Great story and one of the reasons why Cricket is such a great sports...It is so amateurish and I am so glad for it !
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23896785-5001505,00.html Perfect pitch for a bowling Stone
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David Walsh | June 21, 2008
HAD you been travelling near the village of Cranleigh, about 80km south of London, one Sunday earlier this year, you could have followed the signs to the cricket match and made the most extraordinary discovery.
For sure, there was much that was familiar from any weekend match: the finely cut grass of the cricket pitch, families picnicking around the boundary, white flannels, the white canvas of the marquees, the ugliness of the ice-cream van.
Startling, though, was the familiarity of the faces inside the boundary.
The tall guy with the gentlest batting stroke: wasn't that Mike Rutherford, the guitarist from the old rock band Genesis? And the one over there, standing in the outfield, who looked like he didn't want to age, that was surely Pink Floyd's Roger Waters. The same Waters who once filled us with fight - "We don't need no thought control/ No dark sarcasm in the classroom" - was now playing cricket on a Sunday afternoon with Guy Waller, the headmaster of smart Cranleigh School.
In the middle of them all, directing the flow of banter around the wicket, stood Eric Clapton. An earnest cricketer, let us say. But it is the little guy in the gully who rivets you. Bill Wyman, the old Rolling Stone, in his 72nd year and still up for it. Once velvet jackets, crazy shirts and funky scarves were his battledress; now it is the establishment whites of the cricket world.
"Subversive? Of course the Rolling Stones are subversive," Keith Richards said 40 years ago. When the subversive stops rolling, is this where he ends: in the ebb and flow of willow on leather, nourished by the excellent food organised by Belinda Graham-Rack and the women's committee at Cranleigh?
But look again: Wyman stands in the gully, one hand ready for the catch, the other poised with a StMoritz cigarette between middle and index finger.
Wyman has played these cricket matches for 22 years. Trawl through the pages of cricket's bible, the Wisden annual, and you will find him in the 1991 edition. It says: "Bill Wyman, fielding at gully, caught the ex-England captain Brian Close, one-handed, with a cigarette in his other hand." The team is called the Bunbury XI and it is the creation of Clapton and his friend and fellow cricket-lover David English.
Clapton has helped to rope in leading figures from show business, English ropes in leading figures from all kinds of worlds, and they have been playing every summer for two decades. Along the way they've had a lot of laughs, raised a lot of money (pound stg. 11 million) for charities and given Wyman the chance to dance with one of the loves of his life.
There's a touching side to this Bunbury club, something that the debutant Waters might not have understood before that Sunday. They were in the changing room before the game when English called for some quiet and invited the old Pink Floyd leader to stand and be inaugurated as a Bunbury. A room that had been full of banter lapsed into an almost reverential silence as English, holding Waters's shoulders, delivered the team's gospel:
A Bunbury stands for freedom,
Stands for fun,
Stands for ever being young;
So do a good turn unto others,
Never turn from your quest,
For you are a Bunbury
And a Bunbury does his best.
Wyman would have watched a ceremony he has witnessed countless times and felt the same emotional pull, because there is something about this band of brothers. Not quite the Rolling Stones, but it has given him a sporting life that in his youth he craved but never got. He could bore you with the names of the Bunburys he has shared a wicket with: Ian Botham, David Gower, Phil Collins, David Essex, Georgie Fame, Mark Ramprakash, Elton John, Rory Bremner, Viv Richards, Adam Faith, Brian Lara. On and on the list goes and there's a lot of stories that Wyman could tell.
Like the day at Reigate Priory, Surrey, in 1993 when he got Michael Holding out. At the time, Holding was a star in the West Indies team and one of the world's most feared fastbowlers.
"I bowled him with a googly," Wyman says. "He came up to me, all the way up the pitch, and he's six feet five (196cm) and I'm five feet seven, and he stood about two inches from my nose and said, 'Wait 'til you bat, man, I'm going to give you some chin music.'
"I tried to be cool because he had to be joking. 'Oh yeah,' I said, 'I'm looking forward to that.' He then stomped off towards the pavilion and all our players were saying, 'You haven't half annoyed him', and I'm saying, 'Nah, he's only winding me up.' So we went to lunch and a couple of the guys come to me and say they had heard that Holding was ranting and raving in the dressing room, saying what he was going to do to me. I said, 'Stop messin', Holding's not like that.'
"Then Holding came walking towards me in the clubhouse, right behind me, and he whispered in my ear, 'You wait 'til you bat, man, you gonna smell the leather.' They called him Whispering Death because of the speed of his bowling. I'm No4 in the batting order and in no time we've lost two wickets and I'm walking towards the wicket. As I do, the ambulance parked in the corner of the field starts going 'di-dah, di-dah, di-dah'.
"Holding wasn't bowling, but as I walked to the wicket he came from the outfield and took the ball from the bowler. This was halfway through the over, very irregular. It made me a little nervous.
