‘CLIVE FLUNG HIMSELF TO HIS RIGHT, HIS HAND MOVED OUT IN THAT CONCERTINA WAY AND HE TOOK WHAT WAS THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY CATCH.’
Sir Victor Blank was born in Stockport, Lancashire on 9 November 1942. He is a businessman, who became the youngest partner in the law firm Clifford-Turner before joining the merchant bank Charterhouse, where he later became chairman and chief executive. He has been chairman of three major companies – Trinity Mirror, GUS and Lloyds TSB – and a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He is now a senior adviser to the US private equity group TPG Capital and was knighted in 1999 for services to the financial industry. Among a number of charitable involvements, he is chairman of Wellbeing of Women.
I am sitting in Victor’s office, which is situated little more than a cover drive from Claridge’s Hotel, in the heart of London’s Mayfair. Beside his desk is a small table bearing an array of cricketing and celebrity photos and caricatures; among them I spot David Frost and John Major. Victor is a man who loves cricket so much that he has his own cricket pitch in the grounds of his Oxfordshire home at Chippinghurst.
‘More than 20 years ago I looked at this wonderful river meadow that I owned. It was flat and looked as though it could be made into be a cricket pitch,’ he recalls. ‘I went into Oxford where I saw the Christ Church College groundsman, Morris Honey, and asked him if he would come out and have a look at this field. So he came and saw that the grass was eight feet high. I asked him, “Can I turn that into a cricket pitch?” and Morris said that I could. “To start with, you need to chop it down, then cut it and roll it and eventually you will have a decent grass field. After that we can do some work on the strip itself.”
‘We started with a local farmer’s threshing machine that chopped the tall stalks down and then kept cutting and rolling the whole field. Then Morris came in with some loam and topsoil, and dressed it and did all kinds of clever stuff. But, for about five or six years it was a very flat, but very dead, wicket. And then Morris sadly passed away. He was succeeded by a groundsman called Dick Sula, who looks after the pitches at the Parks used by the University in Oxford. We decided to do some real work to improve the wicket. Dick took about nine inches out of the strip, put in a proper foundation, then loam and then topsoil, and according to the guys who play on it now, it’s as good as most first-class wickets.
‘But because the ground is really part of the back garden, it is not suitable to open it for public events. So my games are all private cricket matches. But the ground has a nice ambience and it seems to work. We always try to make our events a family day because we always hated going out to a corporate event at the weekend without the children. There are lots of facilities, so you see loads of kids with their faces painted, queuing up for ice creams, and on the bouncy castles and that sort of thing.
‘We put on both charity and benefit matches every season for the Lord’s Taverners and Wellbeing, and for professional cricketers. I have held benefit matches for Mike Atherton and for John Emburey, and some of the other Lancashire and Middlesex players over the years. I thought the idea of doing a Taverners cricket match would work. I was, at that time, chairman of a merchant bank in the City, and I believed that it would be quite easy to get a six-a-side competition running. If the charity brought along some celebrities and also some great cricketers, and if the banks brought their team and put something into the pot, and if I threw in the pitch, the marquee and the lunch, then we would raise some decent money. It’s a formula that has worked. One of the nice things about the City is that I only have to make five phone calls every year and I’ve got the five teams – the sixth being mine. People just like doing it. They can contribute to the Taverners and have a nice day out in the country at the same time.’
From the charity’s point of view, Victor’s event is a successful and enjoyable occasion. But it’s a modest affair compared to the match played as a substantial fund-raiser for the charity Wellbeing of Women [WOW]. It is a misconception that Victor became involved with WOW because of his own mother’s death. His commitment to the charity, of which he is now the chairman, began rather differently.
