by John Wisden
Wilson was reinvigorated by two years of captaining Lincolnshire, and began a career in coaching that took him to South Africa, where he was head coach at the Wanderers and undertook some pioneering work in the townships. That led, in 1977, to a phone call from E. W. Swanton, offering him the job as head coach at Lord’s. He thought Swanton must be mixing him up with a Wilson who had played for Kent, but refrained from saying so. Although Ian Botham had been a recent graduate of the MCC Young Cricketers, the coaching system run by Len Muncer was haphazard. Aided by the opening of the indoor school, Wilson embarked on a revolution, and alumni that included Phil DeFreitas, Phil Tufnell, Norman Cowans, Dermot Reeve and Paul Nixon were testament to his success.
DeFreitas had particular reason to be grateful: “When I went for my trial for the groundstaff, I remember that Phil Tufnell and I were told at the end that we hadn’t made it,” he recalled. “But Don had seen something in us, and demanded that we were selected. If it hadn’t been for Don, we wouldn’t have got on the staff.” He also quietly looked after their interests. “We were very often excused the usual groundstaff boys’ duties when the big matches were on,” said DeFreitas. “Don would do his utmost to see that we were somewhere else playing cricket. He told you things straight, in black and white, but we could always have a laugh as well. He was an enormous figure in my life.”
Emerging players from overseas were welcomed, too. An 18-year-old Martin Crowe arrived on a scholarship from New Zealand in 1981. “I remember Don’s eyeballs popping out and his wild enthusiasm for cricket: ‘Now then Crowie, I’m ready for ya, lad,’ as he marked out his run-up.” Between puffs on his small cigar, Wilson would dispense precious nuggets of advice. “He taught me about hundreds,” Crowe recalls. “‘No one remembers 60, lad, only big hundreds,’ he said.”
His house and garden, just behind the Mound Stand, were a popular party venue during Test matches and after one-day finals. Wilson left Lord’s at the end of 1990 and took charge of sport at Ampleforth College, back in his native county. He wrote an entertaining autobiography, Mad Jack (a nickname first bestowed by Burnet), and to his huge delight became president of the Yorkshire Players’ Association. His former spinning colleague Geoff Cope provided perhaps the most fitting epitaph: “I have never found anyone with so much enthusiasm for the game.”
WILSON, JOHN STUART, died on July 2, aged 80. Stuart Wilson, a fast-medium bowler from the Brechin and Forfarshire club, played 16 first-class matches for Scotland. A Manchester-born plumber, he made his debut against Lancashire at Old Trafford in 1957, and started well by dismissing the county’s openers, Alan Wharton and Jack Dyson. Wilson’s best figures of five for 51 came against MCC at The Grange in 1959, while three years later he took four wickets in each innings at Greenock as Scotland won their annual encounter with Ireland.
WIMALADARMA, WELIWITAGODA RAKITHA DILSHAN, died on September 29, aged 27, after watching Sri Lanka’s World Twenty20 match against West Indies on television with some friends earlier in the evening. Some reports suggested drugs may have been involved; one of the other party guests also died. Rakitha Wimaladarma was an off-spinner who claimed 53 wickets, mainly for Saracens, in Sri Lanka’s domestic first-class competitions in 2009-10, including a career-best eight for 68 against the Army; a few weeks later he took 23 wickets in successive matches against Moors and Tamil Union.
WOODHEAD, DEREK JOHN, died on July 29, 2011, aged 76. After scoring an unbeaten century in only his second Sheffield Shield match for Western Australia in 1958-59, Woodhead looked to have a promising career ahead of him as an opener – but after three failures at the beginning of the next season, he was dropped permanently. His thesis Fundamentals and Techniques of Batting in Australia earned him the award of his Teachers’ Higher Certificate in 1969, and is held at the J. S. Battye Library of West Australian History in Perth. He coached the Australian fast bowler Mick Malone and, later, Greg Shipperd, who opened the batting for both Western Australia and Tasmania.
