i was always massively into cricket – my dad Tim played for Middlesex for nine years and was a PE teacher and coached at Finchley, where I started playing.
When I was 15 I was playing for Middlesex 2nds so the progression went quite quickly. But things kind of slowed down for me at the age of 16, and although I had a good year for them nothing really came of it.
I took the whole of my lower sixth-form year off and went to Sydney to play cricket, so I had to cram all of my A-levels into a year.
Perhaps I had taken my cricket too seriously at that point, so when I turned 18 I decided that my life wouldn’t be about ‘making it’ in cricket, I needed to get back to enjoying the game.
I went to Loughborough University and had a great time there, playing with a great bunch of guys. Graham Dilley took over as coach there in my second year and we had a fantastic crop of people involved.
Graham was a brilliant coach. He instilled in us all that we should make time to have a pint and a cigarette every now and again.
He was one of those guys who just helped you be yourself and he always told us to laugh if something funny happened on the pitch.
He really helped me rekindle my passion for the game at a time when I was shrugging my shoulders.
I was really enjoying my cricket and I started doing well again and in my second year I got picked up by Derbyshire.
The county were traditionally not as strong as Middlesex and they had a bit of a clear-out at the start of the decade.
That was a really good pressure-off experience situation with Colin Wells as the coach.
Again he just helped me be myself and told me that I was good, which is something I’d never had before.
We had a really good couple of years and we just missed out on promotion one year.
It was a really positive environment with a bunch of people who didn’t really have any expectation on their shoulders – with the exception of Dominic Cork and Michael Di Venuto. A lot of us had come from nowhere and it was a good environment to go and express yourself.
Michael was the kind of batsman who would be smacking five runs an over on a pitch that was doing everything and I would be struggling along at the other end.
In a way he makes you look at yourself and wonder what you’re doing wrong but at the same time it was inspiring to watch.
I had a really bad year in 2004, off the back of a pretty bad year in 2003 as well, and I went from being Young Player of the Year to being surplus to requirements under coach Dave Houghton, who clearly didn’t rate me.
That was pretty disconcerting as a young man. I was looking at myself and asking what I’d done wrong. In the end I was questioning myself and lost form, and he had a good justification not to renew my contract.
When you have a crisis of confidence and a few things going on in your family life as well, it’s a bad cocktail and things went a bit sour.
I played some Minor Counties cricket for Dorset and loved it but I had my own coaching business at the time as well and in the end I couldn’t justify going down to Bournemouth for three days each week in the summer.
My Revolution Coaching business is going brilliantly now. It’s not the kind of industry to get into if you want to make a lot of money, but it’s certainly one of the most satisfying things to do.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper on Friday September 4, 2015
