“HE WAS THERE LOOKING LIKE SOMEBODY FROM THE MAFIA…”
Graham Taylor was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on 15 September, 1944. He is a former footballer who played for Grimsby Town before moving to Lincoln City where, in 1972, he switched into management. His time in club management, particularly at Watford, where he was in charge three times, and in his first spell at Aston Villa, was very successful. He also managed Wolverhampton Wanderers after a testing time as manager of England. He is now chairman of Watford FC, a football pundit and was awarded the OBE in 2001 for services to football.
Graham and I meet at the five-star Grove Hotel in Watford, which is set in 300 acres containing, among many other facilities, a championship golf course. Tiger Woods has won a major tournament here and Graham tells me that it is where the England footballers stay before internationals. It is necessary, from time to time, to drag him away from football, such is his deep and continuing involvement in the game, and back to cricket. I soon learn that his father, who’d come up from Westerham in Kent, was the local sports reporter for the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph and that his first sporting love was cricket and Kent.
‘At the end of the road where we lived there was a piece of grass which was Wembley in the winter and Lord’s in the summer, and we played “dads and lads” games on it. The dads were batting and I was bowling to my father. I wanted to bowl leg breaks. I was going to pitch the ball outside his leg stump for it to spin in – but the ball never moved! Next ball, the same thing happens. So he’s giving me the “Come on son, you can do better than that” look. Third ball, he ignores completely because I’ve done nothing so far, but this one turns in and takes his leg stump. He surveys the wreckage, then looks across at the other dads and says, “I’ve been teaching him how to do that for the last fortnight.”
‘He was a big cricket man and a very inventive one. I remember that we used to play Subbuteo, the table football game, but he also created a table-top game of cricket. He cut out little fielders from thickish paper and we would write the name of a player on each piece, all the famous cricketers that I knew then. Then he made wickets and a bat and would roll up the silver paper from a cigarette packet to make a little cricket ball. I suppose we made up the rules as we went along; one was that if the batsman hit the ball and it stopped on a fielder, then he was caught. So many dark winter evenings were spent around the dining room table and it was just another way that my father helped me to develop my love of cricket.’
Having played cricket at Scunthorpe Grammar School, Graham turned out for the local steel works team, Lysaghts, although by then he had abandoned leg spin and become a batsman. ‘I had had no coaching whatsoever but I had got an eye for the ball and I could hit it and get a few runs, so I don’t think I was a bad batter. Nevertheless, it was decided that I should have some coaching and all of a sudden I was taught how to play myself in, whereas previously I had gone in, asked for my guard and if the first ball needed hitting, I hit it. Now I was told by the coach, “No, no, leave that alone, don’t hit that. You could be out. You might not get it right. Leave it, it’s going wide, leave it. Now play yourself in, get the feeling of the pace of the ball, feel of the wicket.” So after that, when I went in, usually first wicket down, I scored 9 or 10 runs and got out. Previously I would have had around 30 runs on the board before getting out. After all this coaching, I was in longer getting my 10 than I had been getting my 30!’
In his first spell as manager at Watford Football Club, Graham started a cricket side that, as part of pre-season training, played against some of the villages around the town. ‘It helped to build a good team spirit – a family ethos – and involved the players and management in the local community.’ And there were some talented performers on the cricket field, not least John Barnes, who played for Watford before moving on to Liverpool. ‘He was a left-handed Garfield Sobers and I was a left-handed Geoffrey Boycott. We used to open the batting and while I was carefully playing myself in, he would hit the ball that needed hitting. Inevitably, when I was on four, he’d be on 40!
‘One game, I was fielding at first slip when the ball rockets towards me off the edge of the bat, comes whoosh and hits me. There were shouts of “Hold on to it!” then “Oh, great catch, boss!”’ Graham clutches his ribs as he re-lives the moment. ‘When it’s our turn to bat, I am opening with John Barnes and the pain suddenly hits me, and I think, “I’ve cracked my rib! Can’t say anything to the footballers, you’ll never live it down.” So I am not going to say a word. But then I make the worst mistake of my life. I walk up to Barnes: “Barnesy, I think I have cracked my rib,” I grimace, “so there are no quick runs today. Not one.” At the start of the second over, he strokes the ball a short way on the off side and straight away he’s running. There’s no time to shout so, instead of saying “No!” I react. I’ve got to run – and, of course, I get run out. To this day I tell him that’s why I sold him to Liverpool. “You ran me out at cricket – I don’t want people like you in my club!”’
