Mike Gatting: My biggest regret is going on rebel tour

"But those things have happened and at the time it seemed the right thing to do."

We are half-an-hour into the interview and I've just asked the current MCC president the biggest regret of his cricketing career.

His answer is perhaps not surprising but it's delivered in a typically honest manner. Back in 1990, Gatting was very much the outcast of English cricket having captained the country's second rebel tour to apartheid South Africa, which coincided with the release of Nelson Mandela.

The former skipper was slapped with a three-year ban from Test cricket.

It seemingly completed a downfall which had begun with the infamous Shakoor Rana affair in 1987 and included his sacking as England captain the following summer, following an alleged encounter with a barmaid during a Trent Bridge Test. With the benefit of hindsight, his decision to then go to South Africa seems unthinkable.

There had been six previous rebel tours – from England, Australia, the West Indies and Sri Lanka – but none had taken place at a time of such momentous political change.

Lifting the ban on the African National Congress meant it was the first tour to face angry demonstrators. At one point, in Pietermaritzburg, Gatting walked into a crowd of around 4,000.

Former South Africa skipper Ali Bacher, who organised the tour, later admitted he feared the Englishman might have been killed.

"I went in to the crowd because that is what they asked us to do," shrugs the 56-year-old. "They wanted to see who we were and tell us to go home. So we did."

It's difficult to imagine a man who at that moment was facing a three-year exile from the international game would, 23 years later, be firmly part of the establishment.

For one thing, he doesn't seem the stereotypical image for president of a centuries old, stuffy institution such as the MCC.

When I put it to Gatting that, back in the 1980s, a working-class kid from Willesden would have been the last person expected to hold his current post, he laughs out loud.

But then Gatting, the MCC and the sport have changed an awful lot since then, as he's only too quick to acknowledge.

"In the 80s I was happy because I had made it into the Middlesex side," he says. "I was enjoying my cricket and playing with some unbelievable players.

"And you're right, at no stage do you ever dream of being MCC president or anything like that.

"It was a different place in those days. It was perceived as being very elite and it probably was, it was almost run like, dare I say it, the Army. They have come a long way.

"Women are now involved and can come into the club, which is quite right. The demeanour of the people on the gate, the people in the ground, is softening. They now make people feel welcome.

"The whole atmosphere is totally different to what it used to be. It was almost like trying to get in and out of a prison."

Gatting's tenure as president began in October and runs for 12 months. It promises to be a whirlwind experience. Top of the agenda is the redevelopment of Lord's, in the club's 200th year at the ground, while there are also ambitious plans to take the game to China.

But where Gatting talks with most passion is when he speaks about taking the game into those communities less well off.

It's perhaps fitting in that respect our meeting takes place at Wolverhampton Sports Academy, where Gatting is present to open a superb new nets facility.

It's a venue he knows well, having played indoor cricket there in the early 90s. It's also just the type of place he hopes will help bring the sport to a wider audience and help rid it of any remaining elitism.

Dressed in a tracksuit, Gatting is comfortable among the crowd of young cricketers who've come to meet him, happy to pass out advice. He is undoubtedly driven by his own modest upbringing and experiences of trying to break in at Middlesex during the 1970s.

Born in 1957 in Kingsbury, North London, he soon moved with his family to what he quite cheerfully describes as the "rough end" of Willesden.

For him and brother Steve, sport played a huge role and, along with cricket, Gatting was also a keen goalkeeper until being rejected by QPR at the age of 14.

"You would look to go and play something," he says. "I knew how hard it was. If you didn't have something to do, there was nothing else to do but get into trouble.

"I was fortunate to a degree in that my mum and dad, when they had two kids, had to find an extra job and at the weekend they were steward and stewardess of a sports club. Me and my brother were lucky because the weekends would be spent up at the sports club.

"All the equipment was about two sizes too big for us but we managed to get an idea of how to play. You watched games, you watched people playing and you just picked up great life skills."

Such stories echo when he then excitedly describes his hope of bringing the game to the masses and working in communities, an area in which he believes the sport has made mistakes in the past.

"The one thing football has done better than cricket is they have always had community officers," he says.

"They were way ahead of cricket. Our sport has only just started to realise they need these kind of people too.

"The MCC now has a community officer, which is great. As an organisation the MCC has generally gone out and helped around the world because it used to run the game and it used to help people – it still does.

"But one of the first things I asked is what are we doing for our local area? The five-mile radius around Lord's?

"You've got Islington and Camden which are two very rough areas. Kilburn, Willesden, Wembley just north of there.

"Just around the ground you have some very rich people but 100 yards down the road in Paddington you've got some very poor.

"It's the mixture all around Lord's and perhaps that's why we missed it. We're not going to miss it any more."

As a player, Gatting was once described as "pugnacious, bold, brave and belligerent".

