Gower enjoyed one of the most prolific first-class cricket careers in English history, in both domestic and international competitions. He played domestic cricket from 1975 until 1993, largely with
Leicestershire until 1989, when he moved to
Hampshire. He was a stalwart batsman at both clubs. Winning the toss, Lancashire chose to bat first and amassed 259, thanks largely to a century by
David Lloyd, who would later become Gower's co-commentator. Gower, batting at number seven, scored 32 before he was dismissed by
Ken Shuttleworth, Leicestershire making 321 and taking a first-innings lead. Lloyd made 90 in the second innings as Lancashire declared on 305, with Gower taking one catch to dismiss
Jack Simmons for 17. The match, lasting only three days with 100 overs as a maximum limit imposed on both teams for each innings, ended in a draw, with Leicestershire reaching 90 without Gower getting to bat again. Gower continued to make little impression during the rest of the 1975 season, playing in only two more matches and ending the season with 65 runs at 13.00. He enjoyed greater success in his debut
List A season, playing in eight matches, scoring 175 runs at 25.00 with two fifties. Gower was retained for the 1976 season, however, playing in a total of seven first-class matches. He enjoyed greater success, with 323 runs at 35.88 including a maiden century, 102
*, and a second fifty.
Wisden recorded that "The sun scarcely graced the English cricket scene with its presence in 1978, but when it did it seemed to adorn the blond head of David Gower. The young Leicestershire left-hander could do little wrong. He typified a new, precocious breed of stroke-players, imperious and exciting, who added colour and glamour to an otherwise bedraggled English summer." The 1980 season in England saw Gower again top 1,000 runs, with 1142 at 48.89, including five hundreds and a career-best 156*. This was, thus far, the most prolific first-class season of Gower's career. His final three seasons had seen poorer returns in one-day cricket, with his last century coming in 1992, and with his final season returning 347 runs at 26.69.
International career , scoring a boundary via a
pull shot off his first delivery, bowled by Pakistan's
Liaqat Ali. On 27 July, Gower played against
New Zealand, scoring his maiden Test hundred, 111 off of 253 deliveries in the first innings, and making 11 in the second. He made scores of 46, 71 and 46 in the rest of the series, the latter including his first Test six, earning him selection for the following Ashes Tests in Australia. More controversially, during the
1990–91 Ashes Tour in Australia, England were playing a warm up match in
Queensland when Gower, together with batsman
John Morris, chose to go for a joy-ride in two
Tiger Moth biplanes without telling the England team management. Both had been dismissed earlier that day, and they decided not to remain at the ground to "watch
Allan Lamb and
Robin Smith flat the Queensland attack before a small crowd". For this Gower was fined £1,000, a penalty that could have been steeper had he released the water bombs he had also prepared. He also posed for press photographs with the plane the next day. Gooch was enraged, as he was by Gower's mode of dismissal at a crucial stage of one of the Test matches. During the fourth Test at Adelaide, Gower walked out to the crease to the tune of
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. The last ball before lunch was bowled down the leg side to a leg trap, and all Gower needed to do was block. However, Gower flicked idly at the delivery and was caught at leg-slip. According to
Mike Atherton in his autobiography, "Gooch was at the other end and as he walked off his face was thunderous". This was another example of the strained relationship between the two. His score of nought in the second innings at Melbourne in 1991, when England were chasing quick runs for victory, ended his world record, unbroken sequence, of 119 Test innings without registering a duck. It is often thought that Gooch was instrumental in Gower being omitted from the subsequent tour of India. In response to Gooch's perceived regime of hard work over talent, Gower retired from international cricket in early 1993. though he had a reputation for being aloof. His languid style was often misinterpreted as indifference and a lack of seriousness, an air he bolstered with a variety of "misdemeanours" from apparently "lazy" shots, to practical jokes, even to his preference for blue (not white) socks.
Wisden described him as "fluffy-haired, ethereal-looking" who played "beautifully, until the moment he made a mistake. Sometimes, the mistake was put off long enough for him to play an innings of unforgettable brilliance." with a "devil-may-care" approach some found infuriating, as
Wisden records, "the difference between an exquisite stroke and a nick was little more than an inch" in his style of batting. Gower himself commented in 1995 in an interview in
The Independent: "I was never destined to be on the ball 100 per cent of the time. I don't have the same ability that Graham Gooch has, to produce something very close to his best every time he plays. There were Test matches where I suddenly felt, at the end of it, 'Well, I wish I'd really been at that one.'" Gower was also a right-arm
off break spin bowler despite batting left-handed, who took one Test wicket at 20.00 out of the six overs he sent down on the rare occasions when he was called upon to bowl. His domestic cricket added another three wickets to give him an overall average of 56.75; On one occasion, during
Steve O'Shaughnessy's 35-minute century for
Lancashire, Gower conceded 102 for 0 from nine overs. In the field, Gower is noted by biographer
Kersi Meher-Homji as being a "magnificent outfielder who took amazing catches and threw with accuracy and power to run out the blasé batsman."
Ambidextrous in the field and when bowling, Gower also plays both golf and hockey, writes and kicks right-handed. However, he was far less effective as a fielder late in his career, especially in one-day matches, since a chronic shoulder injury – usually described as the shoulder being "thrown out" – meant that he usually bowled the ball in when fielding, rather than throwing it in, significantly reducing the speed of the return and allowing batsmen easy runs. ==Commentating==