The Brakes Are Off As Swann Matures With England Captaincy

The cheeky chappie grin has deserted Graeme Swann as he sips Earl Grey and shakes his head at staggering news of three international test cricketers being imprisoned for fixing elements of a Lords test match Swann played in last summer.

The 32-year-old number one spinner in the world normally likes to have a laugh at just about everything, but not this time, not on this occasion.

“It’s really sad for the game, isn’t it?” he says, referring to Pakistan’s Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir receiving prison sentences of two years and six months, one year and six months respectively. “But it had to happen if only to serve as the ultimate deterrent to others.

“I feel sorry for cricket that the good game has been marred so much by this scandal, but not for them, not even for Amir even though he’s a young lad. If you’re playing test cricket and you’re a grown man then you are accountable.

“The ICC may have banned them all for five years but as far as I’m concerned they shouldn’t be seen near a cricket pitch again, and certainly not playing. Talking about prison terms is way out of my league but it needed to be done. They broke the law, they made ill-gotten games and as a result someone, somewhere, has suffered.”

For once there’s no joke to follow with Swann. Even he accepts this is anything but a laughing matter. Instead, as he looks out over a Nottingham backdrop, there is a sense of sheer bemusement.

“It all seems just so alien to me,” he says, staring blankly. “I’ve never been approached, and I don’t know a single person in cricket who has been either, but clearly it’s gone on. To what extent is the next question, I guess. I only hope that’s it now. I hope nothing else is unearthed to tarnish the best game in the world. If imprisoning sportsmen doesn’t serve as a deterrent, then nothing will.”

As fate would have it Swann’s next bit of business will see him and his England teammates take on Pakistan in Dubai in a three test, five one-day and three T20 series starting with the first test on January 17th.

It could be awkward but Swann hopes not. “I’ll be honest, I never liked Butt even before I knew about the fixing scandal,” he admits. “I didn’t like the way he carried himself. As for the rest of them, I don’t really know them except for Younis Khan who didn’t play last summer but may well play against us in the New Year. I know him from his days at Notts and he’s one of the nicest guys in the game. I’d assume after this the Pakistani boys will just want to get their heads down and play hard cricket. That’s all I’m interested in.”

Besides, after a year that saw England win the Ashes in Australia, beat Sri Lanka and then thrash India to become the number one test team in the world, but end with a 5-0 one day drubbing in India, Swann knows that there is some repair work to be done.

“It was a bit of a shambles, wasn’t it?” he admits, candidly. “And I played my part in it, for sure, because I just wasn’t very good at all in India which is really disappointing.”

Can he put his finger on why England played so dismally? “Maybe it was a bridge too far for us after the last two years of such success. Sub-consciously we may have felt our work was done and we just took our feet off the gas a little. I can’t speak for the others but maybe I thought: “We’re going to India, it will be hard, have I got the mental energy and fight for it?”

When you’re in England, everything’s in your favour and you’re on a roll then the mental element hardly comes into it. I guess this is an area where we’ll need to improve if we not only want to stay at the top of test cricket, but become the best at all forms of the game.”

Some have suggested that Swann’s public disagreement with Kevin Pietersen played a part after the spinner stated in his autobiography that he never believed the batsman was captaincy-material compared to current test captain Andrew Strauss.

Swann refutes this, although he does accept Pietersen was far from enamoured with him.

“Kevin wasn’t particularly happy with me and we had a chat about it in India,” says the man who at least led England to T20 success in England’s final game in India.

“He’d only read about it in a newspaper. All I meant was that in my view Kevin should never have been captain because he’s not a natural leader of men in the same way that Andrew Strauss is.

“I heard that some pundits suggested it had upset the whole camp and the rhythm of the dressing-room but Kevin and I moved on and there is no ill-feeling. He doesn’t agree with people writing autobiographies whilst still playing but I see no problem with it. Look, it would be lunacy to suggest that it’s always hunky-dory with all 11 England players and we’re all best mates all of the time, but it’s not a problem.”

Swann is now sounding like a senior player which, having taken 153 wickets in just 36 tests since his debut in 2008, and captained the T20 team in Stuart Broad’s absence, he has claims to be. He is far from finished, either.

“I’m not big on stats but I do know that if I carry on as I am and play for another four years I’ll be on 350 test wickets which will do me just fine,” he says. “Then again, if I got hit by a bus and it ended tomorrow I’d still be happy for what I’ve achieved, and in the way that I’ve achieved by sticking to my guns and not playing the PR game.”

He is also aware of the second chance cricket has afforded him, and how unlikely it seemed after a tour of South Africa on 2000 that saw him make a one day debut but make enemies along the way.

“I look back on that tour and cringe at the way I was,” he admits. “I was horrendously arrogant and opinionated. I had a firm belief that I was there because I deserved it whereas now I know I hadn’t done anything in cricket. At 20 years old with nothing under your belt and making clever quips about teammates who’d been there and done it resulted in absolute scorn.  I made a horrible hash of it.

“During the years that passed it got to the stage that I’d written test cricket off. I’d accepted my fate. I pretended I didn’t care when I heard news of squads being selected but the truth was I was furious that players I felt were worse than me got the call up and I didn’t. Now I understand that anger was really directed at myself for throwing away a wonderful opportunity. You have to be accountable for what happens in your life.

“Now I love test cricket so much that I doubt I could just return to playing county cricket any more. I love the roar of the crowd, taking wickets and being the centre of attention. If my England career ended tomorrow then that would probably be it.”

The Breaks Are Off by Graeme Swann (Hodder & Stoughton, £20)