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The Surfer

'My career was hanging by a thread. That's motivation'

Bob Willis talks to the Independent about his devastating spell of 8 for 43 in the 1981 Ashes at Headingley that resurrected his career, and looks ahead to the England-India face-off this summer.

Nikita Bastian
Nikita Bastian
25-Feb-2013
Bob Willis talks to the Independent about his devastating spell of 8 for 43 in the 1981 Ashes at Headingley that resurrected his career, and looks ahead to the England-India face-off this summer.
In the summer of 1981, with the nation racked by industrial unrest and inner-city riots, it seemed entirely if dispiritingly consistent that the England cricket team should also be mired in haplessness. After leading the team to defeat at Trent Bridge, and then bagging a highly publicised pair in a draw at Lord's, Ian Botham resigned the captaincy of which he was about to be relieved anyway. Mike Brearley was then persuaded out of Test cricket retirement to skipper the team at Headingley, but at the end of that third day, with England already a wicket down following on, Willis can hardly have expected, to put it mildly, to be dining out three decades later on the story of the match and the rest of the series.

Nikita Bastian is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo