What Sylvester Clarke taught me

Feeling cold. Clammy hands. Tight throat, restricting breathing. Nervous yawns to get some air. Heart thumping in my chest. Tired, I want to sleep, to be in bed with blankets pulled over my head, shutting out the world.

I want to be anywhere but sitting in a - probably - flea-ridden armchair in the players' viewing room above the members stand in Hove. Next in, pads on, bat, gloves and helmet on the floor by my side. I don't want to use them. I don't want to bat, I want to sleep.

But sleep is bringing little comfort. Night after night I wake in a cold sweat, having seen Imran Khan beckon me for the 100th time to stand at short leg. My eyes are fixed on the batsman, Dav Whatmore, but I can visualise Imran's graceful athletic approach, dark hair flowing, the "Lion of Pakistan" about to engage in battle. I've become a pawn in a private war between two national stereotypes. The Pathan warrior versus the gum- chewing Aussie gunslinger.

Imran unleashes his grenade: a bouncer, as everyone knows it will be, including the batsman, who responds with a ferocious pull shot. I raise two ineffectual hands to protect my helmetless head but I feel the wind of the passing bullet on my left cheek before they reach chest height.

I wake drenched in sweat, breathing fast and shallow, hands, arms, shoulders, neck locked tight with tension and fear. An unanswerable question on a continuous loop going around my head, "What if that had hit me? What if? What if?"

I know what it feels like to be hit. I took a blow earlier in the day and retired hurt for stitching up. I watch Geoff Howarth and Alec Stewart bat for a draw. I explore my swollen top lip with my tongue and from time to time lightly and nervously touch the stitching to make sure it's not weeping. I engage half-heartedly with the team banter, trying to appear cool, up for it, ready for action. No one must guess that I don't want to bat, but I drift in and out of the stories, the jokes, the conversations. I'm too distracted to concentrate, my attention claimed by the conversation I'm having with myself.

This internal dialogue has accompanied me throughout the season so far. A private burden that has led me to think my career is over. A career built on my ability to play quick bowling. An ability that has led the England captain, Mike Brearley, to rate me as one of the top three players of quick bowling in the country; and to bemoan my blunting of "the Diamond" (fast bowler Wayne Daniel) in matches between Surrey and his Middlesex.

What the hell has happened to me? I've been hit on the head before; by Imran, by Andy Roberts and by John Snow. I have been lucky in that no serious damage has resulted from these blows, and they have never stopped me wanting to bat. Indeed, I got off the floor on one occasion to cut Imran's next delivery for six, the ball landing halfway up the Hove scoreboard.

I've always enjoyed the thrill of taking on the world's fastest bowlers. Yes, it can be scary but that's the thrill. Some people like horror movies or roller-coaster rides. I hate both, but facing quick bowlers is a good adrenaline rush. At least it used to be.

I loved watching Sylvester Clarke, our Bajan fast bowler, make opposing batsmen hop about; loved seeing the fear in their eyes. I loved it even more on the occasions when we flayed opposition bowlers all round the oval, especially the quick ones. It was like a badge of honour. Showing the "weak pricks" how to do it.

Now I am the weak prick and I hate it. Worse, much worse, is the fact that not only do I not want to bat against the quicks but that medium-pacers like Ian Greig and Dermot Reeve are causing me physical anxiety. I genuinely think that every ball is going to hit me on the head. I know what it feels like to be hit, and in my experience it doesn't hurt as much as you think it's going to. I know others have been less fortunate but I can only know what has happened to me. Why, then, am I now so scared?

Geoff and Alec see out the day, to my relief. I pack my kit and move on to the next match or training session; no one suspects.

A few days later, I'm making my way across The Oval to the artificial nets behind the Vauxhall Stand. Rain has made the grass nets unplayable. The artificials are not that good but they are our only option. If my form were good, I'd not have a net, but it's not, so I must steel myself against my fear and bat. I need to work out what's happening.

I'm walking with Sylvester. He genuinely scares batsmen when he's 22 yards away with a piece of hard leather in his hands, but off the field he's a softly spoken lovely bloke who has become a good friend.