"I looked out in front of me and there was no one. All the fielders had disappeared. I glanced behind and they were all there. Six bloody slips, two gullys, a deep fine leg, a third man, a leg slip and they're all 30, 40 yards (metres) behind the wicket.
"Then I look at Holding who's gone back 30 yards and is scowling. I still don't believe he's serious but I'm not sure any more. I'm thinking: he's a world-class pro, I'm only an amateur, he can't be intending to do this. Then he starts tearing at full speed and about a second before his arm came over, I thought: bloody hell, he is serious.
"His arm spun, I didn't see a thing, I mean he bowled at 100 miles (161km) per hour. I lost a sense of what was happening, could hear him saying, 'Whoosh man, how's that.' I looked around, the wicketkeeper was throwing the ball up in the air, they were cheering and congratulating him, the umpire was saying 'out' and I was confused. 'I didn't hit that,' I said. 'It was so quick, I didn't even see it. So how could I have hit it?'
"And Holding is all pumped up and, again, two inches from my nose. 'Of course you didn't see it, man, because the wicketkeeper had the ball all the time', and everyone just fell around laughing. The scam had worked perfectly, I'd been done. Lovely, lovely man, Michael Holding."
When Wyman is driving his daughters Katie, Jessie and Matilda to his place in Suffolk, he slows the car through the villages and tells them about the England of his dreams. "See, there's the duck pond and the village green where people played sport, especially cricket. Where one village would play against its neighbour, where the blacksmith went in against the vicar, and where everyone came to watch. It brought the community together."
You can easily picture the scene in the car because he still has an innocent sort of optimism; the years of rock'n'roll didn't take everything and his love of cricket burns as brightly now as it did in his youth. The torch first came to him from his maternal grandmother, Florrie Jeffery, an intelligent and well-read woman who inspired her grandson.
"I came from a slum area of Penge in southeast London and, before going to school, my grandmother had taught me to recite the alphabet backwards. She went into service at the age of 13 and worked in a big house in Upper Sydenham which happened to be next door to the legendary cricketer W.G. Grace. That's where she got her love for the game. During World War II, I was sent to live in my gran's house to ease the pressure on my mum. Later she used to watch the cricket with me on this six-inch black-and-white television - or I used to watch with her, rather."
He liked it at his gran's house because, as the eldest of six, it wasn't easy in his own house. For their once-a-week bath, he would bring the zinc tub from the back yard, his mum would boil the water and then wash all six in turn. By the time she got to Bill the water was no longer hot or clean.
He was one of three boys from a class of 52 in Penge who made it to grammar school but he was not allowed to forget from where he had come. "At the grammar school I was desperate to play cricket but I couldn't get any coaching and I didn't have the gear. I didn't get a chance in the school first team, nor the second or third team. Cricket was for the richer boys from Orpington and all around there, the boys who were the best dressed, the most well spoken."
He and his friend John Blagden worked as scorers for the Lloyds Bank cricket team that played at Beckenham and when they had rustled up enough money they went to their first Test match at Lord's. Sixty years later it is still vivid to him.
Wyman brought his love for cricket to the Rolling Stones. "I was lucky, Mick (Jagger) and Charlie (Watts) were great cricket fans as well. No matter where we were, we followed England's Test matches. On tour I would read books about cricket, the older the better."
In the midst of all the attention on Wyman's many love affairs, his passion for cricket was the only one that remained beneath the radar. "The people who interviewed the Rolling Stones weren't interested in that. What they wanted was the music and your hair and what clothes you were wearing and why didn't you go on the roundabout at the end of the TV show Sunday Night at the London Palladium, and who pissed at the garage after the gig in Romford.
"They wanted controversy, to have a go at the Stones, and that was how it was through our entire career. But, in a way, I was glad of that: people don't know all of your private life, thank God. There was a little bit that was still private, still yours."
BEFORE the Bunbury cricket club there was the Eric Clapton XI, before that just a friendship between English and Clapton and a shared love for cricket. Clapton's interest wasn't like Wyman's, he didn't have the archivist's fascination with history but he loved the game, especially the spirit of Botham. In 1986, English suggested to Clapton that he start his own team. "You organise it, David," Clapton replied, "and I'll be there."
To further enthuse Clapton, English took him to Lord's to watch England.
They wanted to get into the pavilion if they could but, without a tie, Clapton was refused entry. English called up his pal Botham, told him of the problem and even though Botham was padded and just a wicket or two away from batting for his country, he came down to the door and presented Clapton with his England tie.
The friendship survived longer than the tie and Botham became a regular on Bunbury match days. It was common for English to take friends to Worcester to see Botham play. Clapton, George Harrison, Elton John and Wyman all made the journey, but it happened that Botham was having one of those runs at the crease when he was not able to put a decent score together.