‘It is a very happy coincidence, because she died of ovarian cancer when I was 12, and Wellbeing has done a lot of research into the disease and its causes. My becoming involved, though, was wholly down to David Frost. There was a big fund-raising Lunch for Life being held at the Savoy that Princess Diana was attending. Off the back of that lunch, the charity wanted to raise a lot of money and David went to see a number of people, including me. I remember getting the call late one rainy, November afternoon. David was just round the corner, and asked to come and see me. He arrived in a very benign mood, complete with large cigar, to explain that he was raising money and could we at Charterhouse help? He was looking for quite chunky sums – more than we gave to charity – but I told him I could lend him a cricket pitch. David is an old friend who, interestingly, had looked at Chippinghurst before we bought it. He had thought of buying it and so he knew the house. I explained to him that I had this cricket pitch and why didn’t we raise money for Wellbeing by having a pro-am cricket match? He could get some great players and I would go around the City and get some money out of my chums to play with the greats. So he said, “That’s a wonderful idea. How much do you think you’d raise?” And I said, “I have no idea, but let’s assume it will be £25, 000.” So off he went.
‘Three months later, I called David and reminded him of our conversation. The following week he rang to say, “Right, Victor, I’ve got Imran Khan, Dennis Lillee, Clive Lloyd, John Edrich and Mike Denness – will that do for starters?” So I then had to go out and raise the money! Which we did, and in that first game in 1989 we raised £125, 000. We’ve gone on every year since, and have raised about £4. 5 million over the 22 years, just on this one game a year. It’s the same formula: a private event at which we have a lot of City firms and business and industry friends, who come for the day to watch and to support us so well, alongside the charitable trusts and our other friends. But the pros come willingly, usually having been asked by David, and have supported us massively and enthusiastically. We do really manage to attract some of the top players from all over the world. You name ’em – we’ve had ’em!
‘The first time Warney [Shane Warne] came to play, on his first tour of England in 1993, he had just bowled Mike Gatting with that extraordinary leg break. And everyone – Brian Close, Mike Denness and Mike Brearley – all wanted to watch him. So they insisted we play an extra five overs, just so they could watch Warne bowl a few more deliveries. But I think highly of the man for a number of reasons. First of all, I think that he is the greatest bowler, certainly spin bowler, I have ever seen. But more particularly because, on one of the occasions on which he had agreed to play, he had to withdraw because he had been banned by the Australian Cricket Board from playing for a year. Although David Frost and I appealed to them, they said he couldn’t play, not even in a private game in England. So we called him and said, “Come anyway, it would be a privilege to have you here. Come and spend a nice day with us.” So he came along and when he arrived immediately said, “Look, I can’t play but I can bowl in the nets, so why don’t we auction half a dozen overs and I’ll bowl to some of your punters.” So he put on his kit and his war paint, and he went down to the nets and bowled half a dozen overs to people who had paid £200-£300 an over to have Shane Warne bowling to them. And then, without me or anybody else asking him, he just stayed in the nets with about two dozen kids, from 15 down to six years old, and he taught them how to bowl ‘leggies’. There were plenty of people he could have spent time with, there was plenty of good wine in the marquee, but Warney decided that was what he wanted to do. I thought it was a spectacular piece of generosity and I will never forget it. And those two dozen kids will never forget it either.
‘Then there is Clive Lloyd, who I am privileged to have as a friend now. He is somebody in cricket I always admired for the ease and grace with which he batted and extraordinary athleticism with which he fielded. The last time he played down at Chippinghurst – he still comes but doesn’t play now – he was fielding in the covers when Sunil Gavaskar stroked, as he does with great elegance, a cover drive. Clive lumbered a couple of paces to the right, stooped half-heartedly, but the ball went beyond him and I thought, “Oh dear.” Everybody groaned, and Clive just smiled and went back to his position. The very next ball Sunil hit harder into the covers. It was six inches off the ground and Clive moved with the speed that took you back to his heyday. He flung himself to his right, his hand moved out as it used to in that concertina way, and took what was the most extraordinary catch. Afterwards somebody said to him, “Clive, how come you looked as if you were half asleep one minute and the next you took one of the most brilliant catches ever?” Clive said, “Ah! In Kingston, Jamaica, in 1974, I dropped Sunil in the covers and I resolved then I would never ever do it again.” It took him the best part of 30 years to fulfil that resolution!
