THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR BOWLIN'

The former England all-rounder celebrates the hand-made clodhoppers that assisted him to over 1000 wickets

It’s that time of year, for club cricketers at least, when you toy with splashing out on a new bat or the latest pair of pads or gloves, none of them cheap. We all know the private conversation. Can I really justify the new Vanquisher 200 Super Blade for the 40 balls I spent at the crease last season and that one boundary, even if it was a booming cover drive? Well, take a deep breath…..……..you know you want to.

For bowlers, it is the mundane boot which is the most important bit of kit to get right, the ideal one needing to span that difficult mix of comfort and durability. I’ve no idea what is on the market these days but back when I played, we were not well served by commercial brands so most bowlers went bespoke, especially those with big feet.

This pic, taken after a day’s play at Chelmsford in 1991, shows me with my bowling boots. They are a pair of hand-made beauties, size 12½ constructed from double-layered Kangaroo hide and turned out by a wizened old cobbler from Melbourne, Australia, called Hope Sweeney.

All the great seam and swing bowlers of the 1970s and 80s who visited Australia got Mr Sweeney to make their boots for them, but they weren’t cheap. In splashing out for two pairs part of me was hoping for great quality and part that some of their stardust might rub off on me. But it didn’t, not really.

I was hoping to use the photo shown here for my Benefit brochure, at least until a better design came along, which it did courtesy of a genius adman called Patrick Collister. His was far more imaginative as you can see from the other photo.

Back then cricketers like me banked on being awarded a Benefit, which was a kind of loyalty bonus for staying at a club longer than 10 years. They were welcomed, too, as salaries were modest. Benefits also meant there was little flux among players moving counties unlike today, when they flit between clubs and franchises like bees attracted to a sweeter source of nectar.

Anyway, I wanted to use the photo because boots with their toe cut out, a deliberate act done by me with a scalpel or Stanley knife, had become my USP. Commentators mentioned it, journalists inquired over it, while rival supporters shouted abuse: “Can’t you afford new boots Wanker?”

Several colleagues (and opponents) even tried it but for some reason I was always attributed as its inventor. Which wasn’t true. You see I borrowed the idea from Dennis Lillee and Terry Alderman, both of whom had cut (somewhat neater) slits in their boots for the 1982/83 Ashes series. Due to injury neither of them played beyond the first Test, but I’d watched them in the build-up and noticed their strange handiwork.

Like all eureka moments it just made sense and suddenly a life of suffering on a cricket field, at least below the ankle, evaporated. You see, unless you are a nimble Nureyev like Jimmy Anderson, or Sir Jimmy as we now have to style him, with an equally balletic bowling action, your feet are going to take a pounding in the course of your work.

Compounding my pounding was the fact that I had something called a trigger toe, which meant it flicked up against the top of my boot whenever I banged my foot down hard. For the left one, which bore the brunt, that was about 120 times a day (if we take 20 overs as a typical day’s work).

Constantly bashing the nail base of your big toe is bad for it and it doesn’t take long for the pain to become chronic and socks to fill with blood. Cutting a hole in the boot releases the pressure and with it the pain and you get to keep your nail. I’m surprised that more bowlers don’t do it, even now. But then modern boots are probably more comfortable than those of yore, when sturdiness was still something admired in products as well as people.

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