The Shorter Wisden 2013 (47 page)

Born in Settle in the Dales – not a fertile area of recruitment for Yorkshire – Wilson came to the county’s attention in the most startling manner imaginable, bowling Len
Hutton in a benefit match between the town club and a Yorkshire XI in 1953. Hutton invited him to a trial and, by 1957, Wilson was taking his initial steps as a first-team player. The following
summer, he was the beneficiary of a row between Ronnie Burnet, the new captain, and Wardle. When Wardle was ignominiously sacked, Wilson was handed a frontline spinning role, and in 1959
Burnet’s shrewd management of a group of talented Second Eleven graduates bore fruit with Yorkshire’s first outright Championship since 1946. Wilson contributed 51 wickets.

Standing a fraction over 6ft 3in, he ran in off five easy paces and, after a prodigious leap, bowled with a classically high action. “He expected to take a wicket with every ball,”
Sharpe remembered, “and his eyes would nearly pop out.” Wilson’s line was impeccable and he was an acknowledged master of flight. “He was not a big spinner of the ball,
although he could when the pitch was turning,” said Sharpe. Now led by the unrelated Vic Wilson, Yorkshire retained the title in 1960, with Don taking 72 wickets, and there were further
Championship successes in 1962, 1963 and a hat-trick from 1966 to 1968. Wilson featured prominently in each of these, but his most productive year – 109 wickets at under 14 in all matches
– was in the last of those title-winning summers. The Gillette Cup was also won in 1965 and 1969. There were occasional flourishes with the bat, too, notably a one-handed effort with a broken
thumb that guided Yorkshire to an unlikely run-chase at New Road in 1961. And in 1967 he won the
Sunday People
trophy for the most sixes in a season. He was also a fine fielder, especially
swooping to his left at midwicket – “the Settle windmill,” according to Sharpe.

Wilson’s love of the stage was cemented in 1961, when he first encountered the Black and White Minstrels in Scarborough. Already familiar to television audiences, they sang traditional
American minstrel songs, backed by a glamorous female dance troupe. Several members were cricket enthusiasts. “They loved cricket and we loved the dancers,” said Sharpe. “It was
reciprocal trading.” Wilson and Sharpe spent the first half of the winter of 1963 on the road with the Minstrels, working as prompters and backstage factotums. They introduced the repertoire
to their team-mates, and the evening performances quickly became as much a part of that Yorkshire side as the Championships. Fred Trueman summed up the mood: “This is my type of music, not
this bloody rock’n’roll business.”

International recognition – for his cricket – came in India in 1963-64, when Wilson played in all five Tests and took nine wickets. He also appeared in the fourth and the fifth
matches of the 1970 series against the Rest of the World, claiming four wickets, and was selected for the winter’s Ashes tour under Ray Illingworth. With Derek Underwood established,
opportunities were limited, and he assumed the role of social secretary, helping to bridge the touring party’s north–south divide so successfully that he was retained after a hand
injury looked like ending his tour. He was given a chance in the First Test of the series in New Zealand that followed. His Test record was 11 wickets at 42.

The early 1970s were an unhappy time. Too much work in the nets in Australia caused a fault with his bowling (later diagnosed by Fred Titmus from a photograph), and for a while he suffered the
yips. The Yorkshire vice-captaincy also brought conflict with the new skipper, Geoff Boycott. Wilson retired from first-class cricket in August 1974, with 1,189 wickets at 21 in 422 matches. He
took 100 wickets in a season five times; only three bowlers have taken more wickets for Yorkshire since the war. But his best figures were for MCC: eight for 36 against Ceylon in Colombo in
1969-70. He scored 6,230 runs at 14, his only century coming against South Zone at Hyderabad on that 1963-64 tour.

