The Ashes According to Bumble

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I had made my maiden Test hundred against India during this initial spell of Boycs’s absence, and followed that up with another in a limited-overs international match at the end of a troubled tour of England by Pakistan. Relations had become quite strained between the teams after the Pakistanis levelled accusations of skullduggery during the Lord’s Test when Derek Underwood bowled them out. If there was any damp around, Deadly was well, deadly, and water had got under the covers. Persistent showers left a wet patch on the pitch, he kept hitting it and they simply couldn’t cope. I was stood at short leg and it was like picking cherries.

Accusations that we were complicit in the state of the pitch were complete and utter nonsense. Pakistan had been ripped apart by Underwood in the first innings on a drying surface after a lengthy downpour on the opening day, and then after we batted to secure a 140-run lead, rain struck again when Pakistan came out to bat for a second time.

It was actually during the rest day of the match, the Sunday, that London was the subject of some major downpours and these continued into the Monday, which meant that when the temporary tent-like covering was removed, the pitch was discovered to be sodden. The rain had seeped through and in these conditions it was a different game altogether.

Deadly bagged a bundle of wickets with his idiosyncratic left-arm-round stuff – six to be precise – when the match finally resumed at around 5pm on the fourth evening. In plunging Pakistan from 192 for three half an hour into play to 226 all out, he took his innings haul to eight and provided match figures of 13 for 71, in addition to setting up a victory target of just 87 runs.

Dennis Amiss and I wiped 27 from that target before the close of play. But our efforts in 10 overs against the new ball were not the focus of attention that night, due to Pakistan manager Omar Kureishi’s utter indignation. Kureishi put in an official complaint in which he accused MCC of ‘negligence’ and ‘incompetence’ in their attempts to cover the wicket. In those days, if it rained once the Test match was underway then the run-ups and edges of the square were protected but the pitch itself was exposed to the elements. On rest days, however, every effort was made to protect it from the elements, and Pakistan argued that they were entitled to be able to bat on a pitch in the same condition it had been in when stumps were drawn on the Saturday evening.

As it happened, we didn’t get on again. Despite re-marking of the pitch during the final session on day five, the rain returned, and the contest, which had become more political than sporting, was abandoned as a draw and a three-Test series was on its way to a 0–0 stalemate. It was a series which bore few runs for me personally but the news I wanted to hear was delivered during a six-wicket win over Sir Garfield Sobers’s Notts. That match concluded on 30 August, and I celebrated with 116 not out in the one-dayer against Pakistan in Nottingham the very next day.

Preparing for Battle

We felt almost from the moment we arrived that Australia were determined to show they were the better team and that they would avenge that defeat by Illingworth and Co four years earlier. And it is fair to say that we were caught on the hop by their line-up.

For a start, we did not anticipate Dennis Lillee being declared fit, and when he was, on the eve of the series, it undoubtedly gave the Australians a boost. The main thrust of the pre-series talk had been that Lillee was not going to play. He had suffered a serious back injury, spinal fractures that had caused him to be set in plaster from his backside to his shoulders for six whole weeks earlier in the year, and word was he wasn’t going to be ready in time.

With him missing, we really didn’t have anything to fear. Truth was that Australia were a little bit thin on the ground for fast bowlers. Or so we anticipated. They had Gary Gilmour and David Colley, the pairing who opened the bowling for New South Wales against us ahead of the first Test. Both had a couple of caps to their names – Colley’s earned during the 1972 Ashes – while there was a recurring whisper doing the rounds that a chap called Thomson was in the mix too.

We had encountered two blokes of this surname during our four pre-series games – a bit of a beach bum, called Jeff, who sent down some fairly innocuous new-ball fare for Queensland, and who on his Test debut 12 months earlier against Pakistan had, by all accounts, gone around the park, finishing with match figures of nought for 110; and Alan Thomson, otherwise known as Froggy because of the way he sprang to the crease and bowled off the wrong foot, who had featured against England four years earlier when he got involved in a bouncer war with Snow. Because of his experience, we anticipated it would be the latter called up for the opener in Brisbane. But this hardly filled us with fear as his return for Victoria against us a fortnight earlier read 17-0-85-0.

