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| Brian Close 1931-2015 |
Monday 14 September 2015
So, farewell Brian Close, finally out for 84 - possibly the bravest cricketer of them all
Closey's gone, and, if they play cricket in the after-life (and why wouldn't they?), the Supreme Being has a new short leg to call on. I wrote about the great man's courage in 2013. You can find the article here. Here's what being really, really tough looks like:
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I was watching Channel 4 New to-night and hoping to see a tribute to Brian Close. There was an endless interview between a particularly Uriah Heepish Jon Snow and Sir Peter Hall [ who turned out to be Oriental Genius/Charlatan Ai WeiWei] and then there was a brief reference to the great Close while they rolled the programme titles over the famous video clip.
ReplyDeleteClose's death was particularly poignant on the day after Eoin Morgan took a sickening blow to the head from a bouncer and in spite of his modern helmet and face-guard he was badly shaken up. Michael Holding was faster than Starc.
Brian Close was part of the trio of great Yorkshire cricketers [the other two being Boycott and Illingworth] who did not receive their knighthoods because they did not treat the anal retentives at the MCC with due deference].
Great sportsman.
Indeed - having been brought in as England captain for the last match of a disastrous series against the West Indies, he won six of seven tests as captain, and drew one, and then wasn't appointed as captain by the MCC for a tour of the West Indies because he'd been accused of time-wasting in a Yorkshire match against Warwickshire. As you know, in those days, the MCC chose teams for overseas matches (the teams officially represented the MCC rather than England), so, as you suggest, snobbery did for Closey.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should write a book about the idiocy of sports governing bodies over the last century or so - Cricket, Football, Athletics, Tennis, Rugby Union. I'd buy that.
...as exemplified in the case of the cowardly MCC by the D'Oliveira capitulation. And somehow while the greats of Yorkshire were denied, Cowdrey ended up with a peerage.
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