I benefitted and lost out due to England’s constant selection changes

Iremember first being in the dressing room at Old Trafford as a 17-year-old, in awe of the place, and I noticed someone shambling behind me in a string vest muttering about something – it was Clive Lloyd!

That demystified it for me, he was just a normal person that I’d thought of in superhuman proportions. That really helped me come to terms with being a professional sportsman.

I’d grown up in Yorkshire and I got a trial with the Yorkshire Schools side – I thought I’d have no chance getting in and it would be full of posh kids! But I went through north of England, then England Schools, and it was only when I ended up there I thought I must be pretty good.

I got recommended to Peter Lever at Lancashire and he was really quite enlightened, he didn’t care if you’d fallen out of a tree – if someone could bowl very well he’d run with you.

Lots came through with me at that time, Michael Atherton, Warren Hegg, Graham Lloyd, Ian Austin – we’d all practised playing together. My debut came against the touring Australians in 1989,Wasim Akram opened the bowling and that was my ‘what am I doing here?’ moment.

But when you got to know Wasim, he was just a great teammate who happened to be ‘that guy’.

We never won the Championship, of course, but we had a team of great players which I think were probably better than the Lancashire team that did win it a few years ago. I think we were just lacking a good spinner – it may have been different if we had Gary Keedy at his best five years earlier.

We had some fantastic one-day final wins though. In 1996 we made 180-odd at Lord’s in the NatWest Trophy final against Essex on an ordinary pitch, but we came out really fired up. Then we reduced them to 34-8 in an instant. All in all, we won six one-day trophies in a three-year spell. I was a consistent bowler, switched on most of the time, but from an England perspective I wish I’d had more of a chance. I was both a beneficiary and a victim of the chopping and changing that went on at the time, in fairness. I wasn’t really aware that I was in the mix until, in 1995, Heggy told me he thought I’d have a chance for the one-day side. Then Athers took me to one side on the balcony at Lord’s and gave me the news. I was hacked off not to play in the 1999 World Cup. I was the highest one-day wicket-taker in England that summer and especially as we were the hosts, I would have loved to have been given a chance. My last Test was in the 1997 Ashes at The Oval that we narrowly won and what I remember the most is taking a catch off Shane Warne – red ball was against blue sky and I panicked when I thought I’d lost it. The commentator remarked that there was no one happier in the ground then me when I came up on the screen, but that was just out of sheer relief! I was sad in one sense when I retired in 2004, but I’m glad I had my career finished for me because of a knee injury – it would have been hard to let go otherwise. I’ve always had other passions anyway – I’ve been painting and drawing for most of my life and I continue to do so now. I have also worked as a trainer and motivational speaker, and hopefully I’ve inspired people from all walks of life who never thought getting to the top of their field was possible – I certainly didn’t with cricket.