Interview with Chris Taylor part 3

Yet you started well at Chelmsford, with 55 and 96 in two innings, a match where we racked up big runs, then recorded a duck at Taunton, after which we scored a club record 801-8. That must have been a frustrating few days. Were there any comments flying around?

Yes, I felt in really good touch at Chelmsford. I got fifty in the first innings, then made 96 in the second when it was turning square for Danish Kaneria. I thought it set me up for a good season … how wrong I was.

At Taunton, we slipped to 0-2 in the first over and I went and changed into my fielding whites, convinced we’d be in the field before tea. Then we batted for nearly two days and the game became one where everyone else racked up runs and boosted their averages.

You disappeared from the team at that point, which seemed strange after a pretty solid start and your previous campaign…

I had a back injury. Throughout my career I had issues with my back and hamstrings, as I had one leg that was longer than the other, which affected my hip rotation. A Nottingham specialist ruled me unfit for three weeks and then it all went sour from there

Then there were stories that you had a stand up row with Simon Katich?

I’m really pleased to have an opportunity to give my side of this one, as I’m aware of things that have done the rounds in the intervening period.

As I mentioned earlier, Katich came over as overseas in 2007. Clearly, he wanted to score the runs to force his way back into the Australian side. He was fairly introverted and hardly ever spoke in the middle. That was so different to Michael Di Venuto, who talked you through bad patches and encouraged you all the time when you were batting. That wasn’t Katich’s way at all.

When Michael Dighton came in, my place appeared to have gone. After we played Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, I was approached in the dressing room and asked to support a motion of no confidence in Houghton. I refused to do so, as I had a lot of time for him. I don’t think that did me any favours, if I’m honest. That game was the last I played for Derbyshire’s first team.

Around two weeks later, with the atmosphere increasingly poisonous, Houghton was relieved of his duties. Simon Katich took over and was effectively captain and coach.

He then proceeded to name a team for the game against Middlesex with only one Englishman in the top seven. I was told that I’d to go into the second team, captain them against Yorkshire at Derby and get some runs

That was a notorious game?

You could say that. I won the toss as skipper and, with a very young side at my disposal, opted to bowl first.

It wasn’t an easy wicket to bat on and we were so short of bowlers that I had to bowl a spell. I ended up taking five wickets, the only time in any form of cricket I have done so. Now, keep in mind that I hadn’t played in several weeks and was rusty when it was our turn to bat.

I struggled to time the ball and kept finding the fielders, but I ended up making an unbeaten 88 from 142 balls, as we lost by thirteen runs. With the team we had, we’d done well to get so close and I had, after all, been told to go and get some form and runs. Are results that important in second eleven? A lot of teams use the game for trials and yes, while I had perhaps put my personal performance ahead of the team, I thought that getting my form back might be the best thing for Derbyshire in the long term.

When I got back to the pavilion, Karl Krikken was furious. He asked me what I’d been playing at and I explained. He said I’d been selfish and had put myself before the team and we ended up having to agree to disagree.

So what happened next?

We were playing Leicestershire in the next match the following day and I went back into the pavilion after we’d warmed up, to get my cap and a coin to toss. As I was coming back out, I saw Simon Katich and wondered what he was doing there.

He simply said ‘we need to talk’ and sat me down, asking me to explain what had happened against Yorkshire.

I explained everything and at the end of it he simply looked at me and said ‘that’s not good enough’. He said that he wasn’t going to have people playing for themselves and that he wasn’t accepting my excuse. Then he told me he was suspending me from all cricket for a week and that he would ring me at the end of that week.

You must have been upset?

I was distraught. I went back in to get my clothes, didn’t bother to change and went back to my car with my cricket bag. Apparently I walked straight past Wayne White but don’t recall that. Wayne and Richard Hodgkinson, a trialist, simply couldn’t believe what was happening to me.

I sat in my car, stunned and heartbroken. I wondered if I should go back in to the dressing room and play anyway, but eventually drove out of the car park and went home. I was in a daze and have no real recollection of that journey. I phoned my Dad and he told me to get in touch with the Professional Cricketers Association.

I spoke to Jason Ratcliffe at the PCA and he initially thought it was a wind-up. He said to wait for the official documentation on the suspension. I never got any – the club committee seemed unaware that it had happened. The PCA lawyers gave me advice, but it all died down, though it killed my career at Derbyshire.

I was really, desperately hurt by the whole thing. Cricket was my life and my livelihood and it looked like an incident that was badly misinterpreted and handled was going to take it away.

At what point did you decide to leave?

Yorkshire seemed to be interested in my going back. I was still in contract with Derbyshire, but the writing was on the wall. After I returned to the club following the suspension, I played two or three second team games but it just didn’t feel the same. While I still wanted to play for Derbyshire, there seemed little point when the club appeared to have become an autocracy.

I felt that I had to leave to get away from Simon Katich, not Derbyshire. I asked the club for my release, which was granted, and I signed a pre-contract deal with Yorkshire.

Of course, what happened next was that Katich announced he was not coming back and was going to play for Australia again!

John Morris took over the reins as coach and told me that he saw me as a potential future captain or vice-captain. Glamorgan, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire were also interested in my services, but it really came down to my staying at Derbyshire or going back home to Yorkshire. The crucial factor was signing that pre-contract deal and I opted to go back home.

Yet it was a really sad day when we locked the door of our house at Kirk Langley, where we had been very happy, for the last time. It all went wrong at Derbyshire, but I am still proud of what I achieved. I know in my heart that I am 99.9% innocent and did little wrong. I played a one-off poor innings in mitigating circumstances, which was at odds with what I had done throughout 2006. But at the end of it all, I was the only Derbyshire player to score a century on both his first-class and one-day debut, which I am very proud of and is something to look back on in years to come.

Yet the move back home didn’t work out for you. At what point did you start thinking of a career outside the game?

It went downhill pretty much from the start. My hamstrings proved a problem again and I tore both of them in turn. One saw me out for six weeks, the other for four and I had to prove myself all over again in the seconds.

I wasn’t helped by Michael Vaughan retiring from England duties and returning to the county game. There was an established and good top three of Lyth, Vaughan and McGrath and I couldn’t get in to the side. I made three centuries for the second eleven, but the man management at the club continued to be poor and if you weren’t in the side you were pretty much an afterthought.

In July 2009, John Morris asked if I was interested in going back to Derbyshire – initially on loan for the remainder of that season, then for the 2010 summer. The idea held some appeal, but I was loathe to move my family again and our baby daughter, Isobel, was born in September of 2009. My wife was by that time working at Leeds United and enjoying it, so uprooting again made no sense.

At the end of that summer, I told Yorkshire that I wanted to retire and go into business, so they paid up my contract and I was finished as a first-class cricketer.

To be continued..