Emilio Gay: 'Freddie congratulated me on having a strut'

"I was in Canberra actually, two days before I got injured, when the group came out and I found out we [Italy] were playing against England and West Indies. I've obviously got family from the West Indies, on my dad's side [whose parents hail from Grenada]. I could actually qualify for three teams! When they played against West Indies and England, I had a bit of FOMO."

Now with England as his sole focus, where does he think he stands in the pecking order? Unlike some punters on social media, he is unsure.

"It's a tricky one really. You've just been on the Lions tour, shadowing the Ashes. I played well over there, so I'd like to have thought I was potentially knocking on the door. The injury came at a terrible time, to be honest, but obviously I started the season well with a hundred against Kent.

"Social media's great, but you go on it and you might see your name. But you might see five other people's names and they [commenters] are like… 'Emilio's crap', 'he should play' or 'this person should play'. They're not making the decisions, but you hear all these different names and you don't know.

"I'd like to think a couple more performances and my name's in the hat for Test matches in the summer or in the winter, whenever that is. But it's hard to know."

What Gay does know is that a step-up will come with greater pressure. A winter alongside the Test team opened his eyes to that. He trained alongside Joe Root leading into the second Test at Brisbane, and then sat in the crowd at the Gabba to watch England's greatest batter finally notch an away Ashes century.

There will be much more scrutiny, too. One morning, he, Jordan Cox and Tom Haines went for coffee in their England kit and bore the brunt of locals "calling you crap, stuff like that". Graeme Swann, who was part of the Lions coaching staff for the first half of the winter, hammered home that this was the norm they were striving for: "This is a part of playing international cricket. Don't pretend it's not there. We want you to thrive on that."

It was Lions head coach Andrew Flintoff, however, who had one piece of advice that really struck a chord. In part because it pulled at a thread Gay had been managing throughout his career.

"Freddie was massive on with me on mindset. He obviously had that aura, call it arrogance or confidence, when he went out there. And he noticed that I sometimes have a bit of a strut when I walk out to bat.

"I had it against India A, and played well. And he just congratulated me on having a strut. I was like, 'Wow, like really?' He was like, 'Yeah, like, we want you to have that.' He mentioned Baz [Brendon McCullum] and Stokesy [Ben Stokes], and he was like, 'All of us, we want that. If there's any England team that's ever wanted confidence, it's this one.' And he said: 'When you go out to bat, don't turn that off.'"

There's a reason Gay found this quite a profound. Since breaking into the Northamptonshire first team in 2020, he has found himself drawn to the mental side of the game, not least because he found that opposition teams went particularly hard at him.

"When I was at Northants, going from second team to first team cricket, I had a wake-up call. I was not scoring runs. You start getting chat from the opposition and stuff, trying to get in your head. That brought me back in my shell a little bit. Are you as good as you are?

"At the end of 2022, I got that hundred against Surrey - 145 - which gave me confidence. And it wasn't probably till then where I really thought I belonged at this level.

"I think my best stats are against Surrey…" he says. And he's right; he has more runs (648) and more fifty-plus scores against them (five) than any other opponent, along with two centuries. "I got 156 against them [at The Oval] and a 99 [at Chester le Street] last year. They've always given me a bit of abuse as well, which is good fun."

He finished 2022 with 825 runs, before finally breaching four figures in 2024 - 1019 at 53.63 - the summer which earned him a move to Chester-le-Street. Though Durham were relegated last season, Gay marked it with four Championship hundreds.

For all the progress, Gay admits he still retains plenty of doubt. Even against Kent two weeks ago, he walked to the crease confident but saw the lights, dark skies and cast his mind back to the start of the 2024 season, which he started with a pair against Nottinghamshire. "It was up there with the most nervous I've been."

He works regularly with psychologists, and concludes nerves need to be accepted. He recalls the night before his breakthrough century against Surrey in 2022 when, unable to sleep, he sent a voice note to psychologist Dr Karl Steptoe, who he was working with in Northampton.

The reply that came back was to park the anxiety and focus on a plan for Dan Worrall, Kemar Roach, Jordan Clark, Gus Atkinson and Tom Curran. Previously, Gay would spend hours trying to convince himself he was not actually nervous.

He has also picked the brains of Alastair Cook - like Gay, a former student at Bedford School. "He spoke about the man on the shoulder. He said when he would spend time with the man on his shoulder, he would not watch the ball and commit because he's too busy. When he accepted that he [the man on the shoulder] has had his moment, I'm going to go back to watching the ball, that was when he would do better."

Durham return to action on Friday against Lancashire. Gay hopes that means a meeting with James Anderson, assuming Anderson is passed fit to play his fourth match in a row. The veteran seamer, now Lancs skipper, has shown his enduring class in the opening weeks to lead Division Two's wicket charts with 21 at 12.09.

Gay cannot wait to see how he stacks up against Test cricket's most productive seamer. And by proxy, how ready he may be for the highest level.

"He's one of the best bowlers of all time, and he might say a bit," Gay beams, clearly wanting the smoke. "I hope he does, actually.

"Before that, I'm probably going to be nervous. But that's fine. I need that. Because if I play for England and go out at Lord's in front of 30,000 fans, I'm going to be nervous. The more I practice against nerves, the more I'm used it. So I want that."

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