Cricketer whose brand of bats became a household name around the world
b April 12, 1940 d March 8,, 2024
That Ian Botham was the rock star of English cricket in the Eighties was underlined when four bona fide musical celebrities turned up to watch him play for Worcestershire. Elton John, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and the all-rounder’s friend, Eric Clapton, were pictured enjoying a drink at the bucolic setting of the county’s riverside New Road ground in 1987.
Chiefly responsible for enticing Botham to Worcester was Duncan Fearnley, a flourishing equipment manufacturer who personally crafted Botham’s preferred bats and was named chairman of the club in 1986.
At the time, Fearnley’s eponymous company was thought to be the largest maker of cricket bats in the world.
The owner spent hours each morning whittling at a bench in his dusty workshop in Worcester, sculpting bespoke bats for famous cricketers and overseeing a staff of 20 which produced a thousand bats a week for the general public.
Fearnley had signed Botham to a £150 sponsorship deal in 1973 when he was a promising young player. He became a regular for Somerset and made his England limited overs debut in 1976. Against India in 1980, Botham became the first player in test history to score a century and take 10 wickets in the same match, and in 1981 he inspired a celebrated Ashes win in the third test at Headingley. Clearly visible on Botham’s bat as he scored an unbeaten 149 was the Duncan Fearnley “black wickets” logo. Sales boomed.
A Fearnley bat was an object of desire from playgrounds to pavilions across the country and the world, with players of the calibre of Viv Richards, Graham Gooch, Graeme Pollock, Clive Lloyd, Wasim Akram, Sunil Gavaskar and Martin Crowe also using them.
“Duncan made the best bats I have ever used,” Botham told The Cricketer. “He was the best bat-maker of his time. He actually pioneered bat-making. He came to the conclusion that if you dry the wood a little more than normal you get bigger bulk. Then don’t hammer it with the press, just do it lightly, and fibreglass the front - and they were magnificent.”
In Botham’s prime, Fearnley paid him between pounds £5000 and £10,000 in annual sponsorship – a relative bargain partly explained by their warm personal relationship.
Fearnley prospered not only through the quality of his products and his savvy sponsorships but also as a result of contacts forged during his playing days, assertive marketing and ambitious commercial instincts that reflected his ebullient personality.
The visibility of manufacturers’ logos was a controversial subject, but Fearnley ensured his distinctive motif of a set of stumps as seen from above was prominent on the front and back of his bats.
The former India international Sanjay Manjrekar recalled in Wisden India that Fearnley bats were rarely found in the country, yet “that logo was one of the most recognisable in India because Gavaskar used Duncan Fearnley bats. I remember (and there were many like me) I would sit down with black paint and carefully paint that V-shaped logo on my pads and bats, just so I could feel that I was using the same bat.”
Charles Duncan Fearnley was born in Pudsey, Yorkshire, in 1940, to Sidney, a woodwork teacher, and the former Diana Carruthers. His grandfather was a cabinet-maker who worked with the grandfather of another Pudsey cricketer, Ray Illingworth.
Squat of frame, the left-handed Fearnley opened the batting for an England schools XI and played in the Bradford League for Farsley. Aged 15, he became an apprentice bat-maker. He began making them in his own time and sold them to his friends, with the Tudor Rose and Fearnley of Farsley among the earliest models. He appeared for Yorkshire’s second XI, but was unable to break into the first team and moved to Worcestershire in 1960 after a successful trial.
Making bats in the winter and playing in the summer, he made his first-class debut in 1962 and played 97 times for the county over six years, averaging 20.58 and only once notching a century, though twice winning the County Championship.
In 1968 Fearnley married Mary (nee Crump), who became a director of the bat business. She survives him along with their children, Louise and Paul, the brand manager for the company.
Fearnley ended his professional career when he got married and opened an equipment shop in Worcester. At a party with Illingworth and another England player, John Snow, he showed them the logo and Snow agreed to use Fearnley’s bats in an international match. Other high-profile players, including Basil D’Oliveira, followed suit, and Fearnley was soon fielding orders for thousands of bats.
He also sold pads and gloves that were sufficiently futuristic-looking to appear in an episode of Doctor Who, sprayed silver and worn by the Cybermen. At its peak the company was said to command about a third of the global bat market. Fearnley acquired a Rolls-Royce which he drove at a brisk pace to Worcestershire games around the country.
“I’m a bit of a bore in some ways,” he told The Mail on Sunday. “My hobby, my whole life, is cricket.”
His 12-year tenure as chairman was the most successful period in the club’s history, featuring six trophies. The signings of Botham and his fellow 1981 hero and Fearnley loyalist Graham Dilley turbocharged memberships and sponsorship income at the suddenly trendy New Road and Hick was a key contributor as Worcestershire won the County Championship in 1988 and 1989 – their first such titles since 1974. They have not claimed the County Championship since.
“I’m a players’ man,” Fearnley told The Times in 1987. “On one day of each home game I make a point of inviting the players for a drink in the committee room at close of play.”
Convivial to a fault, in 2004 he resigned as a Worcestershire board member and pledged not to attend any of the team’s fixtures for the rest of the season after incidents that were described as “trenchant opinion offered in public places after dining well”. He was welcomed back and served as president from 2011 to 2013, then honorary vicepresident.
He had sold his company in the early 2000s after a dramatic drop in sales. While rivals cut costs and increased output by relying on machines, cheap materials and outsourcing production to Asia, Fearnley’s insistence on handmade local craftsmanship and high-quality English willow meant the firm struggled to compete in a globalised marketplace. Production was slashed and the brand, which is still based in Worcester, decided to focus on premium products – “the Rolls-Royce of cricket bats”, as he put it.
In later life Fearnley co-founded Chance to Shine, a charity that encourages schoolchildren to play cricket. He continued to fashion bats in semiretirement.
“There’s still the same buzz when I make a bat and see it at the end,” he told the Worcester News in 2005. “When you touch the willow it is beautiful. When you finish some bats you know you have something special in your hands. It’s really amazing.”