The Barnacle turns 85
Trevor Bailey is 85, without a driving license, but with a firm opinion that England should be captained by an Englishman
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
Trevor Bailey is 85, without a driving license, but with a firm opinion that England should be captained by an Englishman. The Guardian's Frank Keating calls him up to wish him Happy Birthday.
Ring back in an hour, he says - he's in the middle of cooking lunch (lamb chops and all the trimmings) for himself and his beloved Greta, wife of 60 years. English cricket's one-time doughtiest dead-bat seems in fine nick, except they've refused to renew his driving licence - "far too old," they said. So, car-less, he was unable to attend this summer the 90th birthday party of his long-time new-ball partner and England's most venerable surviving Test alumnus, Sir Alec Bedser.
Bailey's barn-door dead bat had led to a tremendous surge of national jubilation when at Lord's in the Coronation month of 1953 he and Willie Watson had clung together on the burning deck for half a day to save the second Test and so, by August of that year, allow the Ashes to be won. Complete strangers still regularly quiz Trevor for full details. No wonder, for as the onliest Neville Cardus all-hailed in these very pages: "Bailey's bat was not made of the stuff of which lost causes are compounded. It was a truly great vigil, a stand of noble martyrdom on an everlasting afternoon of immense strain."
Nishi Narayanan is a staff writer at ESPNcricinfo