One Hell of a Life: Brian Close
Stephen Chalke
Fairfield Books 2024 £20
Who else in cricket but Brian Close would play his first Test match in 1949 as a teenager and his last in 1976 aged 45? His debut was in Melbourne against a formidable Australian attack: his last Test in London at The Oval meant facing some of the fastest and most fearsome bowlers the West Indies has ever produced.
Author and cricket historian Stephen Chalke introduces his new book on the former captain of England, Yorkshire and Somerset thus: “In my interviews with cricketers over the years his name has come up more than any other. Everybody has had a story about him.”
Chalke retells many of them in an account that reflects on a courageous, intelligent and hugely talented athlete who “could be a fool at times, never fulfilling the potential of his great talent. His judgement was questioned repeatedly, he suffered numerous setbacks and he made important enemies among those in power. Yet somehow his indomitable spirit kept seeing him return.”
In some ways it’s a story from a different age. Post-war cricket drew huge crowds and garnered wide media attention. County cricketers were either “gentlemen” amateurs or professional “players” with the game administered by the former, usually public school boys, from its Lord’s headquarters in leafy St John’s Wood.
In these “good old days”, the amateurs and professionals often changed in separate dressing rooms, sometimes entering the pitch from different gates. The distinctions extended to the scorecard: the amateurs would appear as P.B.H. May and the professionals as Statham J.B. Into this world came Brian Close, the multi-talented son of working-class parents who the national team badly needed but who chafed at the method and manners of those who selected it.
Chalke recounts these conflicts well enough for us to see parallels that remain in the 21st century well beyond the confines of cricket – how those on the inside track can fail repeatedly but remain in post and are often promoted. In that sense the Close story is timeless and Chalke’s account will appeal to many who do not share the passion for cricket of both subject and author.
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