We were hoodwinked, of course, as they wheeled out the man who would no longer be referred to as either Jeff or Thomson from that year forth. Following his selection he was forever known as Thommo and in tandem with Lillee ambushed us right good and proper. When he’d opened the bowling for Queensland against us in that first-class contest, he did no more than amble into the crease, under the express instruction of Australia captain Ian Chappell. He was merely playing to have a good look at us while being careful not to show anything of his true self – so that we didn’t get accustomed to how freakishly fast he could send this ball down at you and would be caught unawares when the serious business began.

Facing up to Thommo was a real challenge not least because of his rather unique bowling action. In modern day cricket you will see batsmen such as Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan muttering to themselves: ‘Watch the ball.’ The television close-ups and slow-motion shots reveal that they mouth those words as the bowler runs up to the crease.

However, occasionally, you come up against bowlers that make it more difficult for you to be able to do that because of slight quirks in their actions. And then there was Thommo, who made it absolutely impossible because he didn’t let you see it at all as he wound up to wang it down. With other people you knew where their hands were going and you could watch the ball all the way because it was visible. But with Thommo you just never saw it because the way he held it, with his body tilted backwards before uncoiling like a gargantuan spring, meant it remained behind him until the last nanosecond. His body shielded this arm that seemed to drag a yard behind the rest of him, and that, allied to the velocity he managed made him doubly difficult to face.

In that most wonderful of fast-bowling combinations, Thommo was the speed merchant, the unrefined paceman. Lillee, although a yard slower than the bowler the world had witnessed in the 1972 Ashes, was quick enough too, but a real artist in comparison to this laidback mop-head that had been plucked from the sticks. Because of his background there were some great tales about the young Thommo’s early days. For example, he didn’t even have a run-up when he first started his professional career, never practised one during net sessions, just shuffled up and slung it down.

So much so that in that first Test at the Gabba, he sent down no-ball after no-ball (13 in the match) which triggered Chappell’s presence on his shoulder as one early over progressed. Clearly struggling to get into a decent stride pattern, Thommo asked his elder: ‘How many paces do I do, skipper?’

‘What do you mean? I’ve no idea. Don’t you know?’

‘Nah, I’ve always walked back to where the tree is at this end – but they’ve cut it down!’

That’s how much of a natural he was. These days fast bowlers carry tape measures among the essential items in their kit bags, mark their initials on the pitch with whitewash to identify their starting point, and do all sorts of other things besides to make sure they set off from the right place. It’s precision. But there was nothing aesthetically pleasing about Thommo.

Make no mistake, with his dander up he was frighteningly quick, and described rather fittingly by one scribe as a one-man sonic boom. Even by fast bowlers’ standards he was pretty raw as a cricketer – a guy who really was from the back of beyond. And in partnership with the recovered Lillee he made us England batsmen feel pretty raw too with regular blows to our bodies. They were a pretty gruesome twosome, who didn’t seem overly bothered whatever the levels of pain they inflicted on opponents. Several of our party had to pay emergency visits to hospital during the six-match series, while I had to undergo a medical check that all was what it should be after an excruciating piece of physical assault in Perth. More of that later.

From my experience, Thommo hardly said a word on the field – I guess with the arsenal he packed in his right shoulder there was no need to – and he is even quieter now. Actually, a little known fact about him is that he slips over to Britain most summers, and lodges with his big mucker Mick Harford, the cricket-daft former professional footballer, while he does the rounds for a few weeks on the after-dinner speaking circuit, then heads back to Queensland and spends the rest of the year chilling out on his boat. You meet some great blokes in cricket and Thommo has to be up there for me. Although I am not so sure I appreciated him as an adversary on that trip 30-odd years ago!

Some suggested we were caught unawares by Australia after two wins and two comfortable draws against the state sides ahead of the first Test. Of course, we were without our own fast bowling nasty Snow, the scourge of the 1970–71 Aussies, and in terms of preparation for games it was nothing like what you might be used to reading about these days.

Let’s just say that fitness was an interesting subject on my only England tour. There were no drills as such for fielding, practice was just day after day of netting. And when we weren’t in the nets, we would be playing one of our many warm-up matches. We had landed in Australia in late October, and were involved in four four-day games between 1 and 25 November. That was 16 days’ cricket out of 25 with all the travelling logistics such a huge country provides in between. It was gruelling work alright, especially for the bowlers as we were still on eight-ball overs under Australian regulations in the early 1970s.

