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

of retreating with an impressive turn of speed towards the square-leg umpire just as the bowler let the ball go. Jack Birkenshaw, who became an umpire after his playing days, once held up play when I was batting against Michael Holding. The problem was that I was stepping to leg to give Holding a good view of the stumps which, hopefully, he would then aim at and hit. But Holding, armed with a new ball, thought there was some sport to be had, and fired bouncer after bouncer at me as I moved further and further away from the pitch. In the end Birkenshaw had to inform the fielding captain that he was moving from square leg and would take up his position on the other side of the wicket, because he believed he was in danger of either being trampled on by me, or being struck on the head by a Holding thunderbolt. A cricket ball hurts, as is a recurring theme amongst the celebrity guests I interview on Saturday lunchtimes on Test Match Special; they all love the game, but many of them were put off playing it because they were hit as youngsters.

      I remember Willey gleefully sending me out to bat as nightwatchman against Hampshire when only a few overs remained in the day, and the great West Indian fast bowler Malcolm Marshall was in full cry. It always took me by surprise, after my time came to pick up my bat and leave the sanctuary of the dressing room, to discover that, against my better judgement, I had actually managed to transport myself to the pitch. Rather like getting from the dentist’s waiting room to his surgery chair, you know you do not want to do it, but something overrides your anxiety and you make the walk. It is hardly surprising that I was particularly hesitant on this occasion, because Marshall bowling at full tilt gave you less than half a second to see the ball, let alone hit it or, more important still, stop it from hitting you.

      I once had the sort of view that money cannot buy when I was at the other end when Marshall was bowling to Gower in a county championship match. From twenty-two yards away it was a wonderful contest, with Marshall’s naturally competitive nature making him strain every sinew to get Gower out. Only from that position – leaning on one’s bat and determined not to leave the non-striker’s crease – can you appreciate the extra time to see the ball that sets batsmen like Gower apart from lesser mortals. Sometimes, having played Marshall defensively off the front foot, Gower would smile up the pitch, nod his head and say, ‘Well bowled.’ Then a graceful flash of the bat would send the next ball flying through point for four, at which Marshall would acknowledge the stroke. It was high-octane stuff with no quarter given, but carried out in an atmosphere of absolute mutual respect. I was almost sorry when Marshall ruthlessly brushed me aside at his first opportunity, because it had been a very special experience.

      To be fair, Marshall and I always got on very well. He apologised whenever he hit me, which I took to be a compliment. On this occasion, a couple of hostile deliveries flew past my nose at high speed, and I could see Willey, the next man to bat, sitting and laughing on the pavilion balcony. Marshall dug another ball in short which fizzed nastily towards my ribs and passed down the leg side to the wicketkeeper. Someone on the field uttered a stifled appeal for caught behind – not much of one, I accept, but enough for a sporting ‘walker’ like me to do the decent thing and give myself out. After all, there must have been a chance that the ball had flicked my glove on the way past.

      There was some surprise amongst the Hampshire fielders when I tucked my bat under my arm and set off for the pavilion. Sam Cook, the umpire, certainly was not expecting it, while Marshall, who had turned and started to walk back to the start of his run-up, could not believe his eyes as I overtook him.

      ‘Where are you going, man?’

      ‘I’m out, Malcolm. A little glove. Well bowled.’

      The mood had changed somewhat on our balcony, and I had not made it to the small gate by the sightscreen when a furious Willey appeared, pulling on his helmet.

      ‘I’ll have you for this,’ he hissed through clenched teeth.

      After taking some nasty blows from Marshall, Willey settled the score in the next match, which was played in the peaceful setting of Chesterfield’s Queen’s Park. It is a beautiful cricket ground, surrounded by trees and with a duck pond at the far end, but it lost all its serenity and calm whenever Michael Holding was bowling for Derbyshire, when it quickly came to resemble a war zone. As it was a local derby there was a decent crowd gathered as I went out to bat, fully padded up from head to toe. The pavilion at Queen’s Park is a wonderful building, with a large balcony running virtually the entire length of its first floor, on which the redundant members of the batting team sit in the open air and watch the game.

      Again, it was one of those surreal journeys to the middle, and I was halfway there when it was rudely interrupted by a recognisable voice shouting from the balcony:

      ‘Oi! You forgot something!’

      I knew it was Willey, and decided to ignore him and stare deter-minedly at the ground, although the cheer from the crowd suggested that something was going 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.