A few days before Worcestershire were due to play Essex in a Sunday match that Clapton intended to attend, the guitarist tried to motivate his friend. "Tell you what, Beefy, if you score a century on Sunday, I'll play live in a pub of your choice after the game," he said. Botham battered Essex, 125 off 70 balls. No one saw it coming, Clapton hadn't brought his guitar, but that was solved by Botham remembering the gift he'd received from Clapton after the victorious Ashes tour of 1986-87. The Fender Stratocaster was removed from the wall of his home in Worcestershire and Clapton went in search of an amplifier in Worcester town centre late on a Sunday afternoon. He found a music shop that was still open and watched as the assistant looked at his credit card, then looked at him, then back at the name on the card. The assistant asked his customer to wait while he made a call to the credit card company. Eventually the amplifier and guitar were united at Botham's chosen pub in the Worcestershire countryside.
"Do you mind if I plug this in?" Clapton said to the landlord and, because Botham was there, that was OK. Clapton began to play, the pub began to fill - the players from both teams, locals who just happened to get lucky - and the last word on the evening came from Keith Fletcher, the England and Essex player. "That Eric Clapton," he told his team-mates, "is not bad on the guitar."
Wyman was there when, on July 11, 1989, the Eric Clapton XI passed away: "We were playing at Penn Street, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire. Eric had a big tour of Japan coming up, his manager Roger Forrester was wicketkeeper and he and Eric were a bit nervous about an injury. I was in the slips with Eric and every time someone snicked a ball, Eric would dodge out of the way. I said, 'Eric, you're not even trying.' He said, 'I've got to watch the fingers, got Japan coming up.' But I said, 'Well, we got to try, we got to go for it, that's what we're here for.'
"It must have got to him because he went for the next ball and it knocked his finger. He groaned, held up his broken finger, and there were shouts of 'ice bucket, ice bucket'. You could see the finger was pulled right back. Eric walked towards the pavilion, so concerned about his broken finger that he didn't feel the bee land on his other hand and sting him.
"We heard the second set of screams. What's up now? 'A bee has stung my other hand.' It swelled and Eric's sitting there with his hands in ice buckets and the rest of us roaring with laughter.
"We're still laughing when the game resumes and the next ball comes flying down the wicket, takes a bad bounce and hits Roger Forrester right on the forehead, knocking him out. Eric decided that maybe having his own cricket team wasn't the best thing and the team became the Bunbury XI. Of course, Eric still plays with the Bunburys."
Wyman's greatest day in the Bunbury shirt came on May 6, 1995, in a match to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World WarII. It was played at the Oval and the match was televised live by Sky Sports. Joanna Lumley opened the bowling for the Bunburys and Wyman became the first man to take a hat-trick in a televised match at the Oval.
Gary Lineker was first to go. "It was his first ball. He was used to hitting 60s and 80s, so he was rightly pissed off. Then Trevor McDonald went. And the last one was Charlie Colville, the Sky cricket commentator, and everyone was happy with that. I was man of the match. It's one of the things I love about cricket: the people. I haven't met many people in cricket that I didn't like. There were a couple that were a bit dodgy. Imran Khan wasn't the nicest person in the world, I must say. But few and far between, and I enjoyed every minute I spent among them."
After the Oval hat-trick, Wyman thought he'd be clever and bow out. But he could no more leave cricket than he could kick the StMoritz habit and, of course, he was sucked back in. He turned up in Cranleigh that Sunday, not even kidding himself that it would be the last. They had a fine lunch before play and during the habitual auction they put up a bat signed by the great Australian Don Bradman.
It made Wyman think of Watts, perhaps his best friend from the Rolling Stones days. How he and Charlie talked cricket in far-flung places and, when the touring was over, Charlie started collecting cricket memorabilia. He has quite a collection now and Wyman, trying to remember when his birthday fell, thought the Bradman bat would make a fine gift. Typically, he worked out how far he would go in the bidding.
He decided to go to two or three grand, but he didn't even get close. The bat went to Waters for pound stg. 20,000.
You win some, you lose some. That afternoon, when the match began, Wyman's team was being made to look laughable by the style of Ramprakash's batting. One of the finest English batsmen of his generation, Ramprakash was hitting sixes or fours on almost every ball. Then, four months short of his 72nd birthday, along came Wyman. On his third ball, he bowled his trademark slow and looping delivery. Ramprakash seemed to go for it but missed, the ball crashed into the stumps and the Surrey superstar was walking towards the pavilion.
"Afterwards I met him and said, 'Hey man, thanks for that.'
"He just smiled at me and I didn't have the impression that he had given me a present. I mean, people have been trying to get him out for years. I don't think he gives presents."
And so old Bill Wyman, who got to be a cricketer in his 50s, rolls on to the next rendezvous: the Bunburys play an Eddie Jordan XI at Stowe House, near Silverstone, early next month. He supposes he'll have to be there; he's got a reputation to defend, a passion to satisfy. To that, who could say no?
The Sunday Times
AuthorTopic: Perfect pitch for a bowling Stone (Read 294 times)
February 15, 2006, 07:53:04 AM