Watching the lads now four decades later with their high energy drinks, their diet and nutritional advice, and a devotion to take care of themselves in their spare time, you can see how well equipped they are to combat such a schedule and environment but they are almost incomparable to our physical state back then. These days players undergo regular tests to make sure they are getting nowhere near the danger zone when it comes to hydration.

In contrast, we were frazzled and returned back home looking like pickled balloons. You see, we understood the need to get fluids on board but what we drank whenever there was a break in play – whether it be a formal drinks break, at lunch or at tea – was called a brown cow. A brown cow, would you believe, was an intriguing mixture of Coca-Cola and milk. We were necking this concoction like it had gone out of fashion at the end of every session. Put it this way, I am not sure you could call it a predecessor of Gatorade!

We simply knew no better. You only had to look at our daily routine when on county duty to see that we were technically still amateurs – certainly when comparing ourselves to the recent vintage to have come through that Old Trafford dressing room, like James Anderson – masquerading as professionals. Strength and conditioning would have amounted to an arm wrestle with your mates at the lunch table, while being careful not to knock over the beer bottles clumped in the middle.

Yes, for each home Lancashire county match, crates of Watneys Red Barrel would be emptied out at the start of the 40-minute interval and not many went back into those crates unopened at the end of it. That was a practice that carried on from the 1960s into the 1970s. Even on my Test debut, at Lord’s, I supped a pint of shandy at lunch before resuming my first international innings. Could you imagine the furore now if one of England’s top-order batters did that? It’s the same game, but the world of cricket has changed.

Our modern lads are all tied into advertising whether it be through their personal gear or team-branded stuff – logos on all their equipment, the collars of their shirts, the pockets on their trousers, all of which is designed to keep you cool in these hot climates. They even wear vests underneath to regulate their body temperature and rate of perspiration. I ask you!

Forget skins. The only undergarments we wore were proper vests when we went to play at places like Liverpool or Southport (do you know how cold it gets at Aigburth in April?). And we didn’t change our clobber drastically for our assignment down under, either. We wore flannels and these bloody great socks, made from thick wool that you might shove on if you were hiking through the Himalayas. Oh, and how could I forget the tour jumper? Nice and thick, MCC colours, cable knit. I was perspiring like a big black Alsatian.

And it wasn’t just our attire that was inappropriate. Back in the day there was scant regard paid to what damage the sun might do to you. Skin cancer was not given a second thought, the world knew virtually nothing about it, and we all thought it was marvellous that whenever we weren’t playing we could have a sunbathe. Even on the field, there were those of us rolling sleeves up to brown off the arms, and unbuttoning shirts desperately trying to improve the tan on the chest. There would never be any danger of us putting caps or hats on, so inevitably our foreheads looked like they had head-butted a Breville by the end of a day in the field. Protection from the sun is so matter of necessity these days – particularly in Australia with their ‘slip, slap, slop’ campaign – that you take it for granted. But in those days there was none of it. The result being that we scuttled around the place like lobsters clad in flannel.

Our fitness regime was monitored by Bernard Thomas, the physio. He would start by getting the fast bowlers stretched, which entailed the likes of Bob Willis and Mike Hendrick putting the back of one of their heels up on Bernard’s shoulder, and Bernard raising up on his toes where he stood. There was a fair amount of stretching for everyone, in fact, but nowhere near the amount of physical activity players have become accustomed to as part of their preparation in subsequent years.

There was a lot of catching practice, particularly spiralling, high catches because in the thinner air the ball travels further and quicker. To lads like me who had not been down under before, looking into clear blue sky for a ball was quite a new experience, and took some adjustment. As a Lancashire lad I was more used to fielding in light drizzle. Despite the glare, however, nobody wore shades like your average endorsed 21st-century cricketer. We just squinted and got on with it.

Given the eventual 4–1 scoreline, you might anticipate a tale of misery being told of that 1974–75 tour – my only England tour as it happened – yet not a bit of it from my perspective. Although it was a chastening experience on the field, and there were some battered and bruised bodies by the end of it (mine among them), I recall it fondly. I made a bargain with myself to give it my best shot and enjoy it. In terms of touring, if not actual age, I was a young shaver and in addition to the cricket this was an adventure like none I had experienced before, and as it transpired none I would experience again (while a player at least). Even the chance to visit the vast sprawling mass that is Australia held an appeal for me.

