Captain Illy... a Yorkshire and England hero
RAY ILLINGWORTH was arguably the greatest England captain of them all.
Half a century ago, he regained the Ashes in Australia despite home umpires not upholding a single lbw decision in the England bowlers’ favour in the entire series.
To the very end, he refused to call them cheats. But he rightly regarded that raiding party on the old penal colony as his greatest achievement.
Illingworth, whose death at the age of 89 was announced on Christmas Day, was cricket royalty – a dogged batsman and resourceful, off-spinner but above all a master tactician.
It remains a mystery, and a stain on the honours system, that he was never knighted for his services to English cricket.
Chaired off by jubilant team-mates at the Sydney Cricket Ground when the urn had been repatriated in 1970-71, he was bold enough to take his players off the pitch when they were pelted with bottles.
Fast bowler John
Snow had been warned for intimidatory bowling after he struck Aussie tail-ender
Terry Jenner, and when
England’s spearhead was accosted by an aggressive spectator, leaning over he picket fence on the boundary, Illingworth led his team off.
As if to underscore the hometown favouritism, umpire Lou Rowan threatened to abandon the match and award Australia victory by forfeit if England did not resume promptly – which would have handed the home side the Ashes.
“I said we would only go back if the outfield was cleared and we were able to play the game unhindered,” said Illingworth.
“Our tour manager, David Clark, wasn’t happy with us and leaned on us to get back on the field, but what I did was right. I asked him whose side he was on.”
That was also the tour on which the first-ever one-day international was played – to make up for a Test match being wiped out by incessant rain in Melbourne. Many years later, when Lord’s procured replica shirts for former players with the numbers in serial order, Illingworth and Boycott argued who should have No.001 in the sequence like two Yorkshiremen squabbling over a parking space.
“As captain in our inaugural limited-overs international, I argued I should be No.001 in one-day
cricket, but Boycs was adamant. ‘No, no, I opened the batting, I faced the first ball, I should have No.1,’ he insisted.
“Then I realised I went in at fifth wicket down, which would make me No.007. I don’t know if Sean Connery or Daniel Craig would agree, but it’s not a bad way to be remembered.”
Raymond Illingworth won three consecutive county championship titles with Yorkshire in the 1960s and quit the Tykes when the bickering became too much.
He returned to lead them to the Sunday League title in 1983, at the age of 51.
One of their games was a 10-wicket romp against Northamptonshire and
I told him I was there.
Illy reeled off the names of the batsmen he dismissed.
He had a photographic memory – he never forgot anything. And we should never forget Raymond Illingworth’s contribution to English cricket.