WOOLNOUGH, BRIAN CHRISTOPHER, died on September 18, aged 63. When Brian Woolnough was lured away from his job as chief football writer of The Sun to become chief sportswriter of the Daily Star in 2000, a significant part of the attraction was the chance to write about a wider variety of sports, especially cricket; he also became a familiar face on Sky TV. He was an enthusiastic fast bowler for the Claygate club in Surrey, putting his imposing frame to good use, and retained a love of the game through his years as one of the most high-profile sportswriters in Fleet Street. He was particularly proud of having batted with Rohan Kanhai in a charity match at Lord’s. After joining the Star, Woolnough became a regular in Test-match press boxes in the summer, especially relishing England’s 2005 Ashes triumph. The Oval Test was an annual highlight – on a day with no writing duties, he would join friends and family for a companionable time in the stands.
ZAHIR ALAM, who died of liver failure on May 30, aged 42, was a leading light with the bat for Assam in the Ranji Trophy for several seasons. Against Tripura at Guwahati in 1991-92 he scored 257, and put on 475 with Lalchand Rajput (239) for the second wicket – then a world record, although it has been surpassed three times since.
Wisden always welcomes information about those who might be included: please send details to [email protected], or to John Wisden & Co, 13 Old Aylesfield, Golden Pot, Alton, Hampshire GU34 4BY.
THE ENGLAND TEAM IN 2012
Out of the rough
STEPHEN BRENKLEY
Redemption took its time. But when it arrived, the satisfaction almost erased the tumultuous 50 weeks that had come before it – almost, but not quite, because the drama surrounding England throughout 2012, both human and sporting, was relentless, intense and compelling.
The wholly unexpected Test victory in India with which they ended their year was a triumph of plotting and redesign. And it had two overwhelming features: the rehabilitation of a team who had grown dangerously accustomed to losing, and the reintegration of a player, Kevin Pietersen, who had come perilously close to the end of his international career.
England’s batting was now refreshed in body and mind. The bowling attack, led by the superb Jimmy Anderson and buttressed by the admirable Graeme Swann, appeared to have regained its old verve. Perhaps the most significant aspect of all, however, was the galvanic start provided by the 2–1 win over the Indians to Alastair Cook’s tenure as official Test captain. He was exemplary.
Appointed formally, all but routinely, after Andrew Strauss’s retirement on August 29, Cook scored centuries in each of the first three Tests of the series, tailoring his innings to the demands of the team. His authority burgeoned with his form, and the respect he commanded was clear. Party to the dropping of his vice-captain, Stuart Broad, he demonstrated the ruthless pragmatism required of all leaders.
When England lost the First Test at Ahmedabad, their seventh defeat of an increasingly wretched year, it was merely a continuation of an abysmal inability to adapt to the needs of conditions in Asia. Yet by the time hands were shaken on a draw during the final afternoon of the Fourth Test at Nagpur, Cook had helped deliver a seamless transformation. The series-levelling win at Mumbai already ranked among England’s most glorious anywhere, a model example of beating opponents at their own game. To travel then to Kolkata and fashion another comprehensive victory was the mark of a dressing-room genuinely at ease with itself again – if not always with the world outside.
It was Cook’s team now. Strauss’s decision to quit all cricket, which few had seen coming, suddenly assumed a retrospective air of inevitability, as is often the way of such matters. Not that it should diminish a jot Strauss’s contribution as England’s captain: an outstanding leader and a man of honour, he will be fondly recalled. In truth, Cook had two teams, since he retained the captaincy of the one-day side he had gained in 2011. England’s rapid advance in that sphere – they won their first ten completed one-day internationals, before sharing the home series with South Africa – was as marked as their Test deterioration
pre-India. This reunification had barely taken place when it was followed by the separation of senior management duties.
