The world is a shocking place, full of daily tragedy and injustice. But in the last week, nothing pierced The Spin to the heart like the death of the great Bob Willis – at 70, gone well before his time.
On the face of it, this makes sense: Bob Willis was a giant of English cricket. The Spin is too young to remember his playing career, but so definitive was his defining moment that to detail it is almost cliche. With England on desolation row – 1-0 down in the 1981 Ashes series and with Australia needing a paltry 130 to win the second Test – he dared their batsmen to stare into the vacuum of his eyes, and they could not. In 15.1 overs, he returned career-best figures of 8-43, hauling his team home by 18 runs to complete the single greatest endeavour in English cricket history – for all Ian Botham’s million-dollar bashing to set it up.
Of course, Willis was about a lot more than that. In 1976 he straightened his run and quickened his approach, precipitating a scintillating period in which he bowled England to a rare victory in India, then destroyed Australia to help reclaim the Ashes. When he finished playing Test cricket in 1984, his 325 wickets put him at the top of England’s all-time list and, in the 35 years since, only three men – Ian Botham, James Anderson and Stuart Broad – have bettered that tally.
Willis also represented more than sporting excellence, a passionate iconoclast who trusted himself to do the things that only he knew best. As a teenager, he let his hair hang low and gave himself the middle name “Dylan” in homage to the greatest Bob of them all, nurturing the fascination for the remainder of his life; so much older then, he’s younger than that now.
His action – open chested, ball coming from back pockets, Bette Davis-style – was imitated in back gardens, front grasses and school playgrounds across Britain. Though he only grasped its idiosyncrasies when watching himself on television, he nevertheless helped establish the principle that good technique is technique that works.
Willis was a doughty batsman too, facing down opposing fast bowlers and retiring with more Test not-outs than anyone else, obduracy he imposed off the pitch too. Even in the aftermath of his finest hour, when anyone else would have been overcome by exhilaration and emotion, Willis refused to dwell on his achievement, instead opting to criticise “the standard of journalism in this country”. He didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
On retiring from the game, Willis moved into the commentary box. But his laconic style – his inability to talk falsely, blow the idiot wind or pretend that he just didn’t see – was not universally appealing, and he was eventually dropped for younger faces, before finding the perfect niche for his principles alongside Charles Colvile on Sky’s close-of-play show, The Verdict.
Like all normal abnormal people, The Spin takes intense pleasure in watching the team it supports suffering – misery is compelling, misery of those we know most compelling of all. So the joy of yet another England humiliation was elevated by the anticipation of Willis deconstructing it with equal measures of love and disgust; occasionally he used a little too much force, but too serious to fool, he just wanted to be on the side that’s winning.
The way sportsmen play tends to reflect the way they are, and Willis was no different. Talking as he bowled – off his long run every time – good and bad he defined these terms, with pinpoint precision and punishing probity. The “Well, Charles” introduction to his invective – scat, more or less – became a simple yet sublime catchphrase, and would immediately be followed by a meticulously structured argument that ended several minutes and bodies later, in a blaze of raging glory.
Much as this will be missed, though, a television programme losing its star – the only tangible consequence for those not lucky enough to know Willis personally – cannot explain melancholy mood. Rather, Willis’s sad passing reminds us of sport’s true nature. Though we are drawn to it by others, we stay with it because it is us, so entwined with our lives as to be inseparable, a never-ending story that roots us in the past and flings us into the future. Sport is personal and sport is immortal, its song always sung, its deeds forever young.
As a consequence, we build profound relationships with those who bestow it upon us. Over hours, sessions, days, series and seasons, we watch cricketers and broadcasters developing, maturing and ageing. We become familiar with their stylistic quirks and verbal tics, see them in elation and desolation, introduce them to our families. We know them.
Except we don’t know them at all. Anyone who’s lost someone close to them and anyone who’s experienced the awful process of death, of waiting for the breath that doesn’t come, understands the unfathomable finality of it all and how quickly the world moves on. Which is to say that Bob Willis the cricketer and Bob Willis the broadcaster does not constitute Bob Willis the father and Bob Willis the husband, which is to say that when we have feelings thinking about Bob Willis we are having feelings about ourselves: about the passage of time, about how we’ve spent our time, about running out of time. He not busy being born is busy dying.
Thanks for everything, your Bobness. Go well.
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