Doleful persona on TV hid warm, funny Willis I knew
THERE is no worse welcome home than with the news that a mate has died. I feared the worst when I switched on my mobile phone after the long flight from New Zealand, and sure enough the confirmation came. The only solace was in seeing the genuine outpouring of warmth and affection for one of the great men – and a sometimes misunderstood man at that – of English cricket.
Robert ‘Bob’ George Dylan Willis himself might have been surprised at the reaction. His doleful countenance on television and the deliberate way he took on a hardhitting, sometimes scathing, persona in punditry meant that the general public rarely came to see the Willis I knew: warm, generous, hilarious at times and someone who cared deeply, really deeply and passionately, about English cricket and those within it.
There are cricketers who have been exceptionally popular with the public at large, but less so among their dressing-room colleagues. Willis was the opposite: those who knew him, who played with him, who worked with him would not have a bad word against him. I lost count of the times I would have to defend him to a present player who had borne the brunt of another Willis bouncer on the The Verdict, the show on Sky Sports after each day of a test that he came to make his own.
When the modern players did get to know him, they came around quickly. In the infrequently organised gatherings between England cricketers of different eras, Willis would become a fast bowler again, sympathising with the present crop against the indignities the game forces upon them, whether it be chief executives’ pitches, batsmen, umpires or those who set the schedules. They were all in it together.
It is so long now since his retirement in 1984, that a generation would know him only as a commentator and pundit, rather than a great fast bowler. With Stuart Broad and James Anderson having gone way past the totals set by Willis and then his longstanding mate, Ian Botham, it is easy to forget just how rare it was for an England fast bowler to pass the 300-wicket mark; easy to forget the hurdles that were presented to a previous generation. Fred Trueman (307) did it first, then Willis (325), then Botham (383), before Broad (471) and Anderson (575) came along to blow those records away.
Without taking anything away from the great careers enjoyed by Broad and
Anderson, they would be the first to admit that central contracts have played to their advantage. Unlike Willis and his contemporaries, they have been afforded more time and resources to allow their best overs to be for their country, rather than their counties. Only fast bowlers know how physically hard it is to do both.
So, Willis himself was sometimes criticised for not bowling at full tilt for Warwickshire, the county to which he moved from Surrey in
1971, because he was saving his best for England. In this, and his fitness programmes during which he would
pound the roads to get mileage into his legs, he was ahead of his time and that allowed him, despite two knee operations in 1975 and countless other physical ailments, to finish his career among the greats, still the fourth most by an England fast bowler. Wearing the Three Lions and the crown in 90 tests meant everything to him and I lost count of the number of conversations we had over the years trying to work out how to make English cricket better.
His method was quirky to say the least. When he was a young bowler at Surrey, the second XI coach, Arthur McIntyre, tried to change his action to something more orthodox, but the ball kept hitting the side-netting. He once told me that he’d never seen himself bowl until he played for England on television and, until that point, he’d imagined he had a relatively normal, sidewayson action, something smooth and rhythmical like Trueman, perhaps, or Brian Statham, or John Snow.
He got the shock of his life when he did finally see how ungainly and awkward it looked. Because of that, there cannot have been a young cricketer of a certain age who did not imitate Willis the fast bowler, either in backyard games or practice: the great Goose – ‘‘Goose’’ was his dressing-room nickname – flapping and winding his way to the crease, right arm pumping furiously, back and forth, by his side. Even the present players were apt to try – Alastair Cook’s solitary test wicket came via an impersonation of the Willis run-up and delivery during a tame end to a test against India.
When it clicked, there was damage to be had. Headingley in
1981 remains one of the abiding memories of my childhood. It was the only test I attended as a paying spectator before I played for England, although I didn’t see any of the glory live, only a John Dyson hundred for Australia. As a 13-year old, beginning to have aspirations, the secondinnings hundred from Botham, the devastating spell of eight for 43 from Willis, orchestrated by the eminence grise, Mike Brearley ,wasa sustaining and inspirational memory.
The past few weeks were gruesome, as the cancer spread, but thankfully the end was peaceful. There was a regular flow of friends and family through the door in the final days. John Lever and David Brown, among others, represented the fast bowlers’ union, and there were visitors who had flown in from Australia. Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street was playing in the background.
Although I had been in text contact during the past few weeks, the last time I saw him was at the end of the season.
A handful of us put on a lunch in his honour at the River Cafe in southwest London, with the next round of chemotherapy due shortly afterwards.
It was a perfect occasion to remember him by. The sun was shining, we had a table on the terrace, the food was sensational, the company was a mix of cricket, media, mates of longstanding, Australians and English. The Ashes had just been shared. The wine flowed, although there was irony in the choice as he once said, in his withering way, that life was too short to drink Italian. There was lots of laughter.
THE TIMES