England were restored by the win in Mumbai, which eased considerably the announcement of their decision to divide the role of head coach. Andy Flower retained the official title of team director, but would now oversee the Test squad only. The day-to-day affairs of the two limited-overs sides were put in the hands of Ashley Giles, Test selector, successful director of cricket at Warwickshire, and sometime Ashes hero.
These appointments were devised partly to ensure that Flower, with a wife and three young children, could have some kind of home life again, and would thus stay in the job. It was a sign of a confident management prepared to confront not just the gruelling reality of big-time cricket in the early 21st century, but what it might take to stay a few runs and wickets ahead of the pack. Putting the theory into practice could prove another matter, but formulating it at all had been a bold first step.
Victory in India bordered on the miraculous, for England had been under perpetual siege from the moment they began the year as the world’s No. 1 Test side – a ranking reached via the ICC’s endearingly arcane points system and officially bestowed by the award of a large mace. But the mace was an albatross by another name. Instead of carrying it aloft like the glorious prize it was supposed to be, England found it throttling the life out of them. In the United Arab Emirates, they batted awfully against Pakistan. Two months later in Sri Lanka, previous mistakes and lapses against slow bowling on slow pitches went initially unheeded, and they escaped with a 1–1 draw thanks to the first of Pietersen’s three breathtaking centuries in the year, plus the wickets of Swann.
Brief respite at home against West Indies was followed by a loss to South Africa, who deservedly claimed the top ranking themselves. South Africa’s victory at The Oval (hosting the First Test because Lord’s was used for the Olympic archery) was by an innings and 12 runs, yet it was more epic than that: they scored 637 for two and reduced to impotence an attack that imagined themselves the most incisive in the world. The defeat was among England’s most shattering.
From late August on – but, for more acute observers, from long before – events in the dressing-room were dominated by the Pietersen saga. The subsequent attempts to draw a line under an unseemly episode, indeed to airbrush it from history, failed to conceal its tawdriness, significance or sheer theatre. That Pietersen was England’s stellar cricketer was merely emphasised during the weeks the saga rumbled on. It overshadowed the loss of both the South Africa series and the No. 1 ranking, the insipid defence of the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, and the squad announcement for the tour of India, for which he was not originally selected.
It had been clear something was up when Pietersen suddenly announced his retirement from all limited-overs cricket at the end of May. Mutterings abounded that relations between him and Flower were strained – and Flower certainly looked strained. A bleak hiatus was eventually reached at the end of the drawn Second Test with South Africa at Headingley, in which Pietersen had scored the second of those three centuries. Clearly not about to let anything lie, he gave a press conference in which he discussed the difficulties of being him. He also floated the prospect that the Third Test at Lord’s could be his last. Within a few days, it appeared his England career might already be at an end, after claims he had sent text messages disparaging Strauss to members of the South African side. Nothing was ever proven, and much was denied, but Strauss’s uncharacteristically bruised reaction told its own story. Relations reached such a low ebb that Pietersen, unwilling – or unable – to deny the allegations, was dropped, and a must-win match became about something else besides: the unity of the squad, the place of the individual in it, and the old mantra that there is no “I” in team. It helped the selectors that Jonny Bairstow, his replacement, made 95 and 54.
England closed ranks, and tried their socks off, but South Africa were simply the better team. It was difficult to tell where Strauss’s mind was. But when he shouldered arms to a straight ball from the estimable Vernon Philander at the start of a potentially fascinating run-chase, it was patently not on the proceedings at hand.
The precise nature of the negotiations which ensued between Pietersen and England will be revealed one day (and what different interpretations they may have). But the ECB went into news-management, or rather news-blackout, mode. Perhaps it was a period when they were damned if they did speak and damned if they didn’t, but the growing tendency to avoid offering reasoned answers to reasonable questions was one that threatened to sully relations with their faithful public. Throughout, it seemed possible Pietersen’s career was over, even while the feeling grew that some senior players might have behaved differently towards him; Flower himself said the strange matter of the fake Twitter account, which poked fun at Pietersen, could have been handled better.
