Fabien Cowdrey remembers his first game. He was a seven-year-old playing for
the under-nines and when he hit the winning runs, he raised his bat, as you
do, knowing his grandad Colin was among those watching. Soon after that, Sir
Colin Cowdrey passed away, but the boy never forgot that first match.
He’s 15 now, more grown up, but things haven’t changed that much. He’d always
known what kind of batsman his grandad was and over the years he’s watched
old videos. You don’t have to be old to know humility. “If only I could bat
half as well as my grandad,” the kid often thought. Well, he’s got the name,
the genes and the ambition. Definitely the ambition.
Young Cowdrey is bright, talented and he could probably do a lot of things.
There’s only one thing he wants to do. “All my life,” he says, like he has
been around forever, “I’ve only had one dream and that is to play cricket
for England.”
On Wednesday he plays for the Bunbury England U15s against the England U16s at
Lord’s, and the significance of the occasion lies in the venue. It is rare
for teenagers to play at the world’s grandest cricket ground and, for them,
it will be a very special occasion. “Like the rest of the lads in the U15s,
I am thrilled to get the opportunity,” says Cowdrey. “Whatever happens, we
can always say we played at Lord’s.”
The match happens in part because of the willingness of the MCC and its chief
executive Keith Bradshaw to sanction it, but also because England’s U15s
have been encouraged, inspired and funded by an extraordinary man who can’t
think of anything better to do with his time. You mention Dave English’s
name to Fabien Cowdrey and the boy’s voice lights up.
“Dave? For the guys who have come through his Bunbury Festival, Dave English
is a legend. A man we all love.”
WHERE do you begin to tell this man’s story? Perhaps as a boy, a year or so
younger than Cowdrey is now, being awoken in the early hours by his father.
“Look, Stinker,” his dad said, using the codename that spoke of their
closeness. “I’ve got to go. Your mum is a good woman who loves you; look
after her and your sister. You’re the boss now.” He understood why his dad
left, even empathised with the zest for life that tempted him from their
London home. He didn’t hear from him for two years.
Though he coped remarkably well, there were times when he needed to work
things out and he would head down to nearby Hendon Park with his cricket bat
over his shoulder. Tomorrow could wait. Today he would improve his batting.
He made it onto the ground staff at Lord’s, played two games for the
Middlesex second team, but he didn’t have that touch of greatness. Instead
he had a talent for enabling those who did. Eric Clapton and Barry Gibb
would soon become two of his favourite people and two of his best mates.
You could zip forward 10 years and find him in Times Square, New York, looking
up at the neon sign that listed the top 10 pop songs in the US at that
moment. In that list were five hits produced by the RSO record label:
Staying Alive, Night Fever, Only One Woman, How Deep Is Your Love, Lay Down
Sally. He was in his mid-20s, president of RSO and the man described by RSO
founder Robert Stigwood as “the one”. He made good money in those days,
bought apartments in fashionable parts of London when nice pads cost £4,000
and, financially, the future was more or less taken care of.
Fast-forward another few years and he’s an actor, with a minor role in the
Richard Attenborough movie A Bridge Too Far. His colleagues are now Laurence
Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Sean
Connery, Ryan O’Neal, Dirk Bogarde, Elliot Gould, James Caan and Liv
Ullmann. With so many stars and so many hours to kill, he forms a cricket
team.
Redford is competitive, Olivier had played in his youth, Hopkins is English’s
opening batsman and when Attenborough isn’t happy with the lighting and he
calls a halt to the shoot, he turns to English: “David darling, go and
entertain the boys.” So they play cricket. The night-time parachute drop of
the 82nd Airborne (US Army) is one of the film’s pivotal scenes as the
Americans come cascading down the night-time sky and make their way
cross-country to link up with their British allies.
Hundreds of cameras film the drop and the ensuing battle; there are takes and
re-takes and cricket games between scenes. Next evening they all gather in a
makeshift viewing theatre to watch the rushes. It is the film’s biggest
scene and the most expensive to shoot and tough-nut producer Joe Levine sits
amongst the actors as they review the previous night’s work.
