Bob Willis
1949-2019

With the sudden, jarring death of Bob Willis aged 70, the English game has lost a towering presence. Cricket is a smaller, quieter, less interesting place for his absence.

Willis, all 6ft 6in of him, was totemic in every respect. Principally, of course, he was a truly great fast bowler, whose legendary appetite for the struggle underscored his achievements across 15 years and 90 Tests, 325 wickets and more operations than all but a hundred men alive could live with.

After all of that, he became a media personality whose reading of the game was invariably so astute – and his delivery so droll – that he effectively patented the no-bullshit punditry persona that these days clogs up our TV screens. While it’s true, however, that many have imitated Bob Willis, it’s equally true that no one’s ever pulled it off like the man himself.

He was, and remained throughout his life, even on those grim days when England had been castled in a session on a featherbed, an advocate of cricket’s essential wonderfulness. Perhaps, now you listen back, it was true especially on those days.

It was inevitable that Sky would eventually ham up the persona, casting him as the modern game’s gavel-bashing overlord. But it never came at the expense of the work. He was always required listening, and never less than fair. He just said things on air that others did in private.

I didn’t know him well, but every time I met him was a good time. I did a podcast with him once, talking through the Headingley thing. That was mildly surreal. He was always gracious and even-handed. There was never any sense of a hierarchy at play, which can’t be said for all the others from his era.

And I was once involved in a magazine that he’d somehow been persuaded to contribute to as its ‘rock critic’. The gig involved him posing for photos dressed in leathers and drainpipes while channelling London Calling-era Paul Simonon.

I knew then, watching all that nonsense take place, that Bob Willis was unquestionably and indubitably one of the good guys.