Profile: Mike Gatting

After captaining both England and Middlesex, Mike Gatting is now Managing Director of Cricket Partnerships at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

Gatting made his debut for Middlesex in 1975 and played his home cricket at Lord’s for the next 23 years until retirement. Aged just 20 he made his Test debut against Pakistan in Karachi in 1978. Although it took him 54 innings to score his maiden hundred, once he started he did not let up, scoring ten in total, including 207 versus India in the same innings Graeme Fowler scored 201 – the first time two Englishmen had scored double centuries in the same Test innings.

Gatting’s two wins as captain came at the expense of Australia in the 1986-87 Ashes series. Although the team landed in Australia with the criticism ‘can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field’ ringing in their ears, Gatting’s men won the series, an achievement England’s cricketers then had to wait another 18 years for. In the meantime Gatting was the unfortunate recipient of Shane Warne’s ‘ball of the century’ in 1993.

After his first class career ended in 1998 – with 94 centuries to his name – Gatting took on a variety of coaching, managerial and administrative roles. His close links with Lord’s were strengthened when he was made Director of Coaching at Middlesex in 1998 and he will begin a third stint on the MCC Committee from October 2010. He also sits on the MCC Cricket committee. Gatting has managed England ‘A’ and under-19 teams and also spent two years as a selector between 1997 and 1998.

Gatting was President of the cricket charity, the Lord’s Taverners, between 2004 and 2006, and his current role at the ECB is geared towards both bringing the game to different audiences and strengthening the county game to produce more Test-quality players.

He was awarded an OBE in 1987.