Sure, things didn’t start well. Mike Denness, our captain, suffered from pleurisy in the early days of the tour and that was a major disruption as we didn’t see him for weeks. To dampen my personal enthusiasm, I broke my little finger in one of those darned fielding practices and missed the first Test, in Brisbane, where Thomson spectacularly deconstructed the façade that he was a fast-medium bowler fortunate to double his international caps. John Edrich broke a bone in his hand there at the Gabba and later at Sydney broke a rib. Dennis Amiss also fractured a finger in that first match, and a combination of their ailments meant I inherited one of English cricket’s great statesmen as a room-mate.

Colin Cowdrey was the equivalent of cricket royalty. He was into his 40s and very much winding down his career at that stage – as the fact that he turned up looking rather lavish in a pinstripe suit, and his warm-up at the MCG, walking around the boundary edge as adopted conductor of the brass band, testify. A real gentleman, it was an honour to spend time with him; not that everyone held him in the same regard. Indeed, after one day’s play during that Test, we were making our way out to the cars waiting for us at the back of the ground, when this little lad with his autograph book addressed Colin in a most uncouth manner. ‘Hey, Cowdrey, you podgy f***er,’ he said. ‘Sign us this!’

‘Oh, marvellous!’ Colin said, in his archetypal English gent’s voice. ‘Absolutely charming!’

Rooming with PF, as he was subsequently dubbed on that tour, was almost a throwback to the era of gentlemen and players. Although mild-mannered and warm, his record and standing in the English game was slightly intimidating, and there was also some awkward history between us for me to get over when we were thrust together upon his arrival down under. You see, sharing a room with Colin took me back to an incident that had occurred in county cricket a good few years earlier. I had not really engaged with him since this particular occurrence on the field in a match between Lancashire and Kent in the mid-1960s.

Back in that era, county teams did not tend to travel with a twelfth man in tow to away matches. You went with your XI, and, in the event that somebody got injured, you simply borrowed a player from the home team. This role of loanee was one I fulfilled from time to time when Brian Statham was captain of Lancashire – it was not to be sniffed at for an aspiring young cricketer, particularly given the toffee involved. Doing ‘twelfths’ paid a few bob as a match fee, and in most instances, there was sod all to do to earn it. Unfortunately, however, this was not the case when Kent came to Southport for a County Championship match in 1967, and Muggins here was on duty.

Called on to the field as a substitute for what was a relatively short passage of play, I promptly dropped two catches – one at mid-on and one at mid-off – to besmirch my reputation with all and sundry but most notably the esteemed leader of the opposition.

‘Tell me about your twelfth man,’ Cowdrey said to Statham later that evening. ‘What exactly is his role in the game?’

Fair enough question, I suppose. I was a hopeful 20-year-old all-rounder in those days, not that he would have been interested by the actual answer to what effectively was a rhetorical question. Now, seven years on, we were top-order team-mates – human targets at Lillee and Thomson’s coconut shy.

Felled by the Cracker at the WACA

Talking of coconuts reminds me of the most painful experience I ever had on a cricket field. Even if you have not seen the footage in question, you will no doubt be aware of it, so please remember to wince in sympathy in all the right places, and we’ll go through it here for old time’s sake.

Remember this was an era of uncovered pitches and facing some of those great West Indies fast bowlers was like hanging out the washing on the Siegfried Line. But of all the blows I took, never was I in as much discomfort as that day during the second Test in Perth when, sadly, I lost most of my genitals.

Thankfully this loss proved only temporary and they were returned to me some minutes later, having been found in 77 different parts, the other side of my protective box. They had migrated south (and every other compass point imaginable for that matter) the instant that a 3,000 mph Thomson thunderbolt shattered this plastic protector, turning it into some kind of medieval torture implement.

For the particular delivery in question, I got myself too square on and immediately knew there was trouble looming, hoping beyond hope that I would get some bat on ball as it climbed above stump level. Alas, no such luck. One of cricket’s more interesting facts is that the first testicular guard was used in 1874, yet it took another 100 years for the first helmets to be worn. A relatively short time, I guess, for blokes to work out that their brains could also play an important part in their lives.

Of course, we are now so used to seeing blokes head out into the middle for gladiatorial combat with every piece of body armour imaginable. But we certainly didn’t have things like chest guards or arm guards back then. You would have something resembling a thigh pad, although they were nowhere near the thickness of the ones you see in kitbags down your local club these days. These things were a bit flimsy to say the least. But being that way meant you had the chance to slide a Reader’s Digest or your spare socks down there too to provide extra protection.

