ILLY_PROFILE_DE-BERTODANO_01MAY94

Pitching it right for England The ball is in Ray Illingworth's court; but can the new chairman of selectors polish up our cricketing fortunes?

by Helena de Bertodano

The steward Lord's cricket ground is apologetic: "I'm sorry, dear, but Mr Illingworth says he knows nothing about the interview." This is puzzling. That morning he had mentioned to the head gateman that I would be arriving at three o'clock. Is Ray Illingworth going senile or is he just being awkward? "If I were you," says the steward, lowering his voice conspiratorially, "I'd forget about Mr Illingworth and interview Mr Lara instead - far more interesting" [referring to Brian Lara, who had just scored his record-breaking innings.] Possibly. But Illingworth, the Yorkshireman who captained the England team in its Seventies heyday, brought back the Ashes from Australia and now, at 61, is chairman of selectors, is the man I want to see. Eventually, after much urgent whispering on walkie-talkies about "the young lady from the press", Illingworth emerges from his lunch, a whiff of alcohol on his breath, and agrees to see me for 25 minutes. He is clearly not senile. But as for awkward. . . he makes no mention of the confusion but is obviously very busy. The England cricket team has just finished its tour in the West Indies and he has to give a press conference. To understand the point of Ray Illingworth, one has to look at the point of cricket. A quintessentially English institution, it is more than just a game. Traditional cricket exports a series of ideals and values to the rest of the world. But is this not going over the top? Is Illingworth, in his new role, really choosing ambassadors for England? Illingworth himself is clear about this: "Behaviour on the field comes into the selection process. It's all summed up in the ageold saying, 'It's not cricket.' It was always acknowledged as a way of life, combining your honour, your behaviour, your integrity - and I think that still runs through the game." But times have changed and this saddens him: "Probably, it's fractionally different now. In the old days, if a batsman had got an edge he automatically walked off. Nowadays they tend to wait for the umpire to give them out. There's more cash in the game now and I think that's altered things." The voice, aitch-less and rich, evokes rolling Yorkshire dales. If ever a man could be defined by the county that nurtured him, it is he. Illingworth - Illy or Ray to the world, Raymond to his Yorkshire friends and family, and Ray-ging Bull to the tabloids - is a small man with blueygreen eyes, thinning hair and expressive eyebrows. He has put on weight recently due to months of immobility following a back operation on a slipped disk. A man who has always prided himself on his fitness, and even returned to whites to play for Yorkshire at the age of 50, he is rather conscious of this: "I'm heavier now than I've ever been but I'll get rid of that in another month or two." The operation has also left him limping slightly and he finds stairs difficult. "The doctor said I wouldn't walk properly for six months, so I'm not doing badly," he says, puffing slightly as he climbs the wooden steps to the stand. By Lord's standards he is casually dressed, in his Donegal tweed jacket, black trousers, spotty socks and black leather basket-weave lace-ups. His Leicestershire cricket-club tie tells a story in itself. Illingworth went to captain the Leicestershire cricket team in 1968 when Yorkshire refused to succumb to his ultimatum to give him a three-year contract, a moment he describes as the saddest in his life. "As a youngster, you grow up giving your right arm to play cricket for Yorkshire. But I was getting no security and I just said, 'That's it.' It wasn't easy." The word "security" comes up frequently as we chat, sitting side by side, in the freshly painted Warner Stand. The clouds have cleared away and the sun is shining on the pitch, which is being prepared for the second day of Middlesex versus England A. Illingworth's preoccupation with financial security has its roots in his childhood. His father, Fred, a cabinet maker, had to close his business at the outbreak of the war when Ray was just seven. When it ended, the shop was sold, and his father suffered the indignity of being employed at @12 a week in the business that he himself had developed, until chronic bronchitis forced him out of work altogether. So the young Raymond was always acutely aware of the value of money. One acquaintance describes him as "the sort of person who will make sure he gets his @1.30 tube fare refunded but who may overlook the @300 he could charge for a guest appearance". He lives with his wife, Shirley, in Pudsey, where he was born, and has an apartment in Torremolinos, where he spends five months a year. But he would only allow his name to be put forward for the England job after agreeing compensation, estimated at @25,000, for the commentating work he would have to give up at the BBC and the Daily Express, in addition to expenses of @14,000. Despite financial hardship, Illingworth, who was an only child ("Good stuff comes in small doses"), remembers his early years, first in Pudsey and then in neighbouring Farsley, as a happy time: "I had a loving family. My parents always kept a good table and kept me clean and tidy. My dad would always make a big effort if I wanted something for cricket." Cricket was a way of life in Pudsey, which had already turned out several cricketing legends including "Long John" Tunnicliffe, Sir Leonard Hutton and Harry Halliday. The young Raymond was captivated after his aunt and uncle took him to see his first match when he was four. He and his friends made a pitch called the Wreck in the school playground and lovingly tended it, buying seed and re-laying it until a herd of cows destroyed it. But he was also diligent with his work, coming near the top of the class in exams. "I only played truant once - to see the Yorkshire versus India match at Bradford. But I was caught when the local paper published a picture of the queue and there I was, right at the front!" He was selected for Yorkshire when he was 19 and played in his first Test Match when he was 26, just before he married Shirley, whom he had met at school. He has played in 61 Tests for England, 31 as captain, triumphantly regaining the Ashes from Australia in 1971-72. The man who seems to have had most influence on Illingworth is Arthur "Ticker" Mitchell, his Yorkshire coach, who imbued Illingworth with his driving philosophy of always being hard but fair: "I was a very easy-going person and he put that bit of fire into me. Anyone who's played with me would say that I might have been hard but I've always been fair, and I think that as long as I can die by that I'll be happy." Despite his uncompromising dedication to cricket, Illingworth says he has always enjoyed the game. "I've had a laugh every day of my life. There's always a comical incident - like when someone gets a ball in the shin. It probably hurts the bloke quite a lot, but it's very funny to everybody else!" Apart from a brief spell selling greeting-cards and fireworks at the end of the Sixties, Illingworth's whole life has revolved around cricket. He seems to live, sleep and breathe cricket, and it is difficult to see anything beyond that. He resists all my attempts to talk about anything else - not, it seems, because he has anything to hide, but because there really is not much else. When he mentions Spain, I am relieved and eagerly grasp the opportunity. "Surely," I say, "you can't be thinking about cricket when you're in Spain." "No," he says brightly, "I'm not. I'm thinking about golf. Very good golfing courses down there." He and Shirley have two daughters, both married, and four grandchildren, whom he sees almost every day. "Shirley and I have always been very happy together. She had to put up with a lot in the early part when we had children and I was often away. But we are close. She knows when not to talk to me!" Illingworth is scrupulously honest, saying his father taught him "never to be afraid of the truth". He is often described as a "blunt, bluff Yorkshireman" or a "tough-talking tyke". When asked by The Cricketer which current players he admired, he answered: "None." His first press conference in his new role was remarkable for its candour but earned him criticism for the way in which he lambasted most of the England team before speaking to the individuals concerned. Headlines the next day nicknamed him "Illy the axeman". I suggest that his bluntness sometimes borders on rudeness. But he says that is not fair. "I think I know the difference. I wouldn't absolutely destroy someone - but if people ask me a question I give them a straight answer, and if they don't like it, then that's their bad luck. It's true that I don't stand fools easily but I've always been honest throughout my life. "If, for instance, I'd caught a ball that was very near the ground and the batsman said to me, 'Did you catch it?' and I said, me." Mike Turner, the former Leicestershire chief executive and a close friend of Illingworth's, says that he has the "most outstanding analytical cricket brain in the country". He describes him as "honest, straight and true. One of my strongest memories of him is when Leicestershire won the Benson & Hedges cup in standing on the balcony, holding the trophy aloft with a tear running down his cheek. That for me summed Ray up." But now, in Illingworth's mind at least, Leicestershire and Yorkshire are on the same side. His role is to give English cricket the stature it needs to reestablish itself in the wider world. Although the West Indies tour was not as shameful as the wallopings England has recently received at the hands of India, Sri Lanka and Australia, he has a Herculean task ahead of him. Can he do it, or is England finished as a world cricketing power? "No, we can still do it. We're going through a transition period at the moment but we've got some pretty good young players about and we'll be back." Then, with a touch of that humour so characteristic of him: "And when we've knocked the living daylights out of them, we'll go out and have a beer with them."

(Thanks : The Sunday Telegraph)