David Capel
Northamptonshire all-round cricketer who helped England to an unlikely victory against West Indies
DAVID CAPEL, who has died of a brain tumour aged 57, was one of several all-round cricketers touted as England’s “New Botham” as the performances of the real thing began to tail off in the late 1980s.
A bustling seamer and hard-hitting batsman, who even looked the part with blond highlights and a moustache, Capel did better than some in living up to that impossible billing – Ian Botham himself said Capel’s “enthusiasm for the game was second to none” – but his final international returns were underwhelming, although his 21 Test wickets did include Viv Richards three times and Allan Border twice.
Capel did, however, play a part in one of England’s most unlikely victories, early in 1990, when they inflicted what was only West Indies’ second ever defeat in Barbados. He winkled out two early wickets, and was also vastly amused – given the shellacking the England batsmen faced from the home side’s battery of ferocious fast men – to be warned for intimidatory bowling.
He had actually outshone Botham on his Test debut, against Pakistan at Headingley in 1987, entering after Imran Khan and Wasim Akram had reduced England to 31 for five, and scoring 53. Botham, with 26, was the only other man to pass 10, and England slumped to an innings defeat. That winter, in a bad-tempered series in Pakistan, Capel put his attacking instincts aside at Karachi and battled for more than six hours for 98, which remained his highest Test score.
There had been another near-miss in a domestic Lord’s final, when his 97 at Lord’s in 1987 was not quite enough to seal the Benson and Hedges Cup for Northamptonshire, as Yorkshire equalled their total and won as they had lost fewer wickets.
It was Northants who saw the best of Capel, a fiercely loyal workhorse at an unfashionable club. He was associated with them for nearly 33 years, first as player and then, after retiring in 1998, as a coach; he succeeded Kepler Wessels as director of cricket in 2006. He finished with more than 10,000 runs for the county, with 15 centuries (he also made one for Eastern Province in South Africa), and nearly 500 wickets.
His best performances with bat and ball both came late in his career, in 1995, and nearly spirited Northamptonshire to the County Championship, which they have still never won. Capel hit 175 against Leicestershire, and a few weeks later grabbed seven for 44 against the table-toppers Warwickshire at Edgbaston. In the second innings he took the last wicket to clinch a seven-run victory in what the rival captains Allan Lamb and Dermot Reeve both felt was the best Championship game they had ever played in: “It was like a little bit of a war out there,” said Lamb.
It put Northamptonshire only two points behind at the head of the table, but Warwickshire won all their six remaining matches to retain the title. Northamptonshire ended up third, as they had been in 1992.
David John Capel was born in Northampton on February 6 1963. His family lived in nearby Roade, where he went to the local sports college and played for the cricket club, soon exhibiting the talent which caught the attention of the county scouts.
He made his first-class debut in 1981, and the next year played for England Under-19s against West Indies, hitting 117 in the second Test at Scarborough before falling to Courtney Walsh. He chalked up a maiden county century the following season, against Somerset.
After he finally left Northamptonshire in 2012 Capel had a spell with the Bangladesh women’s team, and also coached local teams and players. Heather Knight, the England women’s captain, was one of many to pay tribute to his passion for the game and impish humour: “Once, when shadow-batting for me in warm-up, he skipped down the wicket and hit me dead straight over the sight screen. Tucked his bat under his arm, walked off and said: ‘Still got it’.”
Others remembered his sheer enthusiasm for cricket, whether stopping his car to join an impromptu game on the village green, or a one-off appearance as a stand-in professional in the Lancashire League in 1991.
“My instant thought was that this was simply pocket money for him,” the Lowerhouse chairman Stan Heaton recalled. “I couldn’t have misjudged the man more. He arrived 90 minutes before the start and put us through a series of coaching drills, took five for 40 in 18 overs, smote 79, which won us the match – and then was the last to leave the bar. On television David looked military medium – but that day he was the quickest bowler I had seen for a long time.”
Capel married Debbie; they had a son, Jordan, who went on to play for Northamptonshire’s Second XI, and a daughter, Jenny. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2018, and endured several operations. At first he seemed to be recovering, and featured in a Sky documentary about that 1990 West Indian tour, but a recurrence proved inoperable.
David Capel, born 6 February 1963, died 2 September 2020