When Graham was manager of Lincoln City, he signed a young player called Phil Neale, who was also playing cricket for Worcestershire. He had been to university and had a degree – a 2:2 in Russian. ‘Quite soon after he joined, I had to give him a bit of advice,’ Graham explains. ‘“Now look, Phil, don’t take this the wrong way, but in order for you to make your mark in that dressing room, not only have you got to think like a peasant, you’ve got to act like a peasant and you’ve got to speak like a peasant. Do you get my meaning?” At that time Phil didn’t swear, so I added, “Not one of them speaks Russian unless it’s when they are swearing at you. ”’
Neale’s current role is as the England cricket team’s operations manager. ‘We have kept in touch and sometimes I’ll leave a message on his mobile phone while the team are warming up, saying, “Neale, what the hell are you doing? Your old boss is watching you. You’ve got this wrong or you’re not doing that properly. Look at Strauss over there – he’s taking no notice of you whatsoever, so what the hell are you doing in this set-up?”’
Graham continued playing cricket until August 2007, when he turned out for David English’s charity fund-raising side, The Bunburys. ‘I bowled a bit until the ball was hit back at me and I stupidly used my foot to stop it. That hurt! I had broken one of my metatarsals, a fashionable footballer’s injury as it happens. I was following in the footsteps, if that is the right expression in the circumstances, of players such as Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and David Beckham. While doing the rounds of doctors, specialist and surgeons I was also diagnosed as having damaged my Achilles, so that was the end of my time playing cricket.’
Now he keeps fit by cycling, including taking part in a charity ride from London to Paris. On the cricket front he is happy to continue his enjoyment of the game as a spectator. ‘Although I was originally a Kent man, my county team since I first went to manage Aston Villa in 1987 has been Warwickshire, where I am an executive club member. My only problem used to be that spectators wanted to talk to me about Aston Villa. I don’t blame people for wanting to talk about football but I don’t like discussing it when I’ve gone to watch cricket. When I watch football I’m always a critic. When I watch cricket I’m just a fan. So, for certain games, like Test matches, I get invited in to the Committee Room, where nobody is talking football to you.’
Graham has been an MCC member since the mid-1980s and is an ambassador for Chance to Shine, a charitable organisation that is bringing competitive cricket – and its educational benefits – back to the country’s state schools. ‘I was asked to become involved. I liked what they are doing and what they have achieved. I’ve already been to three or four schools, talking to the youngsters about football as well as cricket.’ At one such school visit he was described as being as boisterous and excitable as any of the children with whom he was playing cricket and had a word – and a smile – for everyone.
On television, Graham watches more cricket than football, mainly because he still sees so much football ‘live’. He also listens to the BBC’s Test Match Special when he is on the move. ‘I like listening to Geoffrey Boycott. He does have an opinion, and it is overstated now and again, and sometimes he says things that are obviously wrong. I don’t dislike him for that because I have a laugh and I think, “Yeah, go on Geoffrey – pull the other leg.” Jonathan Agnew is another man I like to listen to. He is opinionated as well but I think you probably have to be opinionated and to have your views. And in the past I so enjoyed Brian Johnston, who was part and parcel of everybody’s cricketing life and brought so much warmth and humour to the game.
‘I’ve always liked the Sky team,’ he adds, ‘particularly commentator David Lloyd.’ The respect, it seems, is mutual. Lloyd once remarked, ‘Graham Taylor loves his cricket, but he was there looking like somebody from the Mafia. He was all in black, with a yellow tie and dark glasses, as if he was on his way to do an audition for the Blues Brothers. Do I not like that!’ Upon hearing this Graham says gleefully, ‘He’s got me! And that’s what I like about him, he’s capable of bringing himself down as well as other people, and I like to think I am the same. So I like the Sky team generally; they do a good job. Certain people take to broadcasting naturally. David Gower has got it and so has Gary Lineker. They have great delivery and cheeky grins. They have everything.’
Graham is a big fan of Test cricket, despite feeling that there is too much of it played all over the world. ‘It’s 12 months of the year now. Players are exhausted and likely to pick up more injuries. People who have “proper” jobs may not understand the stresses and strains involved; it is difficult to relate to when you have a full-time job. Take Andrew Strauss, the England captain. He decided to miss the Bangladesh tour early in 2010, for which he was heavily criticised by some commentators. But he came back refreshed to lead the side and it also gave valuable experience to Alistair Cook, who took over as captain. It is such an easy thing for people of my age to question how you can ever pull out when you are the England captain. It is like me saying, “Could I have said no to the England manager’s job?” Well, realistically, if I had known it would have come up 10 years later, I probably would have said no at that time, because I think I would have been better at it later on.’
