Close: Forever One Of The Game's Great Mavericks

Derek Pringle looks at the colourful life of the great Brian Close, who was honoured recently with the naming of ‘Brian Close Walk’ in Baildon, Yorkshire

Cricketers don’t get much designated in their honour outside the grounds they played upon, so it is gratifying to see Baildon Town Council name a thoroughfare after one of the great characters of English cricket – Brian Close.

Close, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 84, had a long and colourful career that stretched across five decades playing, as he did, for England, Yorkshire and Somerset. The new street, in Baildon, a few miles north of Bradford, is called ‘Brian Close Walk’ and was opened by his widow Vivien on Friday – an apposite moniker for a man who played hard, but fair.

Fame came early for ‘Closey’ – as he was more widely known – when he was picked to play Test cricket against New Zealand in 1949 at the age of 18 years and 149 days – still the youngest to do so for England. It was not, though, the harbinger for a long and distinguished Test career; the next 27 years seeing him play just 22 Tests, the last of them at the grand old age of 45.

It was his last three Tests – all of them against the West Indies in that long, hot summer of 1976 – for which he is best remembered, by the public at least. Without cap or helmet, he took the mother of all physical batterings at Old Trafford from Michael Holding then, along with Jeff Thomson, the fastest bowler in world cricket.

Rather than risk getting out by trying to play the rising ball, Close allowed the many 90mph bouncers Holding sent down to strike his body. Not once or twice, but for as long as it took to see England through to the end of play on the third day, which was just over an hour.