Yes, the sight of batsmen wearing helmets was still in its infancy, I wasn’t using one, and I might as well not have been sporting anything between my legs either for the good it did. This pink litesome was completely useless for the job it was supposed to do. If you can’t remember what these litesomes looked like, here’s a reminder: you can still see them in use these days in bathrooms up and down the country – you know, those plastic things you keep your soap in.

Nowadays batsmen are much better protected around the groin but this flimsy thing did more harm than good. Because it was full of breath holes it splintered on impact and concertinaed my knackers. Suddenly, everything that was supposed to be on the inside was now on the outside. If you want to get a tad more graphic, imagine a cactus growing the wrong way out of its pot. Then consider for a moment how that might feel … Was it any wonder that I jack-knifed straight onto my head? Talk about being doubled up in pain. I lose my voice every November in memory of that cracker in the knacker.

Number one priority once back in the dressing room was to release my master of ceremonies from its snare: a pretty unforgiving job for Bernard Thomas, who certainly hadn’t signed up for that kind of thing when agreeing to be England team physio. We didn’t have any medical staff travelling with us in those days, though, so suffice to say I was very grateful for Bernard’s delicate handling of the situation. To be frank, such was the stinging sensation, I wouldn’t have minded a personal visit from the Fremantle Doctor but in the end had to settle for an hour or two of ice treatment once back in the dressing room. ‘Can you take the pain away but leave the swelling?’ I’d pleaded with Bernard upon retiring hurt.

You know as an England opener in Australia that you are going to cop some, and the crowd at the WACA turned gladiatorial, egging their evil henchmen on the next morning when I resumed my innings. The hairs stood up on the back of your neck walking to the crease anticipating a serious going over. A combination of Perth’s extra bounce – even these days batsmen can leave the ball on length in the knowledge that slightly short deliveries will sail over the top of the stumps – and eight-ball overs meant there were plenty of bumpers, as Cowdrey was so fond of calling them, to contend with, and although I didn’t score a mountain of runs – there were very few scoring opportunities against a backdrop of chin music – I was quite proud of sticking it out for six hours in that match against such sustained hostility.

There was no getting away from the fact that batting out there was hellish demanding. I would stop short of saying frightening but it was a real challenge facing someone as rapid as Thommo. As a collective, we just couldn’t handle that pace.

Australia were ultra-aggressive with the ball, the tactic of targeting the body of the batsman a good one on such bouncy surfaces. But in one way we only had ourselves to blame. Or, more accurately, one of our own to blame.

No series brings out good cricket tales, or indeed good cricket myths, like an Ashes series, and Dennis Lillee would have you know in playground parlance that ‘it was the Poms what started it.’ One adopted Pom, actually – that lovable giant Tony Greig, whose decision to bounce Lillee in the first innings of that first Test in Brisbane had repercussions for the rest of us over the coming weeks.

As Lillee regained his feet and brushed past Greig, having been caught behind attempting to hook, he told him: ‘Just remember who started this.’ No matter who started it, it is fair to say that the Australians finished it, although, to his immense credit, Greig never took a single backwards step following this confrontation. He always played in the same positive manner and was forever the showman, signalling his own fours whenever he opened those big shoulders of his, much to the chagrin of his Australian adversaries.

Greigy was the one player within our ranks who took them on with success, and what a totally brilliant guy to play with he was. The cricket was always colourful whenever he was one of the protagonists, a fact that Lillee did not seem to appreciate, particularly when he uppercut to the fence and then dropped down or leant forward to wave his right hand to the audience like the conductor of an orchestra.

That he was out there able to antagonise at the Gabba was chiefly down to one man. A chap by the name of Clem Jones. There were all kinds of storms sweeping around Queensland in the build-up to the first Test, and Jones, the mayor of Brisbane, actually doubled up as the groundsman to get the pitch fit for purpose.

The square had been that wet that as the countdown to the first ball being sent down got closer, no-one really knew which strip we were due to play on. Eventually they produced this pitch that became visible the day before, and we practised along from it before attending a mayoral reception that night.

