The nicest fast bowler
I would not say this about many of the 1,000 or so cricketers I have met in my lifetime but Graham Dilley, who has died aged 52, was a nice guy, especially for a fast bowler.
He was blond, handsome, 6ft 4in, he bowled quick and swung the ball towards the slips and yet somehow, somewhere, he was always smiling. Perhaps it was being the almost perpetual room mate with Derek Randall or more likely it was because he was so easy going that he was asked to share rooms with Randall who did not sleep often, would offer you tea at 3.37am and was accident prone.
It worried Dilley not a jot. "Hey, Rags," I heard him say to Randall one day. "I keep hearing about you having a bath. Talk us through it, Rags and don't spare the details."
Dilley was kind to everyone but the sporting gods were not especially kind to him. He played in 41Tests but was only twice on the winning side: at Headingley in 1981 when he and Ian Botham added late runs that made Australia bat again and at Brisbane in 1986-7. England were up and down - mostly down - in those days and for all his blond good looks Dilley was as inconsistent as anyone.
He began with Kent, was a teenage Test bowler, finished with 138 wickets and joined Worcestershire at the height of his fame and helped them to successive county championships. He began as a naive lad who had never handled a second new ball until he played Test cricket. He had learnt enough by the end of his career to step into coaching roles with England women and Surrey and most recently with Loughborough University.
Botham yesterday remembered a scatterbrained lad who only took one pair of boots to last a full Australian tour - and lost a heel delivering his first ball; Stuart Broad offered thanks for the help he had given him; Michael Vaughan described himself as "gutted" at the news of Dilley's early death.
He might have been a more successful quick with some of Denis Lillee's fire, Wasim Akram's variations, or Fred Trueman's leg stump to off bail humdingers but who would not? I will remember him grinning quietly to himself and offering his own summary of his attributes.
"I'm off for a full body scan on the cheap. I've told them not to bother with the bit above the shoulders. Nothing much in the old brain box, so we can forget about that."
Rest In Peace, Dill. I bet you end up somewhere comfortable like Canterbury or Worcester just as you always did.
Published: 5th October 2011