I don’t know, I tell him. Trott chuckles heartily.
For a man who claims not to read his own press, he appears to have a sharp sense of how he comes across. “People tell me these things,” he says. “When I’m fielding on the boundary. ‘Come on, smile you boring bastard!’ ‘You grumpy old man!’ That sort of stuff.”
None of this is said with bitterness. Trott has never been overly preoccupied with changing opinions of him, and yet there is a sense that some of the mud that is periodically slung at him may have hit its mark.
Before England’s Champions Trophy final against India, Trott reacted to pointed questions from journalists about his scoring rate with a recalcitrance bordering on hostility.
“Hostile?” he replies. “It’s all people talk about. Is it hostile when you give people answers and they repeatedly ask you the same question? If we win, if we’re getting through to finals, and we’re still getting questioned, then you’ve got to wonder: what else do you have to do?”
The fact is that as England go into next week’s Ashes series, Trott is their most reliable source of runs. Until he was out for eight in the truncated Champions Trophy game against New Zealand at Cardiff, his lowest score for England in 2013, in all formats, was 27. That is more than six months without a clear failure.
Think about it. When was the last time you can remember Trott being out of nick? Against Pakistan in the Middle East? England’s highest run-scorer in that series. South Africa last summer? He averaged 43. As an international batsman, Trott is coming tantalisingly close to eliminating form from his game. As a spectator experience, he offers a profound calm: ticking away like an old grandfather clock.
This is no accident. “Your mannerisms and body language are a mirror of your mental thoughts,” he says. “If someone’s standing in a room at a business meeting, you can always tell if someone’s nervous. Body language slows your mind down a bit, so you stop thinking about irrelevant thoughts. That’s all concentration is: it’s an absence of irrelevant thought.”
And this is where all that scratching around at the crease comes in: those borderline-obsessive mannerisms that irritate fielding teams to distraction. “You find things that get you into that state. So if you’re going to write this article, you’ll generally find that you have a routine that you do the whole time. Sit down, have a cup of coffee, switch the light on, open your computer. You do your best work when you do it a certain way. Look at any repetition sport like baseball, or golf. The geniuses are the ones who can just do it in any order, and it’ll come out brilliantly the whole time.”
A term you will often come across in reference to Trott is “machine”. But the emotionless run-robot we see at the crease is only half the story. “When I’m waiting to bat is the most nervous I get,” he says. “Then when there’s a wicket, it’s almost like a sense of relief. I just switch on.”
What gets him worked up? “Bad driving. Steven Finn is the worst. There’s no co-ordination between his toes and his hands.”
What else? “Unfairness. I hate people who make themselves popular out of others’ misfortune. Like, I find a comedian really funny when he can take the piss out of himself. But when he takes the piss out of someone to make himself look more humorous, that’s a pet hate.”
Who does he find funny? “I find Ravi Bopara very funny. We’re a very funny team, actually. In terms of comedians, Michael McIntyre’s quite funny. He’s quite good value.”
Perhaps, as the Ashes circus finally rolls into town, it is time for a reappraisal. The paradox is that one of the most successful England players of modern times is also one of the least understood. Yet it is a measure of his value that he is routinely the batsman that opposition teams target for verbal abuse.
“I enjoy that,” he says. “It’s a compliment. They wouldn’t bother sledging you if you were rubbish. Sometimes I use it. I say: ‘Right, I’m going to make you field a bit longer now.’ ”
And for just a second, the menacing glint in his eye is back.
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'Short and explosive'
The ball shapes in a fraction and hits the top of off-stump.
David Saker applauds. “I was expecting a bit more of a celebration,” says Stuart Broad, as he rearranges the furniture.
In fact, I was just happy to deliver the ball into the correct net. We are in the indoor school at the Oval for a taster training session with the England team.
What stands out is how targeted the drills are. Graham Thorpe explains how to work the ball into the gaps against spin, Saker schools us in the perfect out-swinger, while Jos Buttler demonstrates the art of taking low catches.
“It’s all sharp-reaction stuff,” says Jonathan Trott. “Short and explosive, which is what cricket’s about, really. It’s not a huge endurance thing. It’s more about performing for five seconds - a throw over the top of the stumps for a run-out, or a split-second catch.”
NatWest Current Account customers can win a training session with the England team. Sign up and enter at natwest.com/cricket
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