At the end of the Test series, Strauss retired. True to form, he went with the utmost dignity. The Pietersen saga and his retirement were not connected – at least not directly – but it was a huge shame that his announcement should be tarnished. He went, by the way, because he felt he was no longer scoring the necessary runs; two hundreds against West Indies had offered cause for respite, but not genuine rejuvenation.
Pietersen had been signed up to commentate on the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka and, well though he fulfilled that task, it was clear England were missing him. After their elimination came the beginnings of rapprochement. Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, and Pietersen gave a surreal press briefing in the bowels of a Colombo hotel, in which Clarke first used the phrase that came to embody the whole shebang: Pietersen was to embark on “a process of reintegration”. Clarke was at his most sonorously grave: “In our society we believe that, when an individual transgresses, and when the individual concerns recognises that and apologises, it is important that individual should be given a real opportunity to be reintegrated into our society. This principle is an essential part of having civilised and sensible ethics.”
Whatever Pietersen was guilty of, this made it seem somewhat more than a bloke in a cricket team not getting on too well with some of the other blokes in a cricket team. A few days later, he flew back to England from South Africa, where he had been playing in the Champions League with Delhi Daredevils. He had a chat with some of England’s other senior players, and it was all done and dusted. He was added to the squad for India, and his limited-overs retirement rescinded.
His presence might have encouraged a semblance of optimism, though it can hardly have infused the team with unbridled confidence. From the first day in Dubai in January, when Pietersen was one of several to fall cheaply to Saeed Ajmal, it had gone too wrong, for too long. Techniques which had coped enviably in Australia and England were suddenly and harshly exposed. England did not know whether to stick or twist: they came out slugging, then tried to retrench. Nearly all the batsmen laboured. Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell, in their different ways, searched vainly for a trusted scoring method. Trott came up with a fighting century in a lost cause at Galle, but was perhaps a victim of the incessant demands made of an international batsman.
From the UAE onwards, Bell rarely made Test runs away from home, which was odd – not only because they had flowed in the previous two years, but because of his renaissance as a one-day opener in Pietersen’s absence (and did enough to retain his place in the 50-over side when Pietersen kissed and made up). That both Bell and Trott finished the year with hundreds at Nagpur embodied England’s revival.
But neither could have played the innings Pietersen did. The last of his memorable treble came at Mumbai, complementing Cook’s wonderfully judged contribution. India’s spinners were repelled, while England’s – Swann and the recalled Monty Panesar – took 19 wickets in a masterful exhibition of harnessing helpful conditions. This was the first time England seemed properly to have learned from past misdemeanours. The sweep shot, both ally and enemy to them for a decade, yielded 59 runs in 44 balls; for India, it br
ought only 14 in ten. Yet in Nagpur, where the pitch was slower, England realised it was no longer a judicious option.
The bowlers were magnificent. Their status was seriously challenged by South Africa’s hard-nosed batting, but Anderson passed 250 Test wickets early in the year, and Swann 200 at the end, both passing marks set by great forebears: Anderson overhauled his fellow Lancashire seamer Brian Statham; Swann his fellow off-spinner Jim Laker.
In Matt Prior, England still had the best wicketkeeper-batsman in the world, which said much in an accomplished field. His commitment to the team cause could never be doubted, and his telephone call to Pietersen at the height of the shambles was instrumental in bringing the sides together. England finished in good order. Doubts remained over Cook’s new long-term opening partner, though Nick Compton – a newcomer with impeccable heritage – acquitted himself with abundant concentration in India. But seven different players were selected to bat at No. 6, and Joe Root of Yorkshire, not yet 22, ended as the man in possession, evoking the thought he might soon be Cook’s opening partner.
In the middle of summer, a one-day series of five matches against Australia had gone almost unnoticed. Too much else was happening in cricket and beyond. And two Ashes series loomed in 2013. Such casual disregard was unlikely to recur.