JACK_RUSSELL_PROFILE_25JUL95

CLERK OF QUIRKS WELCOME BACK AT EASE AND EASEL

David Foot on how the county captaincy has helped Russell regain his Test place.

Gloucestershire have always been blessed with their wicketkeepers. "Frizzie" Bush perhaps earned excessive praise because he was WG`s best man. But Jack Board, the Bristol gardener, played for England on merit. So might Peter Rochfield have, after the war, if he had not drunk so much and left the county abruptly. Andy Wilson, stump-sized, was once told not to make any Winter plans because he was going to be needed on tour, though the call never came.

Jack Russell is the best of them all. His Test appearance at Old Trafford on Thursday will be his 37th. There would have been the greatest West Country revolt since Sedgemoor if he had been ignored again. One suspects that the little man would have gone into caverns of despair.

He is a deep one, everyone in the game agrees. His idiosyncratic life pattern, veering from the painting easel to lonely longdistance running around the Badminton lanes, offers an eloquent commentary on the man. He is as dour, durable and honest, as a dry Cotswold stone wall. He is not always at ease in company and seldom stays on - as once he did with teenage thirst - for a drink after the game. But beneath that prematurely strained Stroud face is someone to rely on.

The team have relied on him a number of times this Summer. He has scored 613 first-class at an average not far short of 50, wiling himself to show the disregarding selectors that he is more than a squirting-and-nudging county batsman. "I didn`t ever keep wicket at school, you know. But I did open the batting."

Captaincy, as Courteney Walsh`s temporary replacement, has made him a more rounded person. All his team-mates have noticed it. He sends personal letters to the players, telling them what he ex- pects. He is more overtly relaxed at the crease, eager to attack the bowling at times. "I think some of my shots are quite cheeky."

Against Lancashire, in the last Championship match - watched by Ray Illingworth - he was more energetic than ever. He kept switching his bowlers; he ran between deliveries to have quiet words with the seamers about deficiencies he had detected in the batsmen; he appeared at one stage to be doubling-up with mid-on.

As ever he was first off at the end of the innings, hurtling like a sprinter - not to dodge the autograph hunters but to gulp a waiting cup of tea. Intimates say he gets through at least 15 during a day. Ritualistically he drops a tea bag into a mug liberally filled with milk and then ladles in spoonfuls of sugar. He is full of quirks. Colleagues have noticed that at times he sticks messages of private motivation on the upper blade of his bat. He is continually reminding himself of what he feels is being demanded of him.

Forget the catch he put down against Lancashire when he admits his mind was on bowling changes. He is at present keeping with a technical aplomb well ahead of the rest. As a batsman the stance is less quaint than it was, though he continues to fidget as he seeks a position that is more naturally comfortable.

His last Test was in Antigua last year. TV lenses had magnified an error or two. He had been dropped by England before and recoiled into a self-imposed cocoon. "I was terribly depressed. Only my drawing kept me on level ground."

Jack Russell, idol of Bristol and Cheltenham, is currently on a high. The fun hat and gloves may still give the appearance of a visit to an Oxfam shop but the persona is as alive as the reborn Gloucestershire team. "I didn`t want to let go again in a hurry," says the wicketkeeper who refused to believe that his Test career might be over.

A few explanatory notes;

Stroud is where Russell comes from, The Cotswold hills are in Glocestershire, Cheltenham is in the Cotswolds, and Bristol is where Gloucestershire have their HQ Badminton is a place in Gloucestershire where the game was invented Sedgemoor was the scene of a peasant`s uprising in 1688.