In a wide-ranging interview with Headstrong: An Innings With, Sir Andrew Strauss goes into great detail about his career in the game as well as his personal life, including the impact the death of his wife, Ruth, has had on himself and his young family.
You can listen to the full interview with Strauss on the Headstrong podcast, available to listen to on all the usual podcast hosting platforms. Headstrong: An Innings With supports the Ruth Strauss Foundation and is exclusively previewed by Wisden.com.
In the conversation, Strauss charts out his life in the game, from breaking through at Middlesex to leading England to multiple Ashes series win as captain and his relationship with star batsman Kevin Pietersen.
At one point in the interview, Strauss reflects on his innate drive to push himself in whatever he does and how that sometimes felt out of sync with the general atmosphere within the county game when he broke through as a professional in the 1990s.
“If I really put myself to something then I feel like I really want to succeed in it and I don’t want to have any regrets,” said Strauss. “I’m not one of the people who are kind of like, ‘I’ll just give it a go and if it works out, fine but if not it doesn’t matter.’ I want to give more than that.”
Strauss was a relatively late bloomer, only making his first-class debut at the age of 21. He didn’t properly break into the Middlesex side until the following year, 1999, before soon establishing himself as one of the standout top-order batsmen in the country.
“I think, actually, it’s changed a bit but in the 1990s county cricket was a very comfortable, easy place. People used to go out on the piss quite a lot and it was almost frowned upon to push yourself hard and I never liked that environment. I was always comfortable pushing myself harder than others.”
Three years of heavy run-scoring at the start of the 21st century saw him earn a first England Test call-up at the age of 27, deputising for the injured Michael Vaughan for a Lord’s Test against New Zealand. He enjoyed a dream debut, racking scores of 112 and 83 in a seven-wicket England win.