One heck of a surprise was delivered when we did because here was Jones, the same chap that we had witnessed slaving away in a cork hat, pair of shorts and vest by day, now dressed resplendent in chain, robes, the works. Quite a job share was that one. In fact, when it came to Brisbane in the 1970s he was chief cook and bottle washer too. He knew everything and everyone all around the city, it seemed, and his name was to be known around the world to others subsequently thanks to the naming of the Clem Jones Stand.

In defence of Greig’s goading, Lillee could be a feisty bugger at the best of times, and was prone to react to the slightest provocation. Take the time when Pakistan batsman Javed Miandad bumped into him mid-pitch in a Test match at Perth, while taking a single to fine-leg. Lillee’s response was to follow his opponent to the non-striker’s end and administer a kick up the arse.

A number of his contemporaries would no doubt have been lined up behind him and would have put the boot in a good deal harder given half the chance – let’s just say Javed was as popular as gherkin and ice cream sandwiches – but it emphasised that Dennis just could not resist a skirmish.

He was close to wearing Javed’s bat as a cravat in that incident, and might have done but for umpire Tony Crafter’s positioning between the two men. In the end the only damage done was to Lillee’s pocket – he was fined $120 and banned for two matches.

Whichever way you dress it up, a number of us would live to regret Greigy’s bravado. Some of my own words came back to haunt me, too. When I look back I really wish I hadn’t offered the wisecrack that I could play Thomson with my knob end. Obviously I never meant it!

Being struck amidships is not something you forget. There are few things that leave me speechless but that was one of them, and even blows down below from other bowlers cannot compare to one from Thommo. My old mate Mike Selvey did double me over in a county match at Lord’s once, so I thought it only right to pop into the Middlesex dressing room after play to allay fears he might have done any serious damage.

‘Don’t worry, Selve,’ I grinned. ‘Compared to Thommo, you were a pleasure.’

Verbals played their part in that 1974–75 series but mainly away from the ground, believe it or not. Every evening Australian television seemed to be screening interviews with one Aussie player or another in which they would spell out exactly how they were going to crush us Poms. The most memorable was when Thommo came on one night on the eve of the first Test and matter-of-factly exclaimed: ‘I like to see blood on the pitch.’ We were in a team meeting and it is fair to say there was the odd intake of breath as he declared a preference for hitting opponents rather than getting them out.

As an opening batsman I always liked to keep relations with those hurling that leather sphere down at me at the speed of light on an even keel. Dennis Amiss and I tried to maintain a certain friendliness for self-preservation as much as anything else. So I was at odds with the response drawn when Lillee walked into bat one day and got struck on the elbow by a Greig bouncer first ball. ‘Well bowled, give him another,’ squawked Keith Fletcher from gully.

I cringed as Lillee turned 90 degrees and retaliated with: ‘It’ll be your f***ing turn soon!’ Funnily enough, Fletch was given a right working over when he came in. He would have been left in no doubt what lay in store for him, though, following another episode of the Dennis Lillee TV Show that evening. During an interview on the news, he was asked about the progress of the match, and to assess the position Australia found themselves in – most probably answering something such as ‘we’ll bloody crush ’em’ – before finally being quizzed on what the opposition were like.

‘The Poms are a good set of blokes, I get on with all of ’em,’ he said, before looking right into the camera lens. ‘Except that little weasel Fletcher, that is. I know you’re watching, Fletcher, and you might as well know I am going to sort you out tomorrow.’

Fletch would have been forgiven for wishing that tomorrow had never come as Lillee roared into him next day. Picture the scene as Fletch awaited his punishment – no helmet, no visor, no body armour. Just the MCC navy blue cap sat on the top of his head as Lillee sent down the full artillery. Bouncer after bouncer was fended off or dodged in expert fashion until one short one failed to get up as much as the rest and finally located its target, hitting him straight on the head, flooring our number five batsman in the process, and sending the ball bouncing to Ross Edwards at cover.

‘Blimey, he’s only gone and knocked St George off his ’orse,’ gasped Geoff Arnold, in reference to the emblem on the front of the MCC caps, as we sat in the dressing room watching the drama unfold.

One of the weird things in cricket is seeing the pseudo-pleasure people get when a team-mate gets sconned. Sounds vindictive, doesn’t it? But it’s not, really. It’s similar to self-preservation. Quite simply, if someone else is being hit, you’re thankful. Because it means it’s not you.