Four years earlier, he and I had walked on to The Oval together. Sylvester was trialling for the overseas player role the following season. Manager Micky Stewart had chosen me as the guinea pig to bat against him and give feedback on his potential. It was not yet 9am. I was still half-asleep from the rush-hour journey to Kennington. As I prepared to face Sylvester on an unprepared, end-of-square, end-of-season pitch, I became aware that the entire Lancashire team had assembled on their dressing-room balcony. Clive Lloyd, the West Indies captain, knew of this fellow Clarke and had urged his team to watch. Their excited chatter had intrigued my team-mates and they too filtered out to watch from a safe distance.

Clarke measured out a run that was reassuringly short, no more than 15 yards or so. He swung his arms a couple of times, checked that I was ready and set off. "This'll be a loosener," I thought to myself as I observed the ambling, almost waddling approach to the stumps, the lazy double whirl of the bowling arm. And then, whoosh! A red blur catapulted towards me, pitching just back of a length, veering violently across me in the direction of slip and steepling over my left shoulder before thudding into the keeper's gloves, still on the rise.

I was now wide awake. An audible intake of breath from both dressing rooms reached me, followed quickly by excited hooting and hollering, and useless advice to "wake up Butch", "hook him", "get forward". Thanks guys, much appreciated. I faced one more ball with the same result, announced to a giggling Micky Stewart, "He'll do for me, manager", and marched off to the safety of the dressing room.

A brief encounter with barely a word exchanged, but it felt like something had been forged, a comrades-in-arms thing. It led to me being present to witness his childlike, wide-eyed wonder at his first sight of snow; his despair and anger at the banana throwers and the monkey calls he endured in the north of England. Later, when I had moved counties, a brute of a ball from Clarky which smashed me on the gloves elicited a genuine, "Sorry 'bout dat, Butch. Didn't mean dat, Butch." Later still, a family holiday coincided with his wedding to his long-time girlfriend Peggy. I still chuckle when I think of the reception: sharing a drink in the shade with Sylvester when Peggy, in her wedding dress, hove into view like a Spanish galleon in full sail. "Butch, dat dress mek no sense at all!"

Sadly, barely three years later another trip to Barbados also proved coincidental. I arrived 24 hours before his death and subsequently paid tribute at his funeral.

But now, two mates are walking to practice. One without a care in the world, apart from which girlfriend to see that night, the other subdued by a kind of private grief for a lost talent.

For no reason that I can think of, I can keep my fears to myself no longer.

"I'm having a nightmare, Clarky, I can't get a run."

"You doin' okay, Butch."

"No mate, I've gone. I've lost it against the quicks. I can't play anymore."

"Cor blimeh, you talking bare foolishness. You can play, Butch man."

"I'm not seeing the ball. My eyes have gone."

"Jus' watch de ball, Butch man, watch de ball. Dey ain't nuffin' wrong with your eyes."

In the three words "watch de ball", the seeds of my recovery were sown. I practised. I watched the ball. I watched the ball hard. It was hard work but eventually my confidence returned and with it an understanding of what had happened. It was very simple and Sylvester had hit the nail on the head. I had stopped watching the ball.

A couple of seasons earlier our groundsman had dug up and relaid several pitches in an attempt to inject more pace and bounce into what had become desperately boring surfaces. Some turned out superbly and we played some excellent cricket on them. Others, where the mixture of soils and loams had not quite gelled, were less successful. They had the appearance of crazy paving and induced a cricket ball to do crazy things as well, at terrifying speed.

These strips came to be known as Alien pitches. One of the opening scenes in the first Alien movie has an unsuspecting astronaut bending down to investigate an unknown pod or egg or something only to find a baby alien smash through his visor, attach itself to his mouth and force its way down his throat. This is what happened to batsman after unsuspecting batsman who tried to get a close look at a tempting half-volley. Good-length balls went over your head and bouncers hit you on the ankles. It was horrible.

In my case, the frightening unpredictability of these pitches had led me to look at a part of the pitch where I did not want the ball to land. Consequently, I was neither seeing the ball leave the bowler's hand nor hit the pitch if it did not land where I was looking. Either way I was left with no time to react.

The season ended on a high, and for the rest of my career I was careful to observe the eternal cricketing truth, "watch de ball". But despite this compelling evidence of its efficacy, the eternal life truth "a problem shared is a problem halved" has proved more difficult to live by. I am a man after all.