In the 50 years in which David Foot reported on county cricket, there were perhaps three innings that captured the public imagination more than any other: a blistering 322 scored in only four and a quarter hours by Viv Richards at Taunton, an epic 405 by the young Graeme Hick, also at Taunton, and a world-record 501 by Brian Lara at Edgbaston. It was David’s happy fate to watch every ball of all three.
As a boy, growing up in rural poverty in Somerset, David had dreamed of becoming a cricket writer. “Will I ever become a real, a REAL journalist? Will I have the opportunity of writing ‘specials’, getting to the heart of human nature?” he asked himself in a teenage diary, written while serving a drudge-filled apprenticeship on the deeply conservative Western Gazette in Yeovil.
For many years cricket was only a minor string in David’s journalism. He was the drama critic for the Bristol Evening World, one day attending an obscure university production. His approving verdict – “a strange macabre atmosphere, a commendable quality of natural dialogue and a dramatically powerful climax which stabs at the conscience” – turns out to be the first ever review of a play by Harold Pinter.
Then, when the Evening World closed, he was an unemployed freelance, finding what work he could – from appearing as an extra in the TV series Softly Softly to writing up the sad tales of pre-war night life on the Bristol Downs, told by an elderly lavatory attendant, Victoria Hughes. “Not the kind of record we want on display,” the libraries said. Yet now there is a blue plaque to Mrs Hughes on the toilets and a successful crowdfunded campaign to reprint the book and raise money for their refurbishment.
Cricket, David’s first love, gradually came to the fore: a ghostwritten autobiography for a young Viv Richards, a groundbreaking study of Harold Gimblett, drawn from tape recordings made by the Somerset and England batsman before he killed himself, and two volumes of “intimate portraits” of cricketers, getting to the heart of complex men as he had longed to do as a teenager.
For 30 years, from the late 1970s, he covered county cricket for the Guardian. In the words of his fellow writer Pat Gibson, when the Cricket Writers’ Club presented David with its most special award: “No one is held in higher regard in the press boxes of the county circuit. He has his own evocative style that transcends some of the harsher realities of modern sport, and it communicates his affection for the game and his appreciation of its true values.”
Of the young Hick’s 405 he wrote: “There is something quietly engaging about this emerging genius. His style lacks ostentation, just like his persona. He has an old head and relishes the unmitigated strain of concentration that a marathon performance like this demands.”
Of the record-breaking Lara: “There are no fancy tricks to adorn the sublime style of the little man. But the emotion emerged as he got to 400. The bat was raised in boyish joy; he embraced his partner Piper. They are like blood brothers, rooming together, shielding each other on Friday from the cold, when the advertisement hoardings were careering in the wind.
“The tentative beginnings, the occasional flaws, had all been superseded by the exquisite grandeur of his attacking strokes, which came with eager and instinctive skill. When he pulled or cross-batted, there was nothing ugly in the execution. The cover drives scorched through, evading fielders with embarrassing ease.”
Most special of all for David, though, was the day at Taunton in 1985 when Viv Richards drove and pulled bewildered Warwickshire bowlers to all parts. It was the cricketing day the memory of which David treasured above all others, and not just for the glory of what happened out on the field.
An hour after the close he went in search of the great Antiguan and found him alone in the Somerset dressing room.
“He was tired and reflective. He beckoned me to join him and he found champagne which he poured into plastic mugs. In his own way he was ready quietly to celebrate. Now, in a smelly dressing room strewn with discarded kit, he unwound. There was no prompting needed from me. I had never seen him so eager to talk and I’m not sure he ever was again in his bountiful life of sport.
“A few hours earlier he had scored a triple hundred, so powerful and consummate that one experienced Warwickshire player, in my hearing, said he would give up the game for ever as he realised the enormity of the gulf between them. Now, in the stillness of a cricket ground after almost all the players had gone home, IVA was ready to evaluate what he had achieved. But it had nothing at all to do with cricket.
“His innings, indeed, was barely mentioned. Nor was cricket in general. To my surprise he moved on to religion instead. He also talked of the school friends he continued to see whenever he returned to Antigua. He talked lovingly of his family and the influence they had on him. He chuckled as he recalled his days as a waiter, balancing the glasses with a slip fielder’s dependable hands. It was a contemplative and spiritual journey that he chose spontaneously to make. It certainly wasn’t remotely what I had expected.”
David was the best of listeners, easy to talk to, and he was fascinated by human nature. He probed below surfaces but always with sympathy and compassion, never censorious or judgmental.
This year I have been compiling a collection of his work, drawing on the unpublished writing to tell the story of his life – from childhood in a village cottage with neither electricity nor running water, through demanding years of journalistic struggle, to eventual acclaim as a cricket writer, for the Guardian and in his books. He was a rare talent, one who did indeed get to “the heart of human nature”.
• Footprints – David Foot’s Lifetime of Writing, by Stephen Chalke, £22, is available by emailing stephen.chalke@hotmail.co.uk or visiting www.thenightwatchman.net/buy
• This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
