Duncan - Cricket, Wonderful Cricket

For Helen, Alistair and Ged

All author profits from the sale of

Cricket Wonderful Cricket

will be donated to

The Lords Taverners.

BY TONY GREIG

O ne of the many wonderful things about being a professional cricketer is having the chance to travel the world and meet people that you might otherwise never have known. So, when I started to think about what might be appropriate for this foreword, I was intrigued by the list of people that John has persuaded to talk about the game. I havent met all of them by any means and, of the few I have, some only in passing.

Nonetheless, I could easily write at length here about Prince Philip, Buckingham Palace and the corgis; Michael Parkinson and World Series Cricket; Tim Rice and his generosity; and many others in the books 20-strong line-up. But that is all best left for another time and another place. So Ill restrict myself to just the one story, even if it does revolve around someone who is only in the book second hand!

I first met the Rolling Stones, including Bill Wyman, in Trinidad when one of the England team spotted Mick Jagger sitting in the crowd through binoculars. It wasnt difficult because he was wearing pink pyjamas! So we sent the 12th man over to invite him to come into the dressing room at the close of play. To do this, he had to come into the Members section at the Queens Park Oval and, not surprisingly, there were one or two complaints about his dress. So, when we invited him to have a drink again the next day, we asked him not to wear his pyjamas, but to dress properly. When he appeared, he was dressed all in pink again, but this time it was a pink satin suit, with pink shoes and a pink stetson. The suit probably cost as much as a motor car. What a performer!

So, what am I doing writing this foreword? You may well ask. As a player, and subsequently as a commentator, Ive always felt that there has been something special about the relationship we have with cricket lovers of every kind, including those that you can enjoy reading about in Cricket Wonderful Cricket.

I originally arrived in Sussex from South Africa in 1965, but it was probably another four or five years before I became aware of JD, as the Sussex boys soon labelled him, when he started to cover some of our matches for BBC Radio Brighton. Stanley Allen, a Brighton solicitor, was the original and senior commentator, but we gradually began to see more and more of this cricket-mad NatWest banker.

Over the years, JD became almost an honorary member of the Sussex squad; travelling with us to away matches, bowling in the nets, perching in the dressing room and taking his fair share of the sometimes cruel humour on offer. To be quite honest, he talked a far better game than he played. His military medium should have been court-martialled. And he still claims to have taught me all I know about cricket commentary! I dont think so.

It was in the early seventies that he came to do a pre-match interview with me at my flat overlooking the Hove County Ground. After the usual round of cricket questions, he suddenly asked me why I hadnt bought a house! And that kicked off my first venture into the property market. My then wife and I found a place we liked, he organised the finance, and soon we were living in a home of our own.

And, for forty years or thereabouts, during more than thirty of which we have lived at opposite ends of the globe, we have managed to keep in touch. He has stayed in our home in Sydney and we have stayed at his in London. But a lot less often! Much of the contact nowadays is through the magic of Skype, the internet call system. The problem with this is that he usually wants to chat when I have just got out of bed, bright eyed and clear headed, whereas he is about to stumble in the opposite direction, having normally consumed the best part of a bottle of Rioja

Which is an appropriate note on which to end this foreword. Cricket, communications, a glass of wine and JD are inseparable. His lifetime love of the game has helped him to produce this splendid book. Its very different from the usual run of cricket books and all the better for that. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Tony Greig,

Sydney, January, 2011.

The anecdotes, the humour, the memories, the heroes and the issues aired here are those of a disparate group of people united by a single thread; a love of cricket. For some, it is a lifetimes passion of an exceptional and ever-lasting intensity. For others, it is a calmer and more passive affection, but one that is an important part of life, even when pads and gloves gather dust in a corner cupboard. It is a love that glues ears to Test Match Special, eyes to television sets, bums to seats near the boundary and, increasingly, surfers to cricket websites. It is the eccentric and magnetic allure of cricket.

I sat bolt upright in bed one morning a major achievement in itself! It was three oclock and I was suddenly wide awake. The previous evening I had finished reading an absorbing book of interviews by Gyles Brandreth, called Brief Encounters. He had talked to royalty, politicians, actors and many more. The result was a book that I had enjoyed enormously.

As well, and as usual, that day I had been watching cricket, reading about cricket and thinking about cricket. The wonderful game has been a part of my life since the day I was born. Our house in Sussex, opposite Henfield cricket ground, was situated at deep midwicket to a right-hander when the bowling was from the village end. It was so close that a six once bounced down the hallway and landed in the dog-bowl, near the kitchen back door!

I played the game moderately well in itinerant fashion for a number of teams who seemed to be moderately happy to have me on board. These included Henfield, of course, Blackstone, Brighton Banks, Shoreham, Hove Aldrington, various Westminster and NatWest Bank XIs, and even Sussex, in occasional benefit or social matches. My medium paced trundlers, even though despatched from a good height, generally caused little alarm or despondency amongst opposition batsmen, although there was one long and weary season when 100 wickets were taken in what seemed like as many matches. I was no all-rounder, failing ever to reach the 50 mark with the bat, albeit on one occasion I had made 42 off 14 deliveries (with the aid of two dropped catches while still on nought!) when my heartless captain decided to declare!

Since the launch, in 1968, of BBC Radio Brighton, where I freelanced for a decade or more, I have from time to time commentated on and written about the game. And, when Sussex at long last became county champions in 2003, I even cried about it.

And so it came to pass that the book, and communications, and cricket came together in the early hours of that particular morning and, three sleepless but thoughtful hours later, I crawled out of bed, fortified myself with a mug of coffee, sat at my pc and started to record my initial thoughts on what has become Cricket Wonderful Cricket.

I was already aware of a number of high achievers who were simply cricket mad. Some of them even featured in Brandreths book. Despite forging very successful careers in their own chosen walks of life they had still had the time and energy for cricket, albeit in varied and individual ways.

I knew that I would need to find the right people to talk to and then persuade each of them to give me an hour of their time. I wanted to recruit a diverse group of people with one common denominator a love of the game of cricket. But, to ensure total objectivity, my self-imposed rule was to be that they had remained outside the boundary rope. In other words, they must not have played first-class cricket. That said, at least four came very close. David English had been on the ground-staff at Lords, Michael Parkinson had Yorkshire trials, Ian MacLaurin had opted for a business career rather than a Kent contract and Christopher Martin-Jenkins played for Surrey 2nd XI.