Emburey - An Autobiography

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On England’s disastrous tour of West Indies in 1985/86 Graham Gooch was close to flying home early, worn down by the ongoing protests in the Caribbean about his connections with South Africa. In her entertaining but controversial diary of the tour, Another Bloody Tour, Frances Edmonds, wife of England and Middlesex spinner Phil, articulated the closeness of Gooch and Emburey: “One of the people no doubt pleased to hear of Gooch’s final change of heart was his inseparable ‘Siamese Twin’, John Emburey.

You were both part of hugely successful county teams, Essex and Middlesex – what was it like playing against each other? In the third Test at Headingley the heroics of Botham and Willis brought about an astonishing 18-run victory to level the series… GG: The last time we played against each other, which was also my last game, was just a few years ago. 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. Emburey recalls: “But his speech was just a load of gibberish so Frances said ‘Oh, for f***’s sake, Philippe, just sit down. Then she got up and gave the best man’s speech.”

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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. Your respective counties were the dominant forces in the domestic game for much of the 1980s. What was behind that? JE: I still play for Lashings and Graham actually played a game against us at the HAC ground in the City. He swept a ball off me, got a top edge and cut his eye – he didn’t have a helmet on.

verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Good job Goochy isn’t going home,’ was the general feeling in the camp. ‘Otherwise they’d have to put Embers on a life-support system.’”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. JE: Yes and it got to the point where one day the Essex boys moved my case out of the Middlesex dressing room and into their own. JE:…he was more annoyed because, when he came off, he had this gash above his eye and his partner didn’t notice it. 'Siamese twins' GG: We used to throw to each other. I was talking to Andy Flower last night and that has gone out of the game.

He is a member of famous with the age 71 years old group. John Emburey Height, Weight & Measurements 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. That about sums it up,” says Gooch. “She’s a fearsome woman. Phil and her used to have some fearsome rows. We were in the Melbourne Hilton one time, all sitting round by the hotel pool and suddenly all these clothes started raining down on the pool. She’d tipped his suitcase out of the window.” JE: And the next game at Edgbaston was very similar. Australia needed 140-odd and it followed a similar pattern. JE: It was very much a last-minute decision. It was really decided when we were in Sri Lanka. It was only a couple of weeks before it happened.