Author - Bringing Home the Ashes

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T HROUGHOUT the wonderful summer of 2015, a peppered old thigh pad with the sweat marks of battle telling their own tales travelled everywhere with me. Only it is not any old thigh pad. To me, it is a cherished piece of Ashes memorabilia: the one worn by Michael Vaughan in 2005, when he became the first England captain to get his hands on the famous urn for eighteen years. It remained in my kitbag as we trekked from venue to venue, serving as a reminder of my predecessors in crickets most thrilling narrative, and also of where I have come from.

I was a teenage hopeful without a first-team appearance to my name for Yorkshire when Michael announced his retirement from all cricket in late June 2009. It was then that he started thinking about what he was going to do with certain things from his kit, having remembered that Geoffrey Boycott passed down a chest guard to him when he was a young player at Headingley. In modern-day cricket, that particular piece of protective padding would serve no purpose, given the advances in the manufacturing of such items over the decades, so instead he passed on the thigh pad he had worn his entire career.

It was actually presented to me not by Michael but by Craig White, at the end of a second-team practice session a few days later. He was fully padded up when he called a team huddle and, in a rather surreal moment, dropped his trousers.

Ive got a little presentation to make, he announced. As you all know, Michael has decided to retire from cricket and he just wanted to pass a little gift on to another Sheffield lad.

He proceeded to take the thigh pad off and hand it to me. To have two of my heroes involved in the transaction was really special. Michael sent me a text later that day that read, All the best with your career. Really excited to see how it all goes.

After all hed achieved in the game, it was a very nice touch to recognise someone who had not done anything at all. Hed decided to honour me partly through what he had heard via word of mouth, and partly because hed liked what hed seen after catching me bat here and there on my way up through the age groups and academy at Yorkshire. For him to take an interest in my career was really exciting.

Because, like me, Michael had started with Sheffield Collegiate, it was easy for me to relate to him, and through that connection I saw that all my goals were achievable. The dream was always to follow him across every brick of a career path that had begun at Abbeydale Park and reached a podium at The Oval at its zenith. The thigh pad served to inspire.

For years I kept it in my locker at Headingley, but once I began playing regularly for England I was forced to clear everything out: the changing rooms being the size they are, someone else needed my storage space, so the thigh pad found a new home in the kitbag I lug around in the boot of the car. Its always near me and will remain so until I finish playing. Whether I keep it then, pass it on to another young Yorkshire player or give them something else of mine, I do not yet know, but it is a legacy I want to maintain. I know the feeling it gave me the drive and determination to succeed and would like another player to experience that in the future.

I have a confession to make here. When it comes to cricket, I am a proper geek or, in dressing-room speak, a badger. I have always loved collecting all the equipment, the feel of a new bat in the hand; being handed new kit turns me into a kid at Christmas.

These days that kit has three lions emblazoned on it and, no matter how many international caps I go on to win, I do not think the buzz and sense of pride I feel when pulling on that England shirt will ever diminish for me. Ever since being a young boy watching my predecessors on the TV, or pretending to be them in the back garden, to do so has been a massive dream of mine. I have always been so proud of representing my country and never more so than the summer of 2015 in winning back the Ashes.

Family and close friends would tell you my devotion to the badge is deep-rooted. As an 11-year-old I wore my Yorkshire schoolboy cap everywhere I went. It was my first season representing the county and I was so pleased about doing so that I rarely took it off. If I went to watch my dad Matthew play league cricket for Sheffield Collegiate on a Saturday afternoon, there I would be, advertising the fact I was a junior county cricketer, peak pulled down slightly, with the white rose displayed above my eyeline. I sometimes even wore it if I was with my mum Helen popping to the shops. I would wear it when travelling to my junior matches, not only when the game was under way, and even on the occasions when we travelled to see the England team play.

If I went to watch a Test match, there it was perched on top of my head, as it was in August 2002 when our family went to the match between England and India at Trent Bridge. After the game I badgered Mum to hang around.

Weve got to get the autographs of all the players, I insisted, so desperate was I to meet them all. We did just that and it provided a moment I will always cherish, as Craig White spoke to us in the car park afterwards.

Is that a Yorkshire cap? he asked me.

Yes, it is, I said, beaming.

Thats brilliant, he said. Maybe one day you will get to play with me.

I can still hear Craigs words in my head. I can see him mouthing them to me as clear as day. I even plucked up the courage to repeat them to him when they became a reality on my Yorkshire second-team debut as a 16-year-old. There I was, a schoolboy having just sat my GCSEs, in the same changing room as one of the guys I had looked up to for years. Very nervous I might have been, but I plucked up the courage to tell him the story of how we had met previously. He obviously didnt remember it, but it was a special moment for me; another significant rung on my ascent, if you like.

He gave me a pair of his batting gloves during that match against Derbyshire and for the rest of the season I didnt wear another pair. They were already old and had holes in them, but I wore them until the leather palms were crisp, as if they had been left in the oven, so hardened were they with sweat. I may have been playing second XI cricket by this point, but Craig White held legendary status as far as I was concerned; someone I had tremendous respect for; someone whose journey to the top of cricket I wanted to emulate.

Never losing that special feeling I had when we talked in the Trent Bridge car park has been important to me. It was an integral step on the path of my cricket career and that is why I try to retain a connection with the next generation of the game when youngsters turn up to see England play. Getting to put the Three Lions on is such a privilege, one hundreds and thousands dream of but only a select few get the chance to experience. Interaction with the players of thirteen years ago certainly inspired me to be one of those select few, and my own memories are why I have always tried to give back to the fans who wait around after matches, by signing autographs, chatting or posing for photos. On the day we secured the Ashes, at Trent Bridge on 8 August 2015, I must have been close to the world record for selfies taken in a twenty-four-hour period. It was wonderful that so many people stuck around to be part of the celebrations.

While Michael and Craig provided links to my intended destination, getting there, I have to confess, has required a great deal of good fortune. You see, people have always invested their faith in me, and for that I will always be grateful. I have been very lucky when it has come to being thrown into teams. If ever there was a 5050 call to be made, those with the power to decide seemed to opt to give me the chance to prove myself.