‘I put a shark in Atherton’s bed on my first tour’

Former England bowler Alan Mullally believes his old antics put those of today’s players in the shade, he tells Nick Hoult

‘Curfews? What? Treat men like children and they will rebel. Cricket is art. I don’t want to get too deep about this, but it is about expressing yourself. How do you express yourself when you must be in bed at 9.30. F--- off. Garry Sobers went to bed at three in the morning. Why? Because if not, he would play over the game in his head, lie awake, be knackered and get a duck the following day.”

This is Alan Mullally talking as quickly as he bowled in a career that spanned 17 years and 19 Test matches for England.

We are standing outside the Lucky Shag bar overlooking the Swan River in Perth – a favourite Barmy Army haunt down the years. As we walk in, Craig Overton, current England bowler, walks out – it is only 8pm, long before curfew. Overton does not recognise Mullally. Mullally does not recognise Overton. He is distant from English cricket these days but will be at the Waca for the third Test, thanks to tickets through his old mate Shane Warne.

When we arrange over the phone to meet for the interview, it is just hours after the Ben Duckett story has broken and the England Lions player was punished for tipping beer over James Anderson’s head. “Chucking a beer over James Anderson’s head. Whoopee doo. I once put a dead shark in Mike Atherton’s bed. I’d be banned for three years now if I did that,” Mullally tells me.

So, what is the shark story? “My first tour was to New Zealand and Zimbabwe. Atherton was making his flies for fishing. I love deep-sea fishing. I’ve fished all my life. I think, what is he doing with this fly s---? He is making all these flies and catches nothing. We are in New Zealand. I go fishing and land this mako shark, had to be 90-100 kilos. I stick it in the ute. David Lloyd, who was coach, says, ‘You know what you’ve got to do with it, but you will get dropped.’ I say, ‘Yeah. You’re a selector, help me out.’ He says, ‘No … but you have to do it.’

“So I drag this fish back to the five-star hotel in Napier. Got it on my shoulder. It stank to high heaven, blood everywhere. I ask reception for the key to Mr Atherton’s room, while having this stinking shark on my shoulder. Ironically, he was in the room next to me. I get his key, go in and throw it on the bed. I wrote a note, stuck it on the pectoral fin. It said, ‘Athers, this is a fish.’ I go back to my room, he comes back and all I hear is ‘F------ hell … Mullally.”

The next day, Mullally was dropped. “Who throws a mako shark on their captain’s bed on their first tour? I do,” he says.

Born in Southend, Essex, Mullally grew up in Perth and made his first-class debut in the Sheffield Shield final in 1988, at the age of just 17, for Western Australia, bowling to Ian Botham, who was batting for Queensland, and Allan Border. The Waca was home, then he moved to England, broke into county cricket and, from there, the England team.

A left-arm seamer, he was part of the Nineties generation who missed central contracts and the Twenty20 bonanza. Briefly, he was ranked No 2 in the world in one-day cricket and had great years at Hampshire, playing with Warne. Now back in Perth, he is rebuilding his life after battles with depression and anxiety, the death of his father, breakdown of his marriage and losing money in business deals.

He is looking after his elderly mother and working on a book. A low point was being convicted four times of drink-driving. Counselling at a retreat in Thailand lifted him out of his depression and he is now rebuilding. “It is great people love