Graham has quite a problem with standards of behaviour in all sports, not just cricket, and feels that there are far too many attempts, often successful, to simply cheat. Despite this, he has a confession to make. ‘I have cheated at cricket once in my life. Once when I was batting, a delivery flew off the edge of my bat and was caught by the wicketkeeper. I just stood there and rubbed the side of my face and was given not out, and to this day I know I cheated. I have not done anything like that since and I am not trying to make myself out to be anything special. I just think you should walk. I don’t blame the umpire for not seeing it, for not giving you out, and sometimes he will give you out when you are not. I think his job will steadily be made easier through the use of technology but in principle, it starts with you playing the game.
‘I have no time for footballers who deliberately cheat. I have no time for cricketers who deliberately cheat. And all these wonderful rugby players who play the game and are good to the referees, I have no time for them either when they are in the scrum and they can do whatever they like and still think they are gentlemen. I love it when we beat the Australians. Although I love the way they approach the game and their desire to win, I also know they will cheat on you because they take it to the nth degree. That is why I like to beat them. But not by cheating on them – it has got to be fair and square.’
As well as indulging in his love of Test cricket whenever possible, Graham also enjoys watching the Twenty20 format. ‘It’s the other end of the spectrum from Test cricket and is a great attraction for those people who want to come in and see a match from start to finish in the space of just a few hours. It’s what the younger people want; they want a result. And if it attracts some of the non-cricket people that you want to introduce into the game, then perhaps some of them will go on to watch Test and county cricket.’
I ask Graham to name his three favourite players, which soon gets him reminiscing. ‘Miss Parkinson, who was my teacher when I was at Infants School, knew I loved cricket and she had a television, which we didn’t. In 1953, when I was just eight, she invited me round after school – you just imagine this today – to watch the final Test match at the Oval between England and Australia. I was in her front room, watching Denis Compton hit the boundary that won England the Test match and the Ashes, and I have had him as my number one ever since.
‘When I was England manager I met Colin Cowdrey, something my Kent-loving father would have envied me for. I remember Colin telling me how to bat against the West Indian fast bowlers. What you have to remember, he told me, when you go out against them, is that initially 80 to 90 per cent of your runs will be behind the wicket, because they are that fast. And they take one fast bowler off and another one replaces him. You just hope that, eventually, they will get tired and that there will be a bad ball that you will be able to hook for the occasional boundary. Colin was a marvellous man and a marvellous batsman.
‘And there are so many more to choose from. I look at Kevin Pietersen in the present day and think, “What a batsman.” I go back to Bill Edrich: what a batsman he was. But Ricky Ponting has got to be in my top three in the world. I think he is such a competitive batsman and he delivers when he has to deliver. When I see him coming in, I always assume that the chances are he will get a century.’
Graham is also a huge fan of Alan Knott – but was he better than Godfrey Evans? – ‘Probably not as a wicketkeeper but certainly as a batsman. But should he be in my top three? This is very difficult. I need to think about bowlers now. I got to know Fred Trueman very well. He had this personality and character about him, you know. He was like one of the old-fashioned footballers. They got fit by playing football; he got fit by playing cricket. He had a few pints of beer, because he needed them after he had been bowling all day!
‘I think Brian Statham was very underrated. He was a much quieter man in many respects and probably a bit more of a gentleman as well. I think that the combination of Trueman and Statham was formidable. But then you’ve got Glenn McGrath, who was probably the best bowler in the world.’ He pauses, as if considering every single bowler he has ever seen, before adding, ‘I have to go for McGrath. As I said before, whether I like it or not and I can’t particularly say that I do, I think Australians at times are out of order in the way that they behave but boy, do they know how to win. So I am going to go for Compton, Ponting and McGrath. I am going for two Australians and people will dislike me for it but I’ve simply got to.’
As our time is nearly over I ask Graham for a final thought on the game. ‘There is one thing I have said to myself I want to do before I die. I want to hit a cover drive along the ground for four. I just want to do that again, even if I go out on my own and get my grandson to toss a ball so I can just do that. I want to have that feel of having my feet in the right position, of the bat coming through in the right way, going through the ball, not slogging it, with the bat finishing in the right position, just holding my stance and watching the ball as it crosses the boundary. Then I will drop dead. That would suit me. I will have ended my life perfectly.’
On that interesting albeit somewhat sombre note, we have to finish our chat, one that leaves me feeling a touch concerned for his grandson when the time comes. Meanwhile Graham, totally unperturbed, leaves to prepare himself for Watford’s match that evening at Vicarage Road against Crystal Palace.