Bob Willis: A Cricketer and a Gentleman | Ian Ward, Nasser Hussain and David Lloyd pay tribute

eight months ago english cricket lost one of its greats we lost a dear friend and colleague and our acerbic pundit [Music] it's all over and it is one of the most fantastic victories ever known while willis eight wiggits a fabulous performance guilty guilty guilty tin hat's on here's bob there should be three sets of stocks one for andy flower one for us to cook and one for jonathan trott and a great big barrel of rotten tomatoes to hurl up [Music] it was a grisly mess charles wasn't it [Music] indescribably bad charles in england are looking like a village side on the village green at the moment put the cheese in the trap in walks the mouse and off goes his head i mean we'll remember graeme swann for being a deserter getting into disguise and creeping into the lifeboat on the titanic with the women and children an appalling decision this umpire's call's gonna disappear the ball's hitting the stumps batsman's out the ball's hitting the stumps he's out isn't he even if it's just clipping it by a yes i've seen fewer hookers in soho on a saturday night than i saw at lords this afternoon the last idiot to put australia in adelaide in a nash's test match was yours truly rgd willis i thought joe might have learned from that this day but apparently not well it was very entertaining wasn't it um i thought it was a brilliant performance by all the bowlers for a change and um i'm sure the crowds thoroughly enjoyed it young man when your little purple pets come to an end i'll have you back in the dark [Music] i feel that this is just [Music] dear bobby put the cheese in the trap him walks the mouse off comes his head there are some classic lines throughout i could tell all these people out there if you didn't know bob willis you should have done he was brilliant company oh fantastic a great company he was a shy man really shy but when you went out on a night and particularly if he'd organized it well bring a safety net the lines he would deliver or indeed on commentary you look back in our historic cricket footage and all the big moments lara going to whatever it's got bob's voice all over those replays i think that's what you forget actually and he obviously found himself a lovely little niche there he was brilliant on the verdict again the twitter feed would just fill up if england had a bad day or the hour yesterday you would just see people saying i can't wait for the verdict i'm rushing home to see villas willis come off his long run on the verdict but you spot on that took away a little bit from bob the broadcaster whether it be brian charles lara from trinidad and tobago or shades of savian richards when kevin peterson whipped it through the legs side um the start of the 2005 ashes series he built it up almost like a boxing announcer you know i've done some of these kp dockers and you go into the edit suite and bob's voice is always echoing around there because he called the moment absolutely perfectly and the criticism would dry wit as well oh yeah the rotten tomatoes in the stocks and flying home he was hardcoded for england to do well but he knew what his job was and and he could be ultra critical at times i mean none more so when they asked him skye or her boss is the powers that be asked him to give all the team a number a mark out of 10 which we dread doing that he comes to chris waltz you don't get a point for turning up and he had to write a letter of apology to chris was the nicest man in the world how do you think the players took him at the beginning they were very anti but i think we i think we sort of went out of our way and educated the players and said look he's a top law don't don't take it to heart and every one of them that we introduced steve harmis and all the guys andrew flintoff they all took him to heart they was a top man well i mean i obviously had both sides yeah i was england captain a player the three-finger salute one of them was bob you know um so i knew that he'd be absolutely eviscerating you on the verdict or the whatever it was or even just on commentary back then and you thought that bob hated english cricket and what hated england doing well absolutely the complete opposite when you got to know bob in a commentary box and saw how he reacted when england lost a wiki bob was desperate for england to do well so don't make that verdict stuff up to be