Thanks, Johnners: An Affectionate Tribute to a Broadcasting Legend. Jonathan Agnew

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СКАЧАТЬ on behind me. Thud! A large white and almost fully unravelled toilet roll landed at my feet: Willey had launched it like a streamer from the players’ balcony to create surely the most humiliating entrance by a batsman in the history of cricket.

      County cricket was a hard slog around the country, with matches directly following each other, often with a long car journey in between. Andy Roberts, the wonderful West Indian fast bowler, was my regular chauffeur when he played for Leicestershire. As a cricketer he was the silent, moody type, preferring a glare to abusing – known as sledging – the batsman, but in the car we would have animated discussions about bowling. Andy was used to pottering around the quiet, potholed roads of Antigua, and our wide, open roads quickly encouraged him to drive as fast as he bowled, but a good deal less accurately. When he retired, I was promoted to one of the lucky five drivers on the car list. This was one of the benefits of being among the senior players in the team, because it meant you got to take your car on away trips, which was not only more convenient, but meant you received additional expenses for the cost of the journey. I often had Chris Lewis, as talented a cricketer as I have ever seen, as my rather erratic navigator. A wonderful athlete with a physique to die for, he was capable of bowling genuinely fast, and was a sensational fielder. He was also a good enough batsman to score a century for England.

      Lewis was shy, gentle, definitely a loner, and a most unusual dresser with a particular fondness for strange hats, including one with a racoon’s tail that dangled down the back of his neck. He would devote hours to signing autographs for children, who he would strictly arrange into an orderly queue, yet he could also be exasperatingly disorganised, to the extent of turning up only half an hour before the scheduled start of a one-day international at The Oval in which he was due to play. He claimed to have had a puncture, but was dropped from the team.

      I spent hours in the car with Chris, and reckoned to know him pretty well, so I was genuinely shocked when he was convicted of drug smuggling in 2009 and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. I cannot imagine the Chris Lewis I knew coping easily with that prospect, and it is a desperately sad episode to follow a cricket career that failed to fulfil its enormous potential.

      With such a variety of characters in the dressing room, and the sheer joy of playing the game for a living, there cannot be many more enjoyable and satisfying careers than that of a professional cricketer. I think I was especially fortunate because – while acknowledging that this could sound like a Fred Trueman moment – I really believe that county cricket was at its strongest in the late 1970s and 1980s. Players of earlier generations will be horrified by that statement, and can make perfectly valid claims for their own eras if they like, but for me the clincher was the presence of so many talented overseas players in those years who returned summer after summer, and who really were proper full-time members of their county teams. There is so much coming and going these days, because of the increased international commitments, that it is impossible to remember who is playing for which county in any given week or competition. Most counties in my time had two world-class overseas professionals, and with England’s cricketers also appearing between Tests, the quality of county cricket can surely never have been higher. Richard Hadlee and Clive Rice at Nottinghamshire, Imran Khan and Garth Le Roux at Sussex, Malcolm Marshall and Gordon Greenidge at Hampshire, Viv Richards and Joel Garner at Somerset – the list goes on and on of the partnerships of top cricketers who were deeply committed to their counties, their colleagues and their supporters.

      Some of them were very approachable, too. I remember Hadlee, the calculating and robotically accurate New Zealand fast bowler, wandering up to me as I marked out my run-up before a champion -ship match at Grace Road. He asked how the season was going, and I said it was OK, but that I had started to have a problem over-stepping the crease, and bowling no-balls. I explained how I kept lengthening my run by an inch or two to compensate, but the problem just would not go away.

      ‘That’s exactly what you’re doing wrong,’ Hadlee replied. ‘It sounds illogical, but you must always shorten your run-up by a foot. Your stride will be smaller, you won’t stretch and you’ll stop bowling no-balls. Works for me every time. Good luck.’ And with that Hadlee – a member of the opposing team – walked off, having volunteered an absolutely priceless tip.

      There were others who were not so kind. Most of the West Indian fast bowlers fell into this category, despite my shameless attempts to befriend them. These efforts included attending a Benefit event one evening for Wayne Daniel, who was a particular bully when charging in for Middlesex. I even made sure he saw me buying a raffle ticket, but he still tried to kill me next day. And then there was a very special category reserved for those overseas players who commanded such respect for their achievements and their sheer presence that one felt like doffing one’s cap whenever they walked past.

      In fact, there was only one man in this group: Vivian Richards, a batsman like no other in the way he ruthlessly dismembered bowling attacks, hitting the ball miles with apparent effortlessness. Others have come close to matching him in that department, but I have never seen such an intimidating figure as Richards at the crease. Mechanically chewing a piece of gum, he would swagger about, never the least bit hurriedly. He is massively built, more like a heavyweight boxer than a cricketer, with an enormous neck. Never helmeted, he always sweated profusely, and when focused on the serious business of batting, he smiled only very rarely.

      My first conversation with Viv was brief, and rather hostile. As a young fast bowler and thus, in Viv’s eyes, an upstart to be dismissively swatted away, I made a delivery rear from just short of a length which struck the great man’s glove in front of his not inconsiderable nose. Disappointingly, the ball looped over the wicketkeeper’s head and landed safely, but it was a moral victory, and I felt fully justified in releasing a loud cry of exasperation after an extended follow-through.

      ‘You know what you are, man?’ Viv shouted from only a couple of yards away, stabbing a finger at me, his eyes blazing with rage. ‘You’re a turkey. A f—ing turkey!’

      This was remarkably perceptive, since Dad had been a poultry farmer, but I suspect Viv was not aware of that. Instead it is an example of how Viv loved a fight, and how an incident like that would get him going after, quite possibly, a sluggish start, the legacy of a night out in the bars of Taunton with his great friend Ian Botham. We got off lightly this time – he scored only 75.

      Very few batsmen are good enough to take on fast bowlers verbally like that. The most common form of sledging is the other way round, with a fast bowler abusing or mocking a batsman with the aim of unsettling his concentration in the hope that he will make an error and get himself out. Sometimes it can get nasty and personal, in which case the umpire intervenes to calm tempers, but a lot of sledging is nothing more than humorous banter which can be very entertaining.

      Viv was involved in my favourite example of sledging, which was both funny and harmless, but shows him at his intimidating best. It occurred in 1981, when a law was introduced limiting bowlers to just one bouncer an over. This was designed to put a brake on the dangerous fast bowling perfected so ruthlessly by the West Indians rather than to emasculate young English quicks. But my Leicestershire colleague Gordon Parsons was very aggressive, and since he routinely bowled at least four bouncers every over, the new regulation had a serious impact on his repertoire.

      Tearing in down the hill against Somerset, Parsons struck early on this occasion when Phil Slocombe edged to slip. Typically, Gordon celebrated wildly, but the rest of us, and the bowlers in particular, were not quite so thrilled, because this breakthrough merely brought in the visitors’ number 3.

      We already knew that Viv was in a foul mood. He had been warming up that morning by hitting balls repeatedly against the fence, when Leicestershire’s chief executive, Mike Turner, made a public announcement over the Tannoy.

      ‘Will players please refrain from hitting balls into the advertising boards. And that includes you, Mr Richards.’

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