FROM THE ARCHIVES: GOWER AND THE TIGER MOTH

The curious story of Biggles and Bertie cost both players £1,000

England's tour of Australia in 1990/91 was not a happy one by any means, the Test series ending in 3-0 defeat, foreshadowing the era of Aussie dominance that the 90s would become.

And yet the most infamous event of the tour didn't even take place in any of the Test matches. We are of course talking the Tiger Moth Affair – when David Gower and accomplice John Morris took time off from watching their team bat during the tour game against Queensland to take a ride in two World War II biplanes, that were operated by the rather pleasingly named “Joy Ride” company at a nearby airfield.

The incident came to be seen as the symbolic end of Gower's Test career. The signs had been there after he was unceremoniously relieved of the captaincy and dropped at the end of 1989 Ashes defeat, but by the end of the 1990/91 tour, the writing was undoubtedly on the wall. Throughout the 80s, England had been imitating the grasshopper that sang all summer.

It took a rejuvenated Australia for the realisation to dawn that winter had set in and England had a lot of ground to make up. Captain Graham Gooch and coach Micky Stewart had decided that playing for England was no joke, and in the boot camp mentality they were instilling, it was clear David Gower's face didn't fit.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins was editor of The Cricketer at the time, and he commented on the incident in the magazine's March 1991 issue.

^{David Gower and John Morris in the Tiger Moth}

England's last match against a state side had several unfamiliar but desirable aspects, not the least the result, and one unusual but undesirable one: what might be called 'The Tiger Moth Affair', starring David Gower and introducing John Morris.

It was indeed a pity that the curious story of 'Biggles and Bertie', settled rather belatedly by the manager, Peter Lush, when he fined both players £1000, detracted from the team's first win in nine first-class games on the tour, and a most decisive and commanding 10 wicket win over Queensland at that. Not only did England score over 400 for only the second time on the tour, but all the players who really needed runs got them. Morris, the second of the airborne aces, can be counted amongst them even though his handsome 132, certainly the best innings of the match, was not enough to regain his Test place.

What he did was prove to doubters that he can play very well indeed against an attack including four Test bowlers. By wearing down the attack in company with Graham Gooch, Morris also made batting much easier for Robin Smith, who finally made a hundred and thereby saved his place.

In assessing culpability Mr Lush had a difficult job. He should have taken more account of the fact that Morris was the junior player, and, incidentally, that he also had much more to celebrate than David Gower, who had got out in a characteristic way, caught at cover, cutting, before going off on the joy ride with Morris in two 1939 Tiger Moth bi-planes.

The manager was understandably embarrassed by the incident and took a serious view of it both because the two players had not sought his permission to go off in the middle of the England innings and also because it put two of his players in apparent danger.

The 'Joy-Ride' company, in fact, claims a 100 per cent safety record, although the Civil Aviation Authority were planning an inquiry into complaints about the lowness of their flights, none lower than the 200 feet 'buzz' of the ground during the partnership between Lamb and Smith.

Gower had been top scorer in all three Tests thus far and on his fifth tour here he could be forgiven, to a reasonable extent, for doing things his way. This, it seemed to me, was no more than an end of term prank, far less culpable than Allan Lamb's sortie to the Gold Coast Casino, 60 miles from Brisbane, the night before he resumed a quite vital innings in a Test match in which he was captain. Gower was involved on that occasion but he was already out.

^{The pair's actions landed them with big fines}

Gower and Lamb together in the same England side is a combination which has tended sometimes to spell trouble for the management. Both are fearless, good company, fun-loving and by no means averse to publicity, as long as it is not bad. Gower has not an ounce of malice in him and his refusal to take life and cricket too seriously is an attractive and characteristic.

But it made him a vulnerable national captain and his casual approach does not always fit easily into a team, certainly not one led by Gooch and coached by Micky Stewart. This was why Gower was in some ways a more contested soul in the West Indies last year as a member of the press party and also why team cohesion was simpler there without him. And yet, the perennial dilemma, they could have done with his runs – and on this tour heaven knows what they would have done without them.

This will certainly, though, be a salutory lesson to the whole team that playing professional cricket for England, overseas or at home, is a serious business, demanding unyielding dedication if consistent success is to be expected. It is a pity the point was not made more forcibly much earlier in the tour after the Lamb/Gower casino visit. Yet one would hate to think that it had become a crime to enjoy a cricket tour.

There is a thin line between having fun and behaving irresponsibly. It is a question of judgement and because this game was being played when and where it was, it seemed to me that the management were making a tiger out of a moth.

^{There were protests in Perth}

Speaking in front of an audience of Cricketer readers in 2017, Graham Gooch stated that he was in fact fairly indifferent to the event in itself. What irked him was that Gower and Morris returned to the airfield at the end of the day's play for a photo op with The Sun.

Three days after the tour match ended, the fourth Test began in Adelaide, during which another incident occurred that Gooch was clearly rather less relaxed about.

If there was still any hope after the Tiger Moth Affair that the conflicting ideals of Gooch and Gower could peacefully co-exist in an England dressing room, there certainly wasn't after the latter's first-innings dismissal. Watch it, it's YouTube gold!

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