“What the f*** is that?” screams Levine. “Look, the bottom corner.” In the
distance, but clearly visible, is English’s cricket match, gently proceeding
under the film’s floodlighting, wonderfully indifferent to the carnage all
around it. Levine is not amused; the scene has to be re-shot; as for the
cricketers, they could just be shot. On set they call it “The Cricket Game
Too Far”.
He talked with Hopkins and Olivier about acting; they told him he was an actor
in real life and he realised that wasn’t the same as being an actor. “What
you do, David,” said Olivier, “the stories, the ability to make people
laugh, I couldn’t do. When I presented the Academy Awards, every ad-lib line
that I used was rehearsed.” English spent 6 months on the set of A Bridge
Too Far and if you knew him well enough, you’d be able to pick him out. When
it was over, Redford gave him the bayonet he had used in battle scenes, a
thank you for the introduction to cricket.
After that, English became a writer of children’s books, each with a
cricketing theme. Fourteen were published and when he wasn’t writing he was
organising celebrity cricket matches to raise money for charity. Twenty-two
years ago English met Cyril Cooper, secretary of the English Schools Cricket
Association. Cooper explained that the Association’s U15s festival, which
had helped to identify Gooch, Gower, Gatting, Botham, Atherton and Hussain,
was dying for lack of funding. It was a cause made for English. In the last
two decades his Bunbury celebrity matches have raised £11m, £7m donated to
deserving charities and £4m used to fund the Bunbury Festival of Cricket
(U15s) and develop future generations of England cricketers.
Of the current England team, nine out of the 11 came through the Bunbury
system. English remembers them all. Fifty-two Bunburys have gone on to play
for England, 182 have played first-class county cricket. The first year was
1987, young John Crawley batting with the elegance of Gower; he saw
11-year-old Marcus Trescothick score six centuries; remembers how Phil
Neville excelled at the 1991 Festival; a year later Andrew Flintoff was
there, and the late Ben Hollioake.
“It has consumed me,” he says, “in the way that a love affair can consume you.
I made enough money by the age of 28 to exist for the rest of my life. I’ve
never been materialistic. How could I be into money? You spend an evening
with Eric Clapton, or take a long walk with Ian Botham, or have been there
when Barry Gibb sang something he had written and asked, ‘What do you
think?’ and when you told him it would make No 1, he said, ‘Do you really
think so? I’m not so sure.’ The guy wrote over 300 hits, sold 250 million
albums and never understood how gifted he was.”
The involvement is good for English, stops him dropping anchor and reliving an
extraordinary past. “The boys call me Uncle Dave and I’m proud of that.
They’re at that great time in their lives between boys and young men.
They’re old enough to like girls but not old enough to have agents. They try
to be cool but go red when I introduce them to a girl. I meet them three or
four years on and they say, ‘Remember the time we chatted up the birds
in Brighton?’ At 15, they are still young enough to play cricket without
fear, to instinctively want to put on a show and to know it’s not the end of
the world if they don’t do well.”
He meets them when they’re on the way up and they never forget. They see an
adult whose love for the game hasn’t been tainted by the need to make money
from it, whose love of life hasn’t been diminished by his experience of it.
Botham was his best man when he married Robyn, whispering into his ear as
they walked down the aisle, “Loon (Beefy always called him Loon), you were
never meant to be married, the Loon doesn’t get married.” Still, Barry Gibb
flew from Miami to sing at the ceremony.
“Beefy,” English now says, “was right and wrong. Robyn and I stayed together
for five years but she got homesick and went back to Zimbabwe. We have
remained great friends, speak all the time and we have two wonderful
children, Amy Rose and young Dave, who are with me in England. A lot of
people have never understood me. Being a nutter is a facade; scratch the
surface and you find a very sentimental romantic. I care deeply about other
people, especially my own family and if they’re harmed or in any danger. . .”
