Keeping Quiet: Paul Nixon: The Autobiography

by Jon Colman, Paul Nixon, Steve Waugh, Viv Richards

Overview

From Gower to Flintoff, Waugh to Vaughan, Cronje to Pietersen, Paul Nixon has shared a dressing room with some of the most evocative names in international and domestic cricket – and often enraged them on the field of play. The wicketkeeper, known as his sport's most prolific 'sledger', has amassed more than 20 years of stories from his career at the heart of the game and now reveals them in typically outspoken style. From 'Fredalo' to match-fixing, Nixon has experienced some of the most notorious episodes in cricket history, possesses strident opinions on the game and has a track record of success in the English first-class game and the Twenty20 revolution. With an accent on off-the-field anecdotes, Nixon also lays bare the personality that led the Australian legend Steve Waugh to compare him to: 'a mosquito buzzing around in the night, that needs to be swatted but always escapes.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752482538
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	01/31/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Paul Nixon is a high-profile domestic and international cricket star who has played for Kent, Leicestershire, and England. Jon Colman is a multi-award-winning sports writer with Cumbrian Newspapers. He is a fanatical England cricket fan and has followed the team and Paul Nixon’s career closely over the years.

Read an Excerpt

Keeping Quiet

Paul Nixon The Autobiography

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By Paul Nixon, Jon Colman

The History Press

Copyright © 2012 Paul Nixon and Jon Colman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-8253-8

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CHAPTER 1

HOME ALONE

Friday 3 February 2012.

... thanks [compère's name] ... Hello everyone ... I'm very honoured to be here tonight, but I have to say I was a bit put out that I was only second choice. You actually wanted a legend, a knight of the realm, the star of Strictly Come Dancing – Sir Bruce Forsyth! But sadly he couldn't make it, because he has to attend the birth of his next wife ...

The words coming slowly together on the page in front of me will be delivered tonight to the lucky people of Coventry & North Warwickshire Cricket Club. I am writing a speech, but I'm running against the clock. And the hangover isn't helping.

... now, [compère's name] is such an honest bloke and I'd like to thank him for entrusting me with his problem. He's addicted to drinking brake fluid, you see, but he assures me he can stop at any time ...

The jokes are the easy part. The first one is the property of Roger Dakin, the former England hockey player, and the second is Macca's. Macca is Paul McKeown, my brother-in-law. He has a rich supply and tells them better than me, but I'm improving all the time and – most importantly – I'm a willing learner. That isn't something I would have said thirty years ago.

Sometimes I allow myself a laugh when I think how I've changed. If someone had told me, in the beginning, that I would end up writing speeches and delivering them (and being paid for the privilege!) – I would have presumed they had the wrong man.

But I do it and I usually enjoy it, from beginning to end. As long as I can shut myself away from background noise, and create a little framework of what I want to say, I can drive to any venue and perform comfortably. It might not be so comfortable today, though; my head is still fogged up, and concentrating is hard. The words are going down, but they are landing in slow motion and I'm not even certain they are the right words, or in the right order.

Why do we do it? Why do we batter our bodies with alcohol, put ourselves through the same old cycle and then go back for more? I would love to know. Last night I went out in Leicester with some friends, gave it the big one and, as usual, it is coming back to haunt me in a big way. Hangovers absolutely ruin me. There are rashes and sores on my skin, my eyes have dried up, and I'm not feeling especially positive about the world.

This morning, after breakfast, I sat down to write an e-mail to a friend in the City of London. Any time I type something on the laptop I challenge myself to avoid the little red line that signifies a misspelt word. I think I'm getting better at that, too, but today? You couldn't move for red. It was absolute carnage on the screen, and things haven't got a great deal better this afternoon with a pen in my hand.

OK, ladies and gentlemen ...

I put the pen down and stare at the page. The back of my neck is itching like mad. I sit up straight, give it a vigorous rub, and then, a few more blank seconds later, I reach for my phone.

Paul Nixon @Paulnico199

Minus 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Outside now!

Jordan Carrigan @JordanCarrigan

@Paulnico199 umust be garn soft nico! It's been -9 the past few nights in gods garden Cumbria.