‘On one occasion, Mushie [Mushtaq Ahmed] bowled an over to Mike Procter, getting him out with the last ball. Mike came off the field and said that, in the whole of his career, he had never faced a better over.
‘Also, at another match, there was a marvellous example of how enjoyable it is for the amateurs as well. Company director Nigel Wray, who is a terrific supporter of the Taverners, and of Wellbeing, was batting. Normally you try to ensure that people who have paid to play actually get a decent innings. Wasim Akram was bowling to Nigel and the last ball of the first over was one of those dipping, late inswingers – one of those yorkers that doesn’t get played by anyone! The umpire said, “Oh, we’d better call that a no ball,” and Nigel said, “No, it’s a privilege to be out to a delivery like that!”’
I know Chippinghurst well from the Taverners’ Sixes but in 2010 my wife Helen and I went to the Wellbeing match for the first time, as Victor’s guests. As we walked past the giant marquee to stroll around the boundary, we were aware of the plethora of very smart cars and an amazing and impressive collection of cricketers on and off the field. As we ambled, I tried to list them: Jeff Thomson, Mike Gatting, Mushtaq Ahmed, Adam Gilchrist, Gordon Greenidge. Then, a little later, Mike Atherton, Mark Nicholas, Brian Lara and many more. No wonder that the day is so successful, and no wonder that Victor is so pleased with how productive his converted river meadow has become. ‘The first match we had, I remember standing by the fence at the edge of the ground watching Dennis Lillee bowl to Clive Lloyd. I am watching two of my heroes and just thinking that this is heaven. These guys are playing on my pitch and we are raising all this money for the charity.’
Chippinghurst is clearly at the very heart of Victor’s love of all things cricket but I wonder whether Victor, as a chairman of large public companies, found it difficult to watch cricket as much as he might have wanted. ‘Ideally I would have seen more matches, preferably at Lord’s, but I have had a business life that has been very full and that has enabled me to do all kinds of things, including my involvement with cricket. I probably wouldn’t have had a chance to do that in other circumstances, so there are pluses and minuses to the hectic round of business.
‘When I do watch, I am primarily a Test match man. I also used to love the John Player League, the 40-over games on Sunday afternoons, but Twenty20 I don’t enjoy as much. However, the number of people it attracts, the amount of money it brings to the game, means that it is here to stay. How can you turn down a formula that has that kind of attraction? The big question must be whether longer forms of the game will survive. But grounds here still get filled for Test cricket, and I think they will continue to do so.
‘There is a social element to watching cricket, as well as a purely sporting one. People go for the pies and the beers, and into boxes, and make an occasion of it. We will always have the national pride to want to have international teams continuing to play each other in Test matches. The problem is between Twenty20 at one end, which brings the money in, and the Test matches, which I believe people want to watch. But what do you put in between to make sure you have got the skills to play the five-day game, bearing in mind the county game attracts very few spectators?
‘I also think we probably have got too much cricket and we should either amalgamate the counties or reduce the number of games they play, something the county chairmen would almost certainly resist. But if you take a stratospheric view and look at the number of counties, and you take self-interest out of it, then you have to say something needs to give. Self-interest leads to bankruptcy. We haven’t had enough reforms in the county game. Ian MacLaurin did a great job as chairman of the ECB [England & Wales Cricket Board] but he was never really allowed to finish the job because his proposed changes to the game didn’t suit a lot of people. I don’t know how you make the change, because the vested interests of the counties really dominate the ECB and make it very difficult to push significant change through. We have made a lot of progress, though. We’ve got the central contracts, and money does get down to the counties. But to improve things further, I hope cricket can attract to its hierarchy and administration more of the talented individuals who love and know the game.’
