Isn’t it funny how a smell can conjure up memories? For me, the house where I grew up and spent my formative years had just such an evocative odour. It was a faintly sickening carbon smell. I think it was the oil for the heating system running low.

Whatever the cause, if I so much as sniff it now, I’m back at No 9 Brooklea, in Oldland Common, a village near Bristol.

I moved there in 1984, when I was nine years old, with my mum and dad and my older sister, Anna. It was a big four-bedroom house – one of six in a private road. There was a park nearby and it had a large double garage. It also had a patio with a fish pond, a barbecue and a rockery at the side. Most important for me, though, it had two big gardens – one at the front and another at the back.

It was in this back garden that I spent countless hours playing football and cricket: there were some apple trees, and they would be our goalposts or cricket stumps, depending on the season. My dad, Martyn, would sometimes play with me. He was a pretty good cricketer himself when he was younger – he played for Somerset’s second XI – but couldn’t give enough time to it, as he was making his way in business as a clothes supplier. He really encouraged me, without being too pushy.

A lot of my life, even at that stage, was taken up with cricket. At weekends, I’d go to see dad play at Keynsham Cricket Club, and my mum, Lin, would help with the teas. That’s where I first started playing seriously – I was just 14 when I got into their first team. I’d also play a lot of sport with my best friend, Eddie Gregg. We’d meet up almost every day. Eddie was a better footballer than me, but I was the better cricketer, so it evened out.

Trying to balance cricket and school-work was a real problem. I was spotted by Somerset’s coaches, Bob Cottam and Peter Robinson, at a young age, so it was always likely that I would make a living playing cricket. Consequently, my academic work at Sir Bernard Lovell School suffered. I took nine GCSEs, but I didn’t pass many.

Looking back, I was cricket crazy. One year, there was a fashion for bats to have heavily weighted handles, so I decided to make my own. I climbed onto the roof of the house next door and stole some lead piping. I took it into the kitchen and used the cooker to melt it into a mould, which I placed in some sand. When it had cooled, I fixed the weight to the top of the bat handle. Job done. I have never told anyone about that little escapade. If our next-door neighbours, the Wells family, have been suffering from leaks in the roof over the years, perhaps they would like to contact me now. I’ll pay up.

I effectively left home when I was 16. Somerset County Cricket Club took me on, so I was installed in a flat on St Augustine Street, Taunton. I shared this with four or five other lads on the staff, so you can imagine the sort of stupidity we’d get up to. One of them, Andrew Payne, set off fireworks in the front room. We just covered up the burn marks with a plant pot. Things got silly when he bought himself an air gun and took to shooting everybody else in the flat. That was when the club stepped in and sent someone round to disarm him.

When I go back to Bristol now, a lot has changed. Worst of all, my boyhood friend, Eddie, who I’d known from the age of three, isn’t there any more. He studied for four years at Loughborough University, then died of leukaemia in 2000, aged just 24. It was a big blow to so many people. Just after he passed away, I was preparing to tour Sri Lanka, and I asked his father, Alan, if I could dedicate my first Test century to Eddie. That’s what I did. I looked to the skies at Galle when I passed the ton and shared the moment with him.

My parents have moved from the old family home, too. They downsized to a two-bedroom place nearby in 1998. The pace of life in Bristol is very different now to when I was a boy. It’s really hectic – not as bad as London, but getting that way. I far prefer Taunton. I live there with my wife, Hayley, and my two daughters Ellie, 3, and Millie, who was born this year. We also have a holiday home at the Royal Westmoreland golf resort, a gated community on the west coast of Barbados.

I still like to return to Bristol to see my parents, but Taunton is home now. It’s far more relaxed.

Pegasus Homes is developing a new block of flats for the over55s, overlooking Somerset County Cricket Club’s ground (0800 583 8844, www.pegasus-homes.co.uk)

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