There is a game I often play whenever I drive back to the promised land with Jen and Izzy. It's called 'Who can be the first one back to Cumbria?', and I always win. When the sign for my home county appears beside the motorway, I wind the window down, put my right hand outside and reach forward; I then turn around to my passengers and declare my victory. It's a daft little thing, but I love it.

I've been thinking about home a lot lately. Leicester is where I live and where I call home most days of the year; it's a wonderful city whose people have embraced me. But there's no place on earth that will ever draw me back quite like Cumbria. Returning to my home county has never failed to make me feel good about life – whether as a teenage hopeful or as a veteran with dodgy knees, the warmth I received from people there during my career was priceless. When I played for England Under-15s, I would return to backslaps and 'keep goings'; when I started pushing through the ranks at Leicestershire, I would go home to 'well done lad's and 'we're all behind you's; when I won trophies, and played for England, the same. People from Cumbria have written me countless letters over the years, even during the times when I wasn't doing so well. You have no idea how much that matters.

Jen, my wife, is a home-bird and feels the same pull. Isabella, my three-year-old daughter, seems to share in the excitement any time we point the car north and set off for Langwathby. For Izzy, Cumbria means fresh air and the chance to play with her cousins. For Jen, it is valuable time with her mum and her sister. For me, it means a living nightmare trying to get an internet signal on my iPad, and wondering why I have to do all the visiting when it's me who has just driven 200 miles ('why can't they come to me, just for once?') but mainly, it's a happy place for all of us.

Now I'm retired I should head up there more often, but I seem to be busier than at any time in my life. The other day was typical: in the morning, I spent two hours at a coaching school, and then drove home to do a radio interview over the phone. After lunch I sat through a meeting about a business interest, before embarking on an endless slog through London's charmless traffic for a charity dinner. I finally got back home shortly before 11.00 p.m., in time for a late meal – a chicken wrap with cranberry sauce – and then an hour on the phone to my ghostwriter. Jen? Not for the first time, my wife was at the back of the queue. I barely had time to catch up on her day before the yawning kicked in and it was time for bed.

But I will do it; I will visit home more frequently, now there is one fewer excuse.

Of course! I should introduce myself. My name is Paul Andrew Nixon, I am 41 years old, and if you haven't seen me by now, chances are you will have heard me. I played cricket for Leicestershire, Kent and my country; and all three – there is no point pretending otherwise – at a decent volume. That much you probably know, but there are some things you probably don't. Stories: yes; tales of a chatterbox wicketkeeper: yes; but there's more to my life than just anecdotes. Don't worry, it took me decades to learn certain things about myself – some good, some not so good, some downright strange and some I kept quiet – but we should be able to get there a little quicker.

A text arrives from Josh:

Gym tomorrow?

My reply:

Too bloody right!!

Josh is Josh Cobb, Leicestershire's 22-year-old batsman and our man of the match in last summer's Twenty20 final. Josh is a great kid. His father, Russell, was an old team-mate and a great friend, and I can remember holding baby Josh in my arms when he came to visit us on the farm. When I found myself batting with him twenty years later it made me feel very old.

At Grace Road, pre-season is under way. How do I know this? How could I ever forget? I lead a non-stop life but it's hard not to miss the thrill of a new pre-season. Even though my career was longer than many, even though I had a better swansong than most, and even though my diary is now fit to burst ... nothing quite replaces the buzz of strapping on the pads, stuffing a box into place, pulling on the gloves and then getting down to it in the nets. The trick, I suppose, is not to miss it too much. It's one of the reasons why I refuse to sit still.

In these early days of retirement, the benefits of being an ex-cricketer are few. A little more time with the family is a blessing, and devoting my energy to different goals is exciting, but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick one obvious advantage above all the others, I suppose it would have to be the pain. From morning to night, things don't hurt quite as much now.

Cricket is the best game in the world but when you've played it for more than twenty years and squatted more than a million times (I've worked it out, don't worry), you find yourself creaking as you approach the end. In the final days of my career, pain was – Jen and Izzy aside – my most faithful companion. It was there when I came down the stairs in the morning and when I drove to Grace Road. It was there any time I sat down and any time I stood up. It was there when I went for a lie down, there when the temperature dropped and there when I turned around.