As a boy, Victor lived in Stockport, just outside Manchester, with a father who enjoyed cricket. They would play in the back yard, which was in effect no more than a long piece of concrete. ‘My father tried to persuade me to become a left-arm spin bowler, because he thought that was actually much better than being a right-handed bowler. But I never managed to do it. There are those who’d say I never really improved after the age of eight, which is probably closer to the truth! But I always enjoyed it. I played at school, and a little bit at university – not particularly well – and I’ve played it socially ever since. I’ve never been a great cricketer, although I would like to have been – but the skill just wasn’t there!
‘Though you should know, John, that I was once 12th man for Lancashire, in a sort of honorary way. It was something given to me after doing so many Wellbeing games, as a thank you. I had to turn up at Lord’s at noon with my kit, for a one-day Sunday league game against Middlesex. So I go and have lunch with the team, get changed with the team, have nets with the team, spend the afternoon in the dressing room with the team, take out the drinks and the kit – the only thing I couldn’t do was actually play! But that was fun, and Lancashire won, but no thanks to me!
‘The most memorable time for me at a Taverners game was when Rory Bremner was fielding and went off at some point, took the microphone and started doing impressions of everyone who was on the field. It was just hysterical. You couldn’t play serious cricket while it was all going on! He would announce that Nelson Mandela had turned up to watch the match and imitate his voice – and then it would be John Major, and then a stream of others. Quite remarkable!’
Victor began watching cricket when he was taken by his father to one of the most famous of Test match grounds, Old Trafford, as a seven or eight-year-old schoolboy. ‘I still have this image of Brian Statham opening the bowling for Lancashire with everyone except two players standing behind the bat. He had four slips, two gullies, a point, a leg slip, wicketkeeper and a mid-on and a mid-off. My father explained to me how this worked – how a fast bowler aimed to get the ball to move one way or another so that it would hit the edge of the bat and fly into the slips and so on. So that was my introduction to first-class cricket and from then on I used to go to Old Trafford in my summer holidays. I’d get the train to Piccadilly station, buy a box of sandwiches and a glass of orange juice when I was there, and then just sit and watch. My most memorable time at Old Trafford was watching Jim Laker get his 19 wickets against Australia in 1956. I saw him get 17 of them and after that, how can you not love the game, be excited by it and become a cricket fan?’
Victor has put so much into cricket in all sorts of different ways and particularly in the charitable sense, but is there is anything he has taken from the game that has been significant in his life? ‘Well, first of all I have had immense pleasure out of it because I have met people I would never otherwise have met – people who are prominent in the game that I love, people who I admire. As I said before, heroes have come and played on my own cricket pitch, which is a great thrill.
‘What I have also taken from it is the immense decency the game has engendered in virtually all the people who have played, in contrast with other sports. While money may be a factor in football, for example, you rarely find it so in the cricketing fraternity. Those who get to the top of the game in international cricket probably get fairly decent rewards, but those who are just quality county players are still quite modestly rewarded, and it is difficult for them to get jobs when they finish playing. I have tried to help a number of people over the years and just feel sad that it has to be that way.
‘If you go back 30 or 40 years, local shopkeepers or manufacturers supported the cricketers who came out of county cricket, with the job of salesman or marketing director or whatever. That worked well, but it’s more difficult now in a world that is changing. We were talking about Mike Atherton before. Mike did brilliantly: he was at the top of his profession and has managed subsequently to do very well in the media. Not many people can do that. Some do, but most can’t, because they haven’t got the skills and don’t get the opportunity, and there are far too many who are left struggling. Fortunately, the Professional Cricketers Association [pCA] and ECB give advice and guidance on the educational and career options open to players, particularly once they have finished their playing careers. I do sincerely hope that this is solving the problem.’
As I leave Victor’s office, he asks whether David Frost will feature in this book. When I tell him that I haven’t been able to make contact, he immediately offers to do so on my behalf. Despite some of the tough challenges that Victor has had to face in his long business career, this typically helpful gesture again demonstrates his caring and friendly nature, whether it be to retiring cricketers or humble writers!