Still got some great memories’
the club now. I felt at home, it was a brilliant time.”
Willott is now plying his trade at Bagnall Norton – but more about that later. His spell at Leek helped to establish himself at the forefront of Staffordshire’s attack.
Willott had debuted for the county in 1999 – ironically against Cumberland at Leek – but work commitments limited him to six further appearances over the next seven seasons.
He resumed Staffs action in 2007, while still at Norton, but it was his move to Leek which enabled him to breathe a little easier.
“For the first couple of years I felt my Staffs place was in jeopardy and I had to be better than anyone else all of the time,” added the 39-year-old.
“I only felt safe playing for one game at a time. When I started to be involved with the minor counties representative team and the Unicorns, that’s when you start to feel more secure.
“It’s then that you believe you don’t have to worry about being the first name out of the side. It also helped that I was getting wickets for Leek in the Premier Division.”
It seems ridiculous to think, looking back, that Willott was ever uncertain about his place in the Staffordshire set-up.
His time at county level is now over, but the curtain came down with him regarded as one of best seamers to have played for Staffordshire in recent history.
Willott’s record bears testament to that fact. He finished with 233
Championship wickets and also chipped in with more than 1,000 runs at three-day level. He’s one of only six players in the county’s history to achieve that double.
There was also a title to celebrate. In 2014, Willott was part of the Staffs side which not only won the Eastern Division, but went on to lift the overall Championship trophy after beating Wiltshire in the final.
Willott was at his imperious best in the second innings of that clash, taking four wickets as Staffs wrapped up a 28-run victory in skipper Paul Goodwin’s final minor counties match.
“That four-day final at Salisbury was amazing and I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It was also nice to be able to contribute in such a big game. I remember doing an interview with you after that game and getting emotional because it was Gooders’ last match and we were desperate to win it for him.
“I still feel a bit emotional now, recalling it. I’d played a lot of cricket with Gooders and we’d been through some tough times.
“The first few years were hard, but then we got a really competitive side together. I can still see Paul Byrne taking that final wicket against Wiltshire. I was at long off and spotted the gap between bat and pad which the ball went through to bowl Michael Coles.
“Once that happened, you forgot all of the tough times you’ve experienced and the miles clocked up going around the country.”
Willott’s one-day career with
Staffordshire unfurls mixed emotions from the veteran left-arm seamer. His 77 wickets are the most taken by a county bowler, but missed opportunities still gnaw away in the back of his mind.
He was part of the side which lost both the 2009 one-day final to Norfolk at Durham and the 2016 showpiece to Herefordshire at Wormsley.
“One of the best sides we had was the one which reached the final at Durham,” explained Willott.
“We had Jack Manuel, Dave Wheeldon, Mo Sheikh, Dave Edwards, Craig Barker. Some people at the time regarded our bowlers as the best amateur attack in the country.
“In that final, everything went against us. Players were all of a sudden unavailable and others were being drafted in at the last minute.
“That shouldn’t have been the case for a game of that magnitude. We’d already beaten Norfolk in the group stages, but it rained and we lost four wickets quickly on the first evening.
“That is a game which has never sat comfortably with me.”
There have been plenty of highlights. Willott is quick to recall an encounter against Surrey at Stone in the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy in 2003.
“Ali Brown was in top form for Surrey at the time and there was an article the day before the game which said he’d probably tear the Staffordshire attack apart,” recalled Willott.
“I’m stood there at the end of my run and he’s at the other end and
I’m thinking ‘oh my God, what is he going to do to me?.’
“My first ball hit the shoulder of his bat and looped back to me. I’d got him!
“I’ve got great memories of that game. Mark Ramprakash nodded at me a couple of times after I’d gone past the outside edge.
“And Ian Ward hit three sixes off Richard Cooper to bring up his hundred. If I’m right, one of them landed in a pram, but just missed the baby. We came close to winning that. Richard Harvey belted a couple of sixes in the last over, but we fell just short.”
Willott has a wealth of good times to look back on as he reflects on his time with Staffordshire.
His haul of 7-20 against Cumberland at Barrow stands out, as does his hat-trick in the game with Bedfordshire at West Bromwich Dartmouth in 2017.
To put the icing on the cake, England spinner Monty Panesar was the hat-trick dismissal.
Throw in his Championship title win and impressive statistics, it’s easy to see why Willott looks back on his county career with pride.
But weaved through all of that is the incredible friendships he made – most notably with fellow seamer Craig Barker.
Willott’s finest memory of the pair is their exploits with the bat at Ipswich School in 2013.
Staffordshire were under the pump against Suffolk, but the county duo ensured that the three-day encounter wouldn’t be finished with a day to spare as they produced a rearguard action.
“Me and Barks batted together for a long time and at the end of play on day two, Gooders said: ‘If there’s two lads I’d have picked to make sure the game went in to a third day so they could have another night out, it would have been you two.’
“That was the night I also asked Barksy to be my best man.”
However, a night out could often prove to be a problem for Willott and his Staffordshire team-mates.
An away game at Sleaford against Lincolnshire was a case in point.
“Heavy rain was forecast, so the ‘rain card’ was played,” explained Willott. “We had a few more than we should have done. I got up the next morning, opened the curtains and there’s not a cloud in the sky.
“Kim Barnett was the coach at the time and we turned up at the ground and he’s given us a dressing down. He said: ‘No matter what the forecast is, you’ve always got to be ready. I want you to take plenty of fluids on board. I want you to have a glass of water for every drink you had last night.’
“A comment came from the back of the group: ‘Oh my God, I’ll drown.’ It was then on to 400-metre shuttle runs in the heat.”
Willott, who lives in Endon with wife Hannah and sons Oliver and Seb, still has plenty of overs left in the tank as he looks to add to a club wicket-tally which has seen him take in excess of 1,500 victims.
He’s proving as much with Bagnall Norton, who he has helped to three successive promotions to reach the Premier Division for the first time in their short history.
The clubs of Bagnall and Norton merged ahead of the 2015 season, so it seemed appropriate that Willott would one day be part of the newlook set-up.
“My last year at Leek was 2016 and it was a season which was affected by the weather,” added Willott. “It was a disappointing summer and I felt a bit low.
“I had a call from Tony Dutton at Bagnall Norton to meet for a beer and he was joined by the chairman Nigel Meakin. They sold their vision along the same lines as Leek.
“Nigel’s vision and ambition just opened something up inside me. They were in Division Three at the time, which I didn’t really want to be playing, so I has to get my head around that fact.”
Willott signed on the dotted line and became part of the remarkable Bagnall Norton success story.
Promotion was achieved in his first season, before Division Two and One titles swiftly followed.
“There was a five-year plan to get to the top division, which I thought might be a long shot,” said Willott.
“That first year was tough because there were four sides who won every week. There was a lot of pressure, which sounds silly, because you just couldn’t afford to slip up. We had this plan, but to achieve Premier Division cricket in three years is remarkable.
“Last summer was a really challenging season and we should be looking forward to Premier Division cricket this year. Hopefully we won’t have long to wait.”