When I ran, when I jogged, when I walked and when I stopped – it was always there.

Let me count the aches. When I wore cricket spikes, the soles of my feet would get sore and stiff. If I went for a 2-mile run without first undertaking lengthy calf exercises, that muscle would be pulled in no time, and at night I would need to ice away the hurt. When I drove my car, my knees ached, and when I walked downstairs it felt like my legs could buckle at any time; as a result, the daily descent became a slow motion, sideways shuffle. The squatting has also taken its toll on my back, which isn't as flexible as it used to be; when I sit on the sofa for any length of time, I can only describe the resulting sensation as a kind of indigestion around the spine.

Towards the end, any time I turned my head to the side it would cause my neck to twinge badly. This obliged me to rotate like a robot, using my entire upper body, rather than just my head. And then we come to the battered old hands; during my last, unforgettable summer, any time I caught a cricket ball it felt like the force of twenty was hammering into the gloves, and in cold weather my thumbs would start to ache.

Before retirement, my life had become one of ice baths, hot water bottles, stretches, and so many other methods designed to keep pain at bay. Putting myself through the various contortions of Bikram Yoga sometimes helped, and I also bought something called a Compex machine: a piece of kit the size of an old cassette player, which you attach to yourself and allow electrodes to stimulate the muscles and get rid of lactic acid. You aren't supposed to use it while driving, but I did.

A good, old-fashioned gym workout would occasionally do some good. Lifting weights and developing a sweat seemed to balance the body and take away the aches. But only for a while, on most days, the contract had to be signed with pain. Year after year, month after month, you keep doing the deal until it finally becomes too much. Last summer, it became too much, and I knew for certain that it was time to make way.

I've not gone cold turkey since retiring – far from it. I couldn't. I still get the urge for the gym and I am a nightmare if I go for too long without a run. But it's different now; the worst of the pain has slowly subsided. The other stuff? Well, that's a little more complicated.

Outside, Leicester is Siberia for the day. Sub-zero temperatures are not exactly ideal when you haven't long been home from South Africa. The heating is on but I'm sitting here, at the table, wearing two jumpers. Jen, meanwhile, has gone to collect Izzy from playschool. Izzy, who has inherited her father's energy and was up at four o'clock yesterday morning demanding entertainment; Izzy, who has an incredible knack for finding buttons on the iPad that I didn't know existed, causing it to freeze or go dead; Izzy, who has a flower named after her in our garden (the Isabella Rose); Izzy, the apple of her old man's eye. Izzy ... there's a story there, too.

My mobile phone trills with more tweets. I grab it, again, and run my finger across the screen to unlock it.

I love Twitter; it's right up my street. A couple of presses and you are interacting with people from all over the country and the world. When we were on holiday in Cape Town we promised ourselves one night out, Jen and me, just the two of us, so we left Izzy with the childminder, went for dinner and planned to do nothing but talk and catch up on life without any distractions. What actually happened? People started responding to my invitation to come up with a title for the book and we spent the evening roaring with laughter at some of their tweeted suggestions (More Sledge Than Sant a was one of my favourites, and I was disappointed to learn that The Bald Truth had already been taken by a rugby league player).

People often ask me for a 'retweet' and I try to oblige them all. It's the simplest thing in the world, and if you can make someone happier for a few seconds just by prodding a screen, then I firmly believe you should. Mainly, though, I love it because you are never isolated with Twitter. If I am on my own for any length of time, like today, I cannot help picking up the phone and checking the latest. It's like a reflex action, as natural as anything, and sometimes it's much more preferable to being at home, alone, with just my mind for company. As I'll explain, we haven't always got along.

The speech is going nowhere fast. I gaze at the notepad and try to switch back on. If I can't finish it now I will have to write the final few lines at the dinner table.

Underlining a few words sometimes helps – that will restore my focus. The ruler, I think, is in my office room. I push my chair back, stand up and walk briskly towards the stairs.

