Emburey - An Autobiography

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In the third Test at Headingley the heroics of Botham and Willis brought about an astonishing 18-run victory to level the series… Frances played an unexpectedly central role in Emburey’s wedding day in 1980. Emburey chose Phil Edmonds, rather than Gooch, as his best man because he had a “closer day-to-day relationship” with his Middlesex team-mate than with Gooch at that stage of their careers.

Emburey has mixed feelings about the venture to South Africa in 1982. "The obvious attraction was a lump sum in the bank; but I'd have thought twice about going if I'd known the ban would last three years - that stunned all of us. Assuming I would have been chose for England's tours, and played my share of Tests at home, I have lost financially. I missed playing very much in 1982, but last year I was resigned to it. The only times I missed it then were when England were struggling and I thought I might have helped." GG: We hit it off straight away, we liked the same things and got on well. It was just fate that we were thrown together. Our friendship’s remained unbelievably strong all the way through our careers and now, even on the periphery of the game, it’s still exactly the same.

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JE: We were set in our ways from a young age. I remember Graham doing all these bloody press-ups, about 72 of them – and I could do about seven! So straight away it was clear he was into keeping fit and I wasn’t. I played football in the winter but I didn’t like doing any exercise unless it was actually sport, whereas Graham… verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

JE: That used to piss me off. It’s like playing golf. I used to play the shot out of turn because I was too impatient for the guy behind me to hit the ball. I wanted to get into a rhythm by bowling and a lot of sides knew that so used to slow me down. It really annoyed me.GG: You played a lot of squash though. We used to play squash at Lord’s even during Test matches if we were both out or it was raining. And of course, our England careers pretty much coincided with each other. GG: It was a friendly rivalry but it was a rivalry. I didn’t want John to get the better of me but there was no needle in it. Your respective counties were the dominant forces in the domestic game for much of the 1980s. What was behind that?