A SINGULAR MAN

Phil Edmonds was a brilliant bowler, an infuriating room-mate and a sponsor's dream

Noticed on social media that today (March 8th) is my former Middlesex colleague Phil Edmonds 72nd birthday. He was something completely different. I remember how he was the only cricketer to wear a watch on the field because he was sponsored by Swatch. Here’s an extract from my book A Lot Of Hard Yakka about him.

PHIL EDMONDS – BRILLIANT ECCENTRIC OR ANNOYING BASTARD?

29 July, Lancashire v Middlesex, Southport

At least back on the county treadmill I felt safe and reassured, like a local rep returning to his own patch after a management training week. Even sharing a room seemed suddenly more acceptable, though not with Phil Edmonds. I had been lumped with him for the three-day match against Lancashire at Southport in the sort of 1920s hotel where coachloads of pensioners stop off for lunch. Lots of flowery wallpaper, padded seating and toilets in public areas, but seriously neglected upstairs. The beds were lumpy, musty and squeaky, but not nearly as disturbing as Edmonds himself. As a confirmed insomniac and an information junkie, he kept the telly on until the national anthem had finished and the set was making a nasty high-pitched bleep. Then he’d set the alarm for 6.05 a.m., and when he woke switched on Radio 4 for Farming Today. Music would have been just about OK, but trying to doze as some Cornishman waffled on about milking methods was too much. After two nights of this, I secretly disconnected the radio while he was out of the room, thinking I would at least get a bit more kip. But when he discovered the radio wasn’t working the next morning, he made a great commotion complaining to Reception, and in the end an odd-job man was sent round to fix it, which involved turning on the light and moving my bed as well as making even more noise. ‘Fools rush in …’

I never totally endeared myself to Edmonds, a feisty but intriguing character, which was a shame, since he was captain when Brearley was on Test duty. On the first day of the Southport match, he gave the new ball to Mike Selvey, who usually aggravated him, and constantly yelled at me on the boundary to move 2ins this way or that. He even threw the ball at me once when he thought I wasn’t listening. It ended up in the crowd, ten deep round the boundary. This was the day Charles and Diana got married and it had been declared a national holiday. Most of the spectators wore ties and patriotic hats and were in high spirits. Oh, the romance and blind optimism of those times.

Some punters were following the pageant on transistors but nobody dared take their eye off the middle because between the time Charles entered St Paul’s as a bachelor and emerged as Diana’s husband, Clive Lloyd (above) progressed from 0 to 91. I was bowling at him for most of that innings, slightly apprehensively at first, until he’d blocked four successive maidens. Just as I was starting to feel I’d got him cornered, he swayed on to the back foot and pulled a perfectly respectable ball into some distant allotments as if he were swatting a pesky fly that had suddenly woken him from a mid-morning nap. After that he went berserk. Being toyed with by someone who looks such a misfit is very humiliating. The loping gait, the round shoulders, the thick-rimmed glasses and the sunhat like a German helmet totally belied Lloyd’s awesome power and feline reflexes.

When he suspended the carnage temporarily to have a drink, I picked up his bat. The handle had six rubber grips, the edges were 2ins thick and it weighed a ton. It was like wielding a railway sleeper, and from the bowler’s point of view, that’s what it looked like. He hit Wayne Daniel, who was no slouch, for a straight six which shaved the bowler’s head, never climbed more than 12ft above the ground and was still rising when it clattered into the sightscreen 60yds away. Daniel went as white as a sheet, if that is possible for a man as black as night.  He joked afterwards that he’d never chat up Lloyd’s girlfriend again.

Apart from Lloyd, Lancashire weren’t much of a side in those days, and many of their players were rather sluggish and overweight. ‘Too much beer and black pudding,’ my Mancunian aunt said. We had far more skill and spirit and won the match comfortably in spite of, rather than because of, Edmonds’ leadership. Mostly his captaincy was a dead loss. He was often fractious, set strange fields and omitted players he disliked, e.g. Selvey, a skilled seamer, even on a pitch the colour of a billiard table. If his spinning partner suddenly found some turn on a particular wicket he would bring himself on from that end, relegating his colleague to the opposite one.

Imran Khan almost decapitates Wayne Daniel at Hove. I am the petrified non-striker

He became irked by Daniel’s prolonged absence having ankle treatment at The Oval and was then informed by the umpires that the Barbadian wasn’t permitted to bowl for half an hour once he’d returned. ‘Oh, just fuck off then, Diamond,’ he said, and sent the bemused player back to the dressing room. They nearly came to blows at tea. Sometimes Edmonds was deliberately provocative, and on occasion this backfired. At Hove, Imran Khan had batted competently for some time and I, the only fit fast bowler as Daniel was injured, had spared him the bouncer, chiefly because the wicket was fast and our batsman feared severe reprisals (and so did I). When Edmonds gave me a rest, Imran said, ‘Can I take my helmet off now, then?’ to which we both nodded.

Seeing the Pakistani prince now sunhatted, Edmonds said surreptitiously, ‘Go on, have one more over and stick it up him.’ Imran parried the surprise bouncer with his glove and was caught in the gully. As he jerked his head back his hat fell on the wicket, which kept us amused for a while. But we weren’t laughing when he came haring down the hill later that afternoon. He took 6–52 with the same ferocity he had exacted on us in the above picture, and we lost by a mile. And yet Edmonds’ personality was addictive. He was articulate, sharp and brilliant in the role of devil’s advocate. His outright audacity was enviable, and he had supreme confidence in his ability and judgements, epitomised by his arrogant stroll on to the field and affected upturned sunhat.

It was presumably that inner strength which enabled him to overcome an embarrassing outbreak of the yips in 1980, when for a time he couldn’t manage anything except a double bouncer or a high full toss and only regained control by completely doing without a run-up. He was sometimes intensely irritating, bowling a whole over deliberately down the leg side if Brearley didn’t give him the field placings he wanted, or lying down at mid-on because he was bored, but it usually made us laugh in the end. He was a skilled mickey-taker, admonishing certain players with mock prejudice for the obsessions they had with their looks and their female conquests. He scoffed at Wayne Daniel’s lurid stories about his sexual exploits, yet the two were firm friends and always travelled together. If he wasn’t reading the FT or a biography of Macmillan he was formulating new sponsorship deals – boxloads of Patrick footwear kept arriving in the dressing room, for instance. Frequently he sat on the balcony talking telephone numbers with some pinstriped acquaintance. There was rarely a dull moment.

Extracted from A LOT OF HARD YAKKA Click here to buy