CHAPTER 2

THE CATCH

karl green @karlgreen3

@Paulnico199 just seen skysports catch of 2011 & your not in it??? #worldsgonemad

Aside from the trip to Cumbria, there is one journey I love to make more than any other. All it takes is a single tweet to provoke the memory and I am on my merry way again, to Edgbaston, Warwickshire County Cricket Club, on Saturday 27 August 2011. The occasion? It's the Friends Life t20 final, no less. The contest? Leicestershire Foxes versus Somerset Sabres. The significance? It's only my last competitive match in England! The problem? That would be the 6ft 5in of West Indian danger arriving at the crease.

Kieron Pollard is the kind of player who can take a game away from you in the blink of an eye. The kind of batsman so stupidly powerful he can mishit the ball for six. The kind whose wicket you want early, if at all possible.

Somerset are in reasonable shape when he comes in to bat, so it feels like a few early words are necessary.

He is walking out without a helmet. That will do for starters.

'Look at you, with no helmet!' I exclaim. 'Our quick bowlers are going to come on in a minute and we know you're scared of it, big lad.'

No response.

Pollard takes a single off Josh's off-spin and disappears to the other end. Peter Trego works another off the last ball of the over and keeps the strike.

Matthew Hoggard, our captain, then brings on Wayne White. Pollard requests his helmet and then reappears at the striker's end a couple of balls later. Ding-ding – Round Two.

'Look at you, calling for your helmet! You're shit scared of it. Are you not embarrassed about being scared of it? We're all laughing at you out here.'

Nothing, again.

Pollard sets himself for a bouncer. Chalky runs in and bowls a shade fuller than the Trinidadian expects. He gives himself room and has a waft. No contact. Into the gloves. Lovely.

'Look at you, backing away, you big girl's blouse! Do you not fancy this? What's wrong with you? Everyone's laughing, you know.'

Standard verbals, really. You're not necessarily searching for a bite; just trying to drip a little doubt into the batsman's mind – get him out of his comfort zone. Sometimes it works like a dream, sometimes it backfires. You have to pick your moments, choose your targets.

Pollard still isn't giving much away. I walk back to my position for the next ball ... The next ball, the next ball. A wicketkeeper's life is about the next ball. It could happen at any time, so you always have to be ready. The opportunity to take your ultimate catch – your full-stretch, diving showstopper – could be around the next corner.

When I was with England, Duncan Fletcher used to love trying to give me one of those in morning practice. Eventually he would nick it in just the right place, and I'd spring to my right and keep hold. He'd do the same with Paul Collingwood at gully and Andrew Strauss in the slips. Perfectionists to a man.

When the seamers are bowling, you visualise your ultimate catch before every delivery, but the truth is you only get three or four in your entire career. It's such a rare feeling, and, by the summer of 2011, even rarer for me.

Sometimes the truth slaps you in the face, sometimes it creeps up with stealth. In our quarter-final, against Kent, Rob Key edged one of the first balls of the innings from Harry Gurney. It dipped and swung away from me at the last second, and I just hadn't been able to get there. When I viewed the video later, it looked catchable, which was strange. It hadn't felt remotely catchable at the time.

This, on reflection, had been a message from my 40-year-old limbs and muscles – it was finally getting too hard. Too much of the game was disappearing out of my reach, and the old bones were starting to let myself and the boys down. The End was knocking on my door.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Keeping Quiet by Paul Nixon, Jon Colman. Copyright © 2012 Paul Nixon and Jon Colman. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword by Steve Waugh,
Foreword by Sir Vivian Richards,
1. Home Alone,
2. The Catch,
3. Little Man,
4. Snagging,
5. Blues,
6. Whitewash,
7. Shit Pit,
8. Surgery,
9. Dope,
10. Brandy Time,
11. David May,
12. Limbo,
13. Battery,
14. Margaret,
15. Bounce,
16. Reverse,
17. New Beginnings,
18. Storms,
19. Turmoil,
20. The Offer,
21. Last Summer,
22. Bat On,
Epilogue,
Plates,
Copyright,