I’ve never met anyone who likes being hit by a cricket ball. One bloke came close to challenging that theory, actually, although like may still be too strong a word. A certain Brian Close used to chest balls down like a brick outhouse of a centre-half. Trouble was these leather balls were made for cricket not football and were being propelled down the pitch by some of the planet’s most hostile fast bowlers.

The most famous Close combat came in 1976 when, at the age of 45, he stood up to those West Indies firebrands Michael Holding, Wayne Daniel and Andy Roberts for the best part of three hours in a Test match at Old Trafford. It was in the second innings, in a hopeless cause, and proved to be the last of his England career, but what bravery this bloke showed.

Talk about bulldog spirit. Brian was as tough as old boots, and would literally put his body on the line if he thought doing so would enhance the chances of winning the game. And that was not limited to him wearing a few bouncers while batting, either. Here was a man who seemed to have no limit to his pain threshold, one who was brave enough to offer himself up as a human ricochet during that series against the Windies. Legend has it that during that series defeat, Close came up with an unusual and rather masochistic tactic in search of a wicket for England.

‘I will field at short-leg when Derek Underwood is bowling to Clive Lloyd,’ he announced at a team meeting. ‘When Lloyd sweeps, the ball will hit me, and the other close-in fielders can catch the rebounds.’ If you know anything of the man, you will realise he was deadly serious.

Some lads talk a better game than they play. Back in 1989, a number of years after I had retired from first-class cricket, I was still playing for my beloved Accrington in the Lancashire League. We reached the semi-final stage of the Worsley Cup and were drawn away at Todmorden, whose overseas professional at the time was the Sri Lankan all-rounder Ravi Ratnayeke.

He was a handy cricketer was Ratnayeke but had hardly pulled up any trees in the league that summer and we knew it. He was certainly not a player to put the wind up us. So we remained unperturbed about him coming across our path. However, when we arrived at Centre Vale in late morning, Ravi was nowhere to be seen.

His absence was explained a few minutes later when a beanpole West Indian strolled across the ground as our lads knocked up. There was a lot of mouthing of ‘who’s that?’ around our group as he sauntered past with his kit. I had clocked him a long way off. Huge, supremely athletic, he was the new kid on the block as far as fast bowling in the Caribbean went. It was Ian Bishop, who had made his Test debut within the previous 12 months.

It turned out that, with Ratnayeke injured, Todmorden had hired Bishop from Derbyshire for the day. Now as business transactions go, this was a fairly impressive one.

Bishop flew in to the crease and got the ball through at a fair old lick, but our opening pair of Nick Marsh and Andrew Barker, elder brother of Warwickshire’s left-arm swing bowler Keith Barker, resisted manfully to keep him at bay. Todmorden did not make a breakthrough until we had 63 on the board, in fact, and that put our wicketkeeper Billy Rawstron on the verge of going in.

Billy was our number four and confident enough to declare in the privacy of our own dressing room that, in his estimable opinion, this 21-year-old Adonis from Trinidad was not as quick as some others were making out. He even shunned the notion of wearing a helmet, a ploy I believed was unwise when confronted with a paceman of Bishop’s velocity. He upped the ante by declaring if his West Indian adversary had the audacity to bounce him, he would be hooking. Oh dear, Billy.

At 71 for two, it was time for Billy’s boasts to be put to the test. We’d heard the theory; now it was going to be put into practice.

You have probably guessed by this point that our hero was going to get the trouble he was asking for. Some lads reckon the cricket gods will not allow you to get away with saying stuff like that without having your words put to the test, and sure enough Bish obliged by unleashing one of his heat-seeking missiles. It kissed our Billy on the lips just as he was deciding that a cross-bat shot was the order of the day – careering him straight into the wooden stuff behind him in the process.

A sniff of the smelling salts later and Billy declared: ‘Hey, I can’t be out like that. I had completed my shot.’

As captain I thought I’d better put my young charge right as we escorted him from the field: ‘Billy, you hadn’t even started it. Now let’s go and see a man about some teeth.’

Just to prove he was as mad as his pre-match talk suggested, our noble gloveman refused any treatment until our task was completed, so he went out and took his place on the other side of the stumps for the second half of the match, blood oozing from his mouth, looking like the lead character from a 1980s low-budget zombie flick. We won by 51 runs in no small part due to the efforts of our Rawstron. They breed ’em tough in Accrington, you know. Billy and I are living proof.

