‘PM should aim to put a cricket field in every state school’
Exclusive interview meets the ‘Godfather of English cricket’ who discovered 10 of World Cup-winning team
We are sitting in the home of Dr David English, long regarded as “The Godfather of English Cricket” for his tireless work in developing young players. In his 33 years running the annual Under-15 Bunbury Festival – which brings together the best 56 players in the country for a week-long tournament – 95 have gone on to represent England, and more than 1,000 have gone on to play in the first-class game.
Ten of England’s World Cupwinning side from that most dramatic of finals last Sunday at Lord’s against New Zealand cut their teeth at the tournament, which begins to turn diamonds from the rough.
“I had the most ridiculous phone call from the England World Cupwinning team last Sunday night,” says English, pop mogul, actor and charity fundraiser in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph.
“They all got on the phone. They were all obviously in the hotel. I think they had had a few Coca-Colas. There was Root, Buttler, Stokes, Woakes, Plunkett, Wood, Adil Rashid, Moeen
Ali and they all passed the telephone around and they all said, ‘Dave, thanks very much for everything you did for us’, and ‘thanks for giving us the chance to show what we could do’. Very touching. That meant a lot to me.
“Then Trevor Bayliss [the England coach] phoned me and said: ‘Dave, you encouraged the boys. We talk about you in the dressing room and they tell us how they started’. That meant a lot. They are like an extended family for me, and they always will be.”
English is a one-off. His north London residence is festooned like a museum of music and cricket memorabilia: pictures of English with the prominent England cricketers from the past four decades, books, posters, bats … guitars from Eric Clapton and Barry Gibb.
In 2005, he was first dubbed “The Godfather of English Cricket” by The Telegraph after nine of the Asheswinning side, Freddie Flintoff et al, had beaten Australia in one of the most thrilling series in living memory, having also come through the Bunbury Festival.
“That generation, Freddie, Ian Bell, Vaughnie, all of them, and now this group, have all stayed friends with me. Once you are in the brotherhood, you are in for life. It’s not a fleeting fancy, and when you see them playing for England years later it’s very special. They all remember where they started.”
English is the man who knows everyone worth knowing, and has done it all. He was even on the Lord’s ground staff in his early 20s.
But as the president of RSO Records in the Seventies, he managed the careers of Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees at the height of their fame, acted in A Bridge Too Far with Laurence Olivier, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman and Michael Caine and, as founder member of the Bunbury Cricket Club, alongside his annual festivals, has raised more than £17million for charity.
Catch him on another day and he will regale you – as he no doubt has with all the famed cricketers who love his unbridled enthusiasm – with how he clean bowled Sir Vivian Richards, chatted to the Queen for nine minutes during the presentation of his MBE at Buckingham Palace, stole a romantic night with Brigitte Bardot from under the nose of her gangster boyfriend on the French Riviera, and wrote songs recorded by Elton John, George Harrison and Cliff Richard.
“In 1987, the England schools came to me and said they were broke and could I support them,” English explains about how it all got started. “My only condition was that we would call it the Bunbury English Schools Under-15 Festival after the children’s books that I had written – the Bunbury Tales.
“The rest is history from my lifelong love of our summer game. It is the 33rd year this year at Felsted School, Essex [Aug 4-10], and in that time nearly 100 of the boys have gone on to play for England, and over 1,000 have gone into the county game. It’s been a labour of love. Or should I say a labour I love.
“I didn’t want to go to Lord’s last week – there are too many people to talk to when I’m there – I just wanted to sit at home and watch every ball, every delivery in detail, watching all of these characters who I knew as little men.
“Ten of the starting XI were discovered at my Bunbury Festival and I did feel proud when they were crowned as world champions. It has been a wonderful adventure and long may it continue.”
English, now 73, believes the new prime minister should set out to safeguard the future of the sport in the wake of England’s first
one-day World Cup victory. “In the state schools, you generally get four cones and a dustbin, so they go to the clubs. The public schools have all the facilities.
“Somehow, after winning the World Cup, I believe every state school should now have a cricket field. That should be the aim of the next prime minister.”
The raconteur skills of English go on well into the evening in our conversation, well past stumps. Like the night when a teenage Ben Stokes put Peri-Peri sauce into Joe Root’s Coca-Cola at Nando’s, or Jonny Bairstow’s relentless singing on karaoke, or the grace and power of Jos Buttler, the fun and the memories. “When you are 15 it’s a very interesting age, you are not a child, you are not an adult. You are an adolescent, faintly worldly-wise, but still peeping over the Coca-Cola cans,” he explains.
“At the festival, I teach them to relax, have a lot of fun along the way but watch closely how they form friendships because they will go on to play with and against each other at the very highest level. “Cricket is the most wonderful bonding sport of all. It’s almost like being a regiment in a war. “You are with each other in the good times and the bad times. Cricket teaches you that the team is more important than the individual. Look at the World Cup final. When Ben Stokes got to 50, it didn’t mean anything: he was still focused on winning for the team, making the biggest difference. That says it all about cricket.”
‘Cricket is the most bonding of sports. You are with each other in the good times and the bad’