Perfect partners – like me & Goughie

ANDY CADDICK is a man who knows a thing or two about bowling partnerships. At a time when a single victory, let alone a series triumph, was a cause for national celebration, Caddick and Darren Gough played an instrumental role in dragging the national team up by their bootlaces.

Gough and Caddick were the most threatening and consistent pair of English opening bowlers since Sir Ian Botham and Bob Willis in the early 1980s andwere also a forerunner to an apparent golden age of English quick bowling, preceding first Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard and then England’s current pair, Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson.

Those two now sit one and two in the list of alltime England wicket-takers and are challenging some of the most successful strike partnerships in the history of the game.

Anderson is now closing in on 500 Test wickets, while Broad overtook Sir Ian’s tally of 383 scalps during England’s Edgbaston romp against the West Indies.

So where does Caddick think they rank?

“Whether you’re a spinner or a fastie, you have to bowl in partnership – you have to build pressure for each other because that creates opportunities,” he said. “A bit of rivalry helps too as well you’re constantly trying to out-do your bowling partner and constantly trying to inspire each other to achieve more and more.

“The Andersons and Broads work very well together because they both bring different skills to this England bowling attack. I think they’re up amongst the best in the world.

“If I’m being honest, I would have to say that Goughie and I, if we had had the same opportunities in terms of consistency of selection, then we would have been up there as well.

“In the late 90s, we were changing cricket. The TCCB was changing to the ECB and the whole structure of English cricket was going through a revolution, with things like central contracts.

“We were really creating the platform for players like Broad and Anderson to come in and succeed.”