Beyond his immediate family, there is his cricket family. Flintoff and he have
long been good friends, speaking regularly on the telephone. “Freddie’s a
mini-Botham. He loves all of the old stories. He shouldn’t have been captain
of England because he worries too much about others and it affected his own
game. But he’s got a heart of gold, the most wonderful fellow you could
meet. He doesn’t see why he can’t have a drink, doesn’t understand why he
shouldn’t talk to the bloke from Macclesfield that he’s just met. He was
just having a laugh on the pedalo that time and he thinks, ‘Why not?’ That
episode broke his heart. This is a man who’s had so many operations on that
ankle that if it goes again, he’s finished. Every time I’ve asked him to do
something for the U15s, he does it with a heart. He gives so much.
“I think Rachael, his wife, has been a great influence. She calls him Andrew,
just as his parents do. You see that sometimes. Watch Kevin Pietersen in the
company of his parents and his brother Brian, and you see how respectful he
is with them. It shows you he was well brought up.”
From his days in the music business, English learned how to work with talented
and creative people. “The thing about greatness is that it rarely comes with
normality. Often the expression of the gift comes from a tortured soul.
People say, ‘I saw him at Tesco, he looked normal enough to me.’ Don’t
believe it. During the early years working with Eric, there were periods
where he didn’t want to play, didn’t want to face up to being the great Eric
Clapton.
“It was like the guitar was an extension of his soul; whatever was inside came
out in the music. But he had such a gift, I just tried to stick by him,
would send him little letters: ‘Sold 10 copies of Layla in Botswana last
week, best wishes, Dave.’ When I wanted to start a celebrity cricket team,
he was the first guy I went to and I knew he wouldn’t say no. We’ve always
been close.
“Even to this day, he thinks I’m trying to pull off some scam, using him. I’ll
buy a number of guitars, get him to sign them and then auction them for
charity. He’ll say, ‘Where did you get these?’ Hand-made,’ I’ll say. ‘No,
they’re not. You got them from Ronnie’s music shop, 228 Edgware Road, beside
the Chinese takeaway.’ He loves the idea that I’ve come up with a scam but
he’ll always sign the guitars.”
How could he get Clapton, Gibb, Botham, Flintoff and so many others on his
side? “The thing is, you can’t con people. If you say to them, ‘I need money
for this’, you must make sure they have a good time while they’re doing it.
Life works better if you give more than you take.”
Their cup runs over: meet the cricket philanthropists
DAVID ENGLISH
Managed the Bee Gees, handled publicity for Eric Clapton and the Rolling
Stones, was involved in the launch of the film Grease and had a (very minor)
role in A Bridge Too Far, alongside Robert Redford, right. English used the
money and contacts he made in the music industry to set up the Bunbury
cricket organisation. His friendship with Ian Botham, who was best man at
his wedding, has also been effective in promoting its charity work. The
Bunbury team features stars from the world of pop and sport playing in
exhibition games, the proceeds of which are put back into cricket. The
Bunbury Festival, set up in 1986, brings together the best young players in
the country in an annual competition
SIR PAUL GETTY
Introduced to the game by friend and neighbour Mick Jagger in the Eighties as
he was recovering from heroin addiction, the American Anglophile was only
too happy to use some of the millions he inherited from the family oil
fortune to support his love of the game. Getty, right, went on to purchase
and bankroll the Wisden Almanac, and donated much of the money that paid for
the new stand which accommodates the iconic media centre at Lord’s. He also
hosted touring sides at the ground he created as a replica of The Oval
within his estate in the Chilterns. He served as president of Surrey cricket
club before his death in 2003
SIR ALLEN STANFORD
The latest benefactor of the game, Stanford is a billionaire who made his
fortune (believed to be worth about £2 billion) in property and wealth
management in Texas. He became interested in cricket when he moved to the
Caribbean. In 2006 he put up the money for the Stanford 20/20 competition in
the West Indies, building his own ground in Antigua and promising to invest
£75m in the game in the region over five years. Stanford’s enthusiasm for
the game is such that he has even staged matches in Florida and Texas. He
admits that he prefers the abbreviated form of the game to Test cricket and
recently agreed to provide the £50m prize money for the five
winner-takes-all Twenty20 matches that England will play against the West
Indies, starting in October
