Seven months on from a moment of madness – a brief but industrial exchange of words with Lancashire’s Ashwell Prince – and Andrew Gale has only just served his punishment. On Sunday the Yorkshire captain returns to lead the English champions for the second match of their title defence against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge – the ground where he was controversially denied the chance to lift the trophy last summer.
Last Tuesday’s stunning 10-wicket opening win against Worcestershire at New Road, secured with six England players in the Caribbean, was the last of a four-match suspension for the 31-year-old Gale. Its completion represented closure, of sorts, to a passage in his life that could easily have been career-tainting had sense not prevailed.
After he was originally accused of racial abuse for telling the South African batsman Prince to “fuck off back to your own country, you Kolpak fucker” during last September’s Roses Match at Old Trafford, a formal hearing in front of the Cricket Discipline Commission was avoided when Gale accepted the lesser charge of improper conduct, meaning his ban was extended from two to four games and he was sent on an anger management course for good measure.
“When you get a letter through and it says you’re being charged with racism – and I’m not a racist – it hurt me,” admits Gale. “That stuff sticks.” Thankfully for him, Prince, one of many cricketers from foreign shores to use the obscure Kolpak employment ruling that facilitates registration as a non-overseas player, had already gone on record to state he had not taken the crass sledge as a racial slur.
“I’ve got nothing against Ashwell,” insists Gale, who admits to losing his rag in a pressure cooker match in which the two rivals were battling at opposite ends of the table. “He was disappointed I didn’t show him respect on the field and that’s where I got out of line. I do respect what he’s done – he’s a feisty competitor himself. He gets hard runs and I’ve got nothing against him at all.
“Two matches and then two more on top felt harsh – 16 days of cricket is a quarter of a season, but I accepted it. I want people to look at me when I end my career and say I was a competitor and played it hard but fair.
“I did cross the line on that day – there is no doubt – but over a period of time, do I have an anger problem? I don’t think so. If you ask anyone they would say I’m feisty but I’d like to think I’ve got the respect of my colleagues on the circuit and particularly in the Yorkshire dressing room.”
The suspension and anger management lessons were not the full extent of the sanction, of course. What hurt most was being denied the chance to lift the County Championship trophy at Trent Bridge after Yorkshire, led by Joe Root, beat Nottinghamshire by an innings and 152 runs for a first title in 13 years.
“It was a double blow, especially the fashion by which it was done. Missing the Trent Bridge game hurt but I found out from our chairman [Colin Graves] 20 minutes beforehand that I wasn’t going to lift the trophy,” he reveals. “All my family had driven down, and for someone who’s never represented England it was the biggest day of my career and all I’ve worked for in it – especially my five years as captain. To have that taken away was gutting.”
Gale, who was seemingly airbrushed from the televised celebrations that day, went on to parade the trophy at Headingley the following week against Somerset, in front of a home faithful he remains indebted to for their support during this tough time. He now intends to repay them with a glut of silverware.
To that end, Gale would have no problem dropping himself from the team again, such as he did when Yorkshire travelled to Middlesex last season and the return of Root and Gary Ballance from England duty meant someone had to miss out. That call, Gale believes, sharpened everyone in the squad – with the idea bounced off a former team-mate.
“I’d missed pre-season and was batting on roller skates. We had a settled opening partnership in Alex Lees and Adam Lyth and Michael Vaughan said ‘imagine the message it would send to the lads’ if I dropped myself compared to the one if I played,” reveals Gale. “He said ‘you will recover from it, a young batsman might not’. So I sat down before the match and explained my reasons to the squad. And I came back the following match and scored a century against Durham. Not once after that call did anyone question selection.
“The goal for this club is to win trophies and the lads must buy into that. The young lads are striving to play for England and the senior lads don’t just want one trophy, because we get it rammed down our throats about the teams of the 50s and 60s dominating. They’d say that team in 2014 were brilliant, but only won one. We want people to think about this team having played four or five years and won four or five trophies and think ‘what a team they were’. We want to create a legacy.”
