Geoff Marsh on the 1986-87 series

'We could have had the Ashes for 20 years'

Cricinfo staff

January 4, 2007

Geoff Marsh speaks with Brydon Coverdale about his first Ashes series and the disappointment of losing to England

Geoff Marsh sweeps during a successful start to his Ashes career at the Gabba © Getty Images

It's everyone's dream to play in the Ashes. You'd always sit down and watch the Lord's Test and see the players on the balcony and that's where you want to be. You don't realise how big it really is until you play in an Ashes series.

The build-up was just huge with the amount of people who came out from England. Scoring a hundred [Marsh made 56 and 110] in the first Test was great but we lost, so it would have been better to get another hundred and win the game. Chris Broad had a fantastic series [he scored three centuries and averaged 69.57] and Graham Dilley and John Emburey bowled well. Ian Botham was always hard to face, he was such a good competitor.

Both sides got on well off the field. I always got on pretty well with the likes of Botham, Allan Lamb and David Gower. That was just about the last series where you'd have drink with the other team after the game and mix with the opposition players. It didn't really happen much after that. We drew two and lost two and then we won the fifth Test. Peter Taylor was great in his debut [he took eight wickets and made 42 in the second innings] and he went on to have a terrific career.

My standout memory was just the disappointment of not winning the Ashes. It was very different to 1989, which was the best series you'd ever want to be involved in, on and off the field. The work from Bob Simpson to get us there was great and some guys really stood up to be counted. It's just a shame we didn't win the Ashes in 1986-87 or we could have had them for nearly 20 years.

Geoff Marsh scored 429 runs in the five matches of his opening Ashes series, averaging 42.90

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