Exploding the Myth

Despite all of the pain inflicted, being on an Ashes tour was a great experience. The reality was that I was not good enough as an individual and neither was the team collectively, but being a part of a tour like that, travelling all over Australia on Ansett Airlines’ internal flights, getting acquainted with the Australian way of life, and the subtle differences between the cities was a real career high and a great life experience. A tour like that was long and, against superior opposition, provided no respite. I know the current players talk about the length of tours, and the stretch of time they are expected to be away from home, but what you can’t appreciate now is just how tightly the games were shoehorned into the schedule between late October and early February. Physically it was very demanding, particularly given the fact that we were still playing under the old Australian regulation of eight-ball overs.

Those eight-ball overs were an important dynamic in the flow of matches. Australia hit us hard with pace, and with a few deliveries an over sailing past your nose end, it felt as though we were being pinned down. At the start of an over, we knew that if we got through the first couple of deliveries from Lillee or Thomson there were still half-a-dozen more to come. Talk about dispiriting. On our side we only had Bob Willis with genuine speed, but his dodgy knees only allowed him one burst at full tilt. This in itself came with a caveat: if he over-stepped a couple of times he was suddenly looking at 10 balls before he got his breather, and his run-up was one of the longest the game has witnessed.

While aggression was one of the keys, if not the key component, of the captaincy of Ian Chappell – or Chappelli as he is more commonly known – the competitive edge never turned into abuse. Don’t get me wrong, the will to win was unmistakable but you sensed he wanted it to be done fairly, even against the English. As a cricketer, I found him as honest as they came, and I am not sure he would have stood for unbridled nastiness from his players. I certainly respected him, and would call him ‘captain’ or ‘skipper’ as was the common practice towards the figurehead of your opposition in those times.

In fact, he was too generous on occasion, and I might have avoided my crisis in the Balkans had the Australians bothered to appeal when, on 17, I shaped up to a Thomson delivery; the extra bounce meant the ball got too big on me, and ran up the face of my bat on its way through to wicketkeeper Rod Marsh. I immediately went to put the bat under my arm – as English players you walked in those days – only to realise there was no appeal forthcoming. I waited another split second to listen for the ‘HOWZEE?!’ and the ball being thrown up in the air. But it never came. There was nothing, other than a ‘well bowled Thommo’ and so, as I had turned 270 degrees, there was nothing for it but to let out an apologetic cough and begin some phantom pitch prodding.

This respect for Chappell, held by our team collectively, was in no small part for what he had done for Australia since they had lost the urn in 1970–71. In 1972, they had come to England and earned a draw, and now he was going up a level. He had got this team together and it gelled beautifully – you could tell they were playing for their captain too. Didn’t they flippin’ just.

Like any other team during that generation they had financial issues with their governing body; they were not too enamoured with their appearance fees, because of the insubstantial proportion of the revenue generated from the huge crowds of that series ending up in their pockets. Chappelli’s trick was arguably to spend as much time off the field batting for his men – negotiating better rates of remuneration – as he did on it.

Because once they crossed the white line, boy did those eleven men answer to his tune. They were supremely fit and a very well-balanced side. They had guys who carried out unheralded roles such as Max Walker, who, arms and legs akimbo, would run in and bowl all day. Walker possessed great stamina, a facet which allowed Chappell to rotate Lillee and Thomson at the other end. Then there was Ashley Mallett, a wonderfully steady bowler, who offered that spinner’s gold – control. Although some of the edges from the short balls flew just out of reach, the Australian slip cordon caught just about everything that you would deem a chance, and so they were always going to beat us over a six-match series.

Although we had some feisty fighters, most notably Greig and Alan Knott, there was undoubtedly only one team in it, and despite the drawn third match, Melbourne’s Boxing Day Test, going down to the wire with all three results still possible – Australia needed six runs, us two wickets – the only match we won was the last, and one of the two I missed.

Having begun the campaign late following that broken digit, I was forced back onto the sidelines and onto an early flight back to the UK, boarding it shortly after the second MCG match had got underway. The injury, a long-standing one to my neck, was aggravated taking evasive action at short-leg in a game against New South Wales, and although I subsequently played in Adelaide, my pair of single-figure scores there were to be my last in Test cricket. So as I flew back to the UK nursing two damaged vertebrae, my team-mates cashed in. Thomson was ruled out of the series finale through injury and that other menace Lillee lasted half a dozen overs before breaking down. I believe it is called the law of the sod.