Wilson was reinvigorated by two years of captaining Lincolnshire, and began a career in coaching that took him to South Africa, where he was head coach at the Wanderers and undertook some
pioneering work in the townships. That led, in 1977, to a phone call from E. W. Swanton, offering him the job as head coach at Lord’s. He thought Swanton must be mixing him up with a Wilson
who had played for Kent, but refrained from saying so. Although Ian Botham had been a recent graduate of the MCC Young Cricketers, the coaching system run by Len Muncer was haphazard. Aided by the
opening of the indoor school, Wilson embarked on a revolution, and alumni that included Phil DeFreitas, Phil Tufnell, Norman Cowans, Dermot Reeve and Paul Nixon were testament to his success.

DeFreitas had particular reason to be grateful: “When I went for my trial for the groundstaff, I remember that Phil Tufnell and I were told at the end that we hadn’t made it,”
he recalled. “But Don had seen something in us, and demanded that we were selected. If it hadn’t been for Don, we wouldn’t have got on the staff.” He also quietly looked
after their interests. “We were very often excused the usual groundstaff boys’ duties when the big matches were on,” said DeFreitas. “Don would do his utmost to see that we
were somewhere else playing cricket. He told you things straight, in black and white, but we could always have a laugh as well. He was an enormous figure in my life.”

Emerging players from overseas were welcomed, too. An 18-year-old Martin Crowe arrived on a scholarship from New Zealand in 1981. “I remember Don’s eyeballs popping out and his wild
enthusiasm for cricket: ‘Now then Crowie, I’m ready for ya, lad,’ as he marked out his run-up.” Between puffs on his small cigar, Wilson would dispense precious nuggets of
advice. “He taught me about hundreds,” Crowe recalls. “‘No one remembers 60, lad, only big hundreds,’ he said.”

His house and garden, just behind the Mound Stand, were a popular party venue during Test matches and after one-day finals. Wilson left Lord’s at the end of 1990 and took charge of sport
at Ampleforth College, back in his native county. He wrote an entertaining autobiography,
Mad Jack
(a nickname first bestowed by Burnet), and to his huge delight became president of the
Yorkshire Players’ Association. His former spinning colleague Geoff Cope provided perhaps the most fitting epitaph: “I have never found anyone with so much enthusiasm for the
game.”

WILSON
, JOHN STUART, died on July 2, aged 80. Stuart Wilson, a fast-medium bowler from the Brechin and Forfarshire club, played 16 first-class matches for
Scotland. A Manchester-born plumber, he made his debut against Lancashire at Old Trafford in 1957, and started well by dismissing the county’s openers, Alan Wharton and Jack Dyson.
Wilson’s best figures of five for 51 came against MCC at The Grange in 1959, while three years later he took four wickets in each innings at Greenock as Scotland won their annual encounter
with Ireland.

WIMALADARMA
, WELIWITAGODA RAKITHA DILSHAN, died on September 29, aged 27, after watching Sri Lanka’s World Twenty20 match against West Indies on
television with some friends earlier in the evening. Some reports suggested drugs may have been involved; one of the other party guests also died. Rakitha Wimaladarma was an off-spinner who claimed
53 wickets, mainly for Saracens, in Sri Lanka’s domestic first-class competitions in 2009-10, including a career-best eight for 68 against the Army; a few weeks later he took 23 wickets in
successive matches against Moors and Tamil Union.

WOODHEAD,
DEREK JOHN, died on July 29, 2011, aged 76. After scoring an unbeaten century in only his second Sheffield Shield match for Western Australia in
1958-59, Woodhead looked to have a promising career ahead of him as an opener – but after three failures at the beginning of the next season, he was dropped permanently. His thesis
Fundamentals and Techniques of Batting in Australia
earned him the award of his Teachers’ Higher Certificate in 1969, and is held at the J. S. Battye Library of West Australian
History in Perth. He coached the Australian fast bowler Mick Malone and, later, Greg Shipperd, who opened the batting for both Western Australia and Tasmania.

