“I tried to use a seven iron but on reflection, a wedge might have been better,” says Ollie Rayner, the Middlesex spinner, as he recalls the moment he failed to break into his own house using a golf club in the small hours after last season’s title-winning celebrations, before waking up the next morning on his neighbour’s sofa still wearing his champagne-soaked whites from the day before.
Defeat, at the hands of his back door in this instance, was not something Rayner had been too familiar with in 2016 as a key component of the side that went unbeaten throughout the campaign and emerged with a first County Championship in 23 years after that heady final-day victory over Yorkshire last September, sealed by a hat-trick from Toby Roland-Jones.
The resulting night on the turps in the Lord’s Tavern, after which his house keys were left in the dressing room, was rich reward on a personal level too, with the 31-year-old Rayner reflecting on his best season to date with 51 wickets at 23 runs apiece. Like the team as a whole, he is fully aware opponents will be plotting his downfall in greater detail when Middlesex start their title defence at Hampshire on 14 April.
“We are the bar now,” says Rayner. “It’s not about who won back-to-back titles before us [Yorkshire] – we are the holders and the target. People have not backed us in recent years – despite being a big club at Lord’s – and that has worked in our favour. But now we won’t be taken lightly. The trick is to be unaffected by the pressures of that.
“And I know batsmen will work harder against me. Before they may have spent their preparation working out how to negate Roland-Jones, Steve Finn, Tim Murtagh and think Rayner just bowls a bit of spin. But now they will have plans and I will need to counter that.”
While Rayner’s contribution was central to last year’s silverware – his nine for 102 against Durham in August was pivotal in ending a run of five draws on the flat pitch at Lord’s – he credits Angus Fraser, the club’s director of cricket, and the captain, James Franklin, for their role in shaping a team that lacks ego and in which team-mates pull for each other.
“It’s been a five-year plan, getting like-minded people in the club, and that has been a massive driving factor. We wallow in each other’s success even when you haven’t had a good day yourself. That’s hard in sport because it’s a ruthless occupation.
“Last year we made a massive effort rethinking how we wanted to be perceived. We didn’t want to remain a side that was nice to play against, who on their day will do well but fold if you get on top of them. It wasn’t about being prats and getting in a batsman’s grill. It was about raising our intensity when we identified a situation.
“Gus has been a big factor for us. He’s a grumpy old git but we love him. He’s bad at watching us play – he’s like a mum or dad – he really cares and so finds it hard. He’s a brilliant guy to have, he doesn’t do anything for the sake of it and you can go to him with any problem, cricket or at home. He was part of the team that won the title in 1993 and was bringing it up and moaning how hard it was. It’s great to have broken those shackles but it’s now irrelevant, it’s how we go for the next 23 years. And this year we’re working our nuts off.”
By his own admission the 6ft 5in Rayner is not a cricket obsessive – a text to Eoin Morgan during the winter after a win in India was met with shock from the England captain that he was actually watching – but he is certainly passionate when it comes to the subject of spin-bowling in this country.
At the back end of 2015 he wrote a strong defence of English slow bowlers for ESPNCricinfo, a response to both the well-worn trope about the cupboard being bare and some public criticism from Jeetan Patel, Warwickshire’s overseas tweaker, regarding a lack of hard workers in the county system.
Two months after his riposte – chiefly that conditions and scheduling were doing little to encourage his ilk – the county game changed, with the England and Wales Cricket Board announcing that visiting captains in 2016 would get an option to bowl first in lieu of a toss. The result, by design, was flatter pitches such that in Division One spinners sent down 1,836 more overs and Rayner 444 to his 273 the year before.
“On paper that’s the best I’ve bowled – no, scrap that, it is the best I have bowled, full stop. Before the toss change you might get the odd over here and there to claw the over rate back, maybe a couple before tea or the new ball. Then you would finally turn up on a bunsen in August and people say: ‘Over to you to win the match’ even though it hadn’t been your job up to that point.
“When those situations arose, I had already bowled more overs and had confidence and wickets behind me. The toss rule has definitely been a good thing for spinners and I’m glad it is continuing this year.”
When the conversation moves to Jack Leach, the Somerset left-armer who took 65 wickets last summer only to miss out on England’s Test tour to India after a kink in his bowling action was discovered during routine screening at Loughborough, Rayner gets particularly worked up, both as a Lions team-mate of the 25-year-old during the winter and having been called for chucking early in his own career when at Sussex.
“I was furious when that news came out,” says Rayner. “I don’t feel it would stunt my own progression to say my views on this, that someone, somewhere was under pressure to justify why Leach wasn’t out in India. The guy took 65 poles and no one batted an eyelid. We did those tests [at Loughborough] but we didn’t have to. It was to help them collate info on spin bowling and he missed out on an India tour because of it.
“I hope people don’t judge him, because people will be looking for it now and maybe seeing it when it’s not there. And you have guys who have made millions out of IPL deals or had prolific careers – Saeed Ajmal, Muttiah Muralitharan, Sunil Narine – but while in certain counties it’s not frowned upon, in England it’s heavily policed.
“I told Jack not to worry about it, someone has fucked up here and you’re not trying to cheat the game. His confidence was knocked. He’s a great guy who’s gone from taking wickets to someone who is now questioning all the stuff he’s doing, not how he’ll get a batsman out. It’s the last thing you need.”
On his own experience he adds: “I was definitely chucking it when I got called in my early twenties. I always had a suspect action, my elbow has always been bent – it is now, but it’s a case of not straightening it – and you convince yourself it’s fine, but deep down I knew it wasn’t great. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago my action felt like my own again. So I’ve had to work my balls off to get where I am. I learned the hard way.”
