Early Days
Gough was considered to be a budding young footballer and appeared many times for a YTS team before he embarked on his cricketing career. He frequently refers to his ability as a footballer as a presenter of Talksport's flagship Drivetime programme and demonstrates immense pride as "playing football at a high level." The initial steps of Gough's first-class cricketing life, according to his autobiography, were marked by a lack of discipline, thrust and ambition.
In May 1993, however, during a match for Yorkshire against Hampshire at Southampton, he shifted his mindset completely. With the hosts well into their second innings, and Gough beginning to jade, he found himself with four wickets and a choice: he must either disregard his bodily protests and go for the five-for, or he must lower his speed and safeguard his analysis. The latter had characterised his approach in most such scenarios thitherto, and he duly went with it until Richie Richardson, Yorkshire's foreign signing, told him to engage the former.
Having played through one of the greatest epochs of West Indian cricket, characterised by a pace attack regarded by many as the finest ever, Richardson was well placed to convey such wisdom. Gough took it, claimed his five-for and quickly realised that bowling fast and taking wickets was far more suited to his talents and personality. The new philosophy typified the remainder of his career.
Read more about this topic: Darren Gough
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or days:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
““The days have outnumbered
my fingers and toes.
What can I count with now?”
Saying this,
the naive girl cries.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)