WOOLNOUGH
, BRIAN CHRISTOPHER, died on September 18, aged 63. When Brian Woolnough was lured away from his job as chief football writer of
The Sun
to
become chief sportswriter of the
Daily Star
in 2000, a significant part of the attraction was the chance to write about a wider variety of sports, especially cricket; he also became a
familiar face on Sky TV. He was an enthusiastic fast bowler for the Claygate club in Surrey, putting his imposing frame to good use, and retained a love of the game through his years as one of the
most high-profile sportswriters in Fleet Street. He was particularly proud of having batted with Rohan Kanhai in a charity match at Lord’s. After joining the
Star
, Woolnough became a
regular in Test-match press boxes in the summer, especially relishing England’s 2005 Ashes triumph. The Oval Test was an annual highlight – on a day with no writing duties, he would
join friends and family for a companionable time in the stands.

ZAHIR ALAM
, who died of liver failure on May 30, aged 42, was a leading light with the bat for Assam in the Ranji Trophy for several seasons. Against Tripura
at Guwahati in 1991-92 he scored 257, and put on 475 with Lalchand Rajput (239) for the second wicket – then a world record, although it has been surpassed three times since.

Wisden
always welcomes information about those who might be included: please send details to
[email protected]
, or to John
Wisden & Co, 13 Old Aylesfield, Golden Pot, Alton, Hampshire GU34 4BY.

THE ENGLAND TEAM IN 2012

S
TEPHEN
B
RENKLEY

Redemption took its time. But when it arrived, the satisfaction almost erased the tumultuous 50 weeks that had come before it – almost, but not quite, because the drama
surrounding England throughout 2012, both human and sporting, was relentless, intense and compelling.

The wholly unexpected Test victory in India with which they ended their year was a triumph of plotting and redesign. And it had two overwhelming features: the rehabilitation of a team who had
grown dangerously accustomed to losing, and the reintegration of a player, Kevin Pietersen, who had come perilously close to the end of his international career.

England’s batting was now refreshed in body and mind. The bowling attack, led by the superb Jimmy Anderson and buttressed by the admirable Graeme Swann, appeared to have regained its old
verve. Perhaps the most significant aspect of all, however, was the galvanic start provided by the 2–1 win over the Indians to Alastair Cook’s tenure as official Test captain. He was
exemplary.

Appointed formally, all but routinely, after Andrew Strauss’s retirement on August 29, Cook scored centuries in each of the first three Tests of the series, tailoring his innings to the
demands of the team. His authority burgeoned with his form, and the respect he commanded was clear. Party to the dropping of his vice-captain, Stuart Broad, he demonstrated the ruthless pragmatism
required of all leaders.

When England lost the First Test at Ahmedabad, their seventh defeat of an increasingly wretched year, it was merely a continuation of an abysmal inability to adapt to the needs of conditions in
Asia. Yet by the time hands were shaken on a draw during the final afternoon of the Fourth Test at Nagpur, Cook had helped deliver a seamless transformation. The series-levelling win at Mumbai
already ranked among England’s most glorious anywhere, a model example of beating opponents at their own game. To travel then to Kolkata and fashion another comprehensive victory was the mark
of a dressing-room genuinely at ease with itself again – if not always with the world outside.

It was Cook’s team now. Strauss’s decision to quit all cricket, which few had seen coming, suddenly assumed a retrospective air of inevitability, as is often the way of such matters.
Not that it should diminish a jot Strauss’s contribution as England’s captain: an outstanding leader and a man of honour, he will be fondly recalled. In truth, Cook had two teams, since
he retained the captaincy of the one-day side he had gained in 2011. England’s rapid advance in that sphere – they won their first ten completed one-day internationals, before sharing
the home series with South Africa – was as marked as their Test deterioration pre-India. This reunification had barely taken place when it was followed by the separation of senior management
duties.

England were restored by the win in Mumbai, which eased considerably the announcement of their decision to divide the role of head coach. Andy Flower retained the official title of team
director, but would now oversee the Test squad only. The day-to-day affairs of the two limited-overs sides were put in the hands of Ashley Giles, Test selector, successful director of cricket at
Warwickshire, and sometime Ashes hero.