After breaking into the Middlesex side in his late teens, his natural talent was quickly noticed by the England selectors and he was sent on tour at the age of just 20, making his Test debut against Pakistan in 1978.

International success did not come easy and it was not until his 54th innings that a century finally arrived when he struck a battling 136 against India in Mumbai.

The captaincy soon followed, as did an Ashes series win in Australia. But then came Rana and the beginning of his troubles. During a Test in Faisalabad, the Pakistani umpire signalled a dead ball when he adjudged Gatting to have made an illegal signal to a fielder while the bowler was running in. That led to an angry confrontation in which Gatting had to be dragged away from Rana by team-mate Bill Athey.

Rana then refused to continue the game the next day until the England skipper apologised. He eventually did so, under protest.

With the amount of money now involved in the sport, it's easy to forget neutral umpires are a relatively new invention.

The Rana affair did not come out of the blue but instead after England had been angered by a number of decisions during the series.

They were also unhappy the umpire was wearing a Pakistan top under his jumper.

"I suppose it was the integrity of the game and the people in it," says Gatting when discussing the incident and non-neutral umpires, before adding rather diplomatically: "The one thing which has hit home to me is having neutral umpires takes a huge amount of angst out of the game."

Publicly, Gatting was supported by the English cricketing authorities but it is now widely accepted the Rana affair was the real reason behind his sacking as skipper the following summer.

When, in 1989, a chance to be reinstated was vetoed, he admits it made his decision to take the money and skipper the rebel tour easier.

"Sadly there were some people involved with English cricket who made it perfectly clear they didn't want me involved and went out of their way to do so," he says. "I suppose I maybe, you might say, cut off my nose to spite my face."

Unlike the six previous rebel tours, this one was funded directly by the apartheid government and Gatting does not need telling of the light in which many still view it.

But he says the growing belief that Mandela was to be released also influenced his decision.

"I felt that was what should be happening anyway," he says. "For a politician to say he was going to do that was quite powerful and I thought there would probably be a lot of eyes and ears and focus on that, rather than us. But there you are."

In the face of growing unrest, the tour was cut short. Gatting didn't feature for England again until late 1992 but played international cricket until 1995 and continued to appear for Middlesex until three years after that, eventually retiring at the age of 42.

What shines through in conversation, always, is his love of the game. It comes as no surprise he pursued a role as an administrator when his playing days were done – he is currently the ECB's managing director of cricketing partnerships.

Ask him about any aspect of the game and he will talk for minutes in typical, no-nonsense style yet without any semblance of arrogance and always in a respectful tone.

I ask him whether the financial lure of Twenty20 is in danger of destroying Test cricket on the subcontinent. But Gatting remains confident of the longer format's health.

"Test cricket is where you become a Tendulkar, a Dravid, or a Gower or a Botham," he says. "If you play well in Test cricket, they know you're a good player.

"How on earth will they pick their IPL players without Test cricket, because how on earth do you become a great player who is respected around the world?" When it comes to talk about the biggest challenge facing the game, Gatting is unequivocal. In his view it's about how to tackle corruption and prevent the fixing scandals of the recent past from reoccurring.

For him, the answer lies in educating impressionable young players while also ensuring there is a sanction in place which will deter them from being led astray.

"It's a sad thing because in some countries the players aren't paid that well," he says.

"There is a lot of money at stake. When you talk about money which goes through the system, in Asia alone you are talking about billions of dollars.

"It's incredible the amount of money which is gambled. That's why there is all this spot-fixing and alleged match-fixing.

"People get their heads turned and we need to educate them.

"The only thing you can do is put a sanction in place which stops people asking the question because the punishment is too severe.

"I suppose it's something people might be looking for. Other sports are looking for life bans straight away. I hope we find the solution soon."

With our time drawing to a close there is just one question left to ask, though I fear it might earn me a punch as I suspect it's one he's been asked many times before. Namely, is he now entirely sick of seeing Shane Warne's Ball of the Century, or being asked about how it feels to have been the victim?

Even those with little interest in cricket know the story, or have seen the moment when Warne's first ball in England pitched a foot outside leg stump and then turned to clip the top of off stump.

Gatting's confused, vacant look as he trudges off has been shown countless times – particularly with back-to-back Ashes series having just been played.

It remains, however, one of the sport's most famous moments. When I ask the question, Gatting simply laughs.

"It doesn't irritate me when people ask, not at all," he says. "Sadly, it is in the history books.

"You are written in the history books for things you do, like winning the Ashes in Australia – that is a piece of history. Shane Warne's first ball in Ashes cricket is another.

"It would have been really upsetting had he taken 17 wickets and ended up on a Melbourne beach, never to be seen again. Then I might have been more than upset.

"But the fact he ended up being, without a shadow of doubt, the best spin bowler of all time makes it easier.

"All right, he bowled me. But like everything else, it's just a part of history."