were flying past our ears and still appeared to be rising as they arrived to the keeper. I didn’t play that game, but I remember being in the dressing room seeing English batsman after English batsman visibly shaken and traumatized by their first taste of what Western Australia pitches had to offer. We were truly beaten that game – 70 all out in the first innings. But playing in those kinds of alien conditions was what these youth tours were all about.

 

Who did I think would make it? On our side, I regarded Gough and Crawley as dead certs. I thought Keech, Butler, Holloway  and Hallett had a chance. Of those we played against – for Australia: Damien Martyn and Jason Gallian and another lesser know player today Ken Vowles (who smashed it from ball one - short and compact, he looked and batted like the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character). For Pakistan: Zahid Fazal, Ataur Rahman. Moin Kahn looked the part but I thought he was too cocky to make it. I was wrong.

 

Q - Tell us about your time at Middlesex – you played approximately 50 games – I guess your opportunities were limited with Emburey and Tufnell still in the side, not forgetting Jamie Sykes too.    

 

My first first class game was against Sussex when I was 17 in 1988. I played as Tufnell’s replacement when he played for England (or out of action for, er, other reasons). I couldn’t believe I was playing amongst my heroes since I was boy: Gatting, Emburey, Butcher, Cowans, Daniel, Williams, Downton and Slack.

 

Q – Who was your best mate at Middlesex?   

 

I spent a lot of time with Mike Roseberry who kind of took care of me in the first couple of years. Paul Weekes and I joined the Middlesex staff in the same year, and as spinners who bowled in tandem regularly, we had a lot in common. Alistair Frazer and I got on well with too.  I also got on well with Simon Hughes.

 

Q – What was the dressing room like with all those great characters?  What memories do you have?   Were you a practical joker?

 

Middlesex was a confident environment in those days, both within the second and first team dressing rooms. In the seconds, we were the team to beat at the time and we knew it. Off the field, the team dynamics were amazing.

 

We had the legendary Jamie ‘Psycho’ Sykes. I’ve never met anyone like him since. A big guy from the Hackney Downs with an even bigger mouth and naturally hilarious. He came across as the guy you could call if someone owned you money and wanted to speed things up a little. Jamie and Tuffnell together in the dressing room was the best show on earth. Rainy days would provide these two clowns with an appreciative audience. They would just talk, argue, fight and joke between themselves and the rest of us would crack up. Tuffnell with a fag hanging out of his mouth, never completing a word longer that two syllables would regularly wind up Syksey who himself was on a constant weight loss program, convinced that wrapping up his torso in a black plastic  bin liner was the way to go, rather than reducing the after-game beers and curries. That dressing room was the hard school. If you had dropped a catch the session before you’d know all about it, no holding back from team mates in describing the embarrassing way the ball was fumbled.

 

I used to drive Jamie to games. He had a driver’s license, but explained to me that he was not suitable for driving, as he’d get too wound up with the moron drivers getting in his way. He’d often end up causing GBH to the likes of poor souls who indicate right and then turn left. His road rage would be tempered if he was a passenger instead. So I was a little surprised to hear that after his cricket retirement he had become a black cab taxi driver. God help London.

 

Learning your way around the system was a self taught exercise.  There was no ‘players handbook’. Well, there was, but it wasn’t useful for the things you *really* needed to know. Rules that were missing:

 

1. On your first morning of your first day on joining the staff, do not breeze into the first team dressing room and sit on the comfiest looking chair in the prime spot next to the balcony AND expect it to be yours for the rest of the season. If you do this, do not be surprised if a 6 foot - four West Indian, 15 year veteran stands over you looking displeased.

 

2. Similarly, on your second morning of your first week on joining the staff,  do not walk across the hallowed turf while the Middlesex Cricket Committee is in session. Especially wearing a torn leather jacket and jeans. Expect your first team captain to have a word in your ear and explain that the rules have now been formalized regarding appropriate attire while convening at the Home of Cricket, thanks to you.

 

3. When playing a game, make sure you know what kind of game you are playing. After taking 5 wickets in each innings of the first game of the 2XI championship season, do not turn to a colleague at the end of the game and ask “when’s our first proper game then?”.

 

4. When doing 12^th man duties for the first XI, it is unwise to take your shower before the last ball of the day is played. Especially if your team manager is asking where the f&%#ing drinks are for the f&%#ing players who’ve just been on the f&$^ing  field for the last six hours of the f$#*ing hottest day of the  f%@$ing year, without taking a wicket.