Although a good enough bowler to make his county debut as an 18-year-old, still at school, and then picked for a full overseas England tour three years later, Neil Foster nevertheless took seven years to graduate from being considered a player with Test potential to holding down a regular place in the England side in 1987. In the intervening years there was a brief flirtation with a career in soccer, a serious spinal injury, and sparse Test appearances which gave him too little time to establish himself.
The talented Neil Foster had to battle a serious spinal injury and avert the lure of a career in football before becoming England’s leading strike bowler in 1987. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year the following spring.
In an age when state-controlled comprehensive schools were devoting more and more time to soccer, and less attention to cricket, Neil Alan Foster, born at Colchester on May 6, 1962, needed a keen cricketing father to maintain his interest in the summer game. At Philip Morant School in Colchester, Foster in his early teens was a tall, fast centre-forward, later turned central defender, who attracted the interest of the local Football League side. School cricket was, in the main, limited to 20-over games after lessons, and Foster’s development owed more to contacts at the nearby grammar school, who pushed him forward to the Essex Schools Under-14 side, and to his family.
Raised in the Essex village of Wivenhoe, Foster from a tender age was performing 12th-man duties for the local club, where his father, Alan, was considered the Geoff Boycott of the side. Foster says, He was a keen, if somewhat deliberate opening batsman, gentle in-swing bowler and immensely proud of his achievements at club level. Later they switched to another Essex side, Mistley, where Foster from the age of 14 began to develop the high upright action that was to become the hallmark of his bowling in the years that followed.
Although Essex’s fortunes had fallen into sharp decline, Foster still took 86 first-class wickets in 1987, and with Ian Botham unavailable and Graham Dilley unfit, Foster, a mere onlooker in Australia less than twelve months earlier, departed with England for the World Cup in India and Pakistan as the side’s leading strike bowler. His place in the side was strengthened by several useful late-order innings, in which he hit hard with a straight bat, and a growing reputation as an athletic outfielder with a strong, low return.
Neil Foster last played for England in the second Test of the 1993 Ashes at Lord’s. He finished with 88 wickets from 29 Tests at 32.85, including five five-fors.
