BY TONY GREIG
One of the many wonderful things about being a professional cricketer is having the chance to travel the world and meet people that you might otherwise never have known. So, when I started to think about what might be appropriate for this foreword, I was intrigued by the list of people that John has persuaded to talk about the game. I haven’t met all of them by any means and, of the few I have, some only in passing.
Nonetheless, I could easily write at length here about Prince Philip, Buckingham Palace and the corgis; Michael Parkinson and World Series Cricket; Tim Rice and his generosity; and many others in the book’s 20-strong line-up. But that is all best left for another time and another place. So I’ll restrict myself to just the one story, even if it does revolve around someone who is only in the book ‘second hand!’
I first met the Rolling Stones, including Bill Wyman, in Trinidad when one of the England team spotted Mick Jagger sitting in the crowd through binoculars. It wasn’t difficult because he was wearing pink pyjamas! So we sent the 12th man over to invite him to come into the dressing room at the close of play. To do this, he had to come into the Members’ section at the Queen’s Park Oval and, not surprisingly, there were one or two complaints about his dress. So, when we invited him to have a drink again the next day, we asked him not to wear his pyjamas, but to dress properly. When he appeared, he was dressed all in pink again, but this time it was a pink satin suit, with pink shoes and a pink stetson. The suit probably cost as much as a motor car. What a performer!
So, what am I doing writing this foreword? You may well ask. As a player, and subsequently as a commentator, I’ve always felt that there has been something special about the relationship we have with cricket lovers of every kind, including those that you can enjoy reading about in Cricket Wonderful Cricket.
I originally arrived in Sussex from South Africa in 1965, but it was probably another four or five years before I became aware of JD, as the Sussex boys soon labelled him, when he started to cover some of our matches for BBC Radio Brighton. Stanley Allen, a Brighton solicitor, was the original and ‘senior’ commentator, but we gradually began to see more and more of this cricket-mad NatWest banker.
Over the years, JD became almost an honorary member of the Sussex squad; travelling with us to away matches, bowling in the nets, perching in the dressing room and taking his fair share of the sometimes cruel humour on offer. To be quite honest, he talked a far better game than he played. His military medium should have been court-martialled. And he still claims to have taught me all I know about cricket commentary! I don’t think so.
It was in the early seventies that he came to do a pre-match interview with me at my flat overlooking the Hove County Ground. After the usual round of cricket questions, he suddenly asked me why I hadn’t bought a house! And that kicked off my first venture into the property market. My then wife and I found a place we liked, he organised the finance, and soon we were living in a home of our own.
And, for forty years or thereabouts, during more than thirty of which we have lived at opposite ends of the globe, we have managed to keep in touch. He has stayed in our home in Sydney and we have stayed at his in London. But a lot less often! Much of the contact nowadays is through the magic of Skype, the internet call system. The problem with this is that he usually wants to chat when I have just got out of bed, bright eyed and clear headed, whereas he is about to stumble in the opposite direction, having normally consumed the best part of a bottle of Rioja…
Which is an appropriate note on which to end this foreword. Cricket, communications, a glass of wine and JD are inseparable. His lifetime love of the game has helped him to produce this splendid book. It’s very different from the usual run of cricket books and all the better for that. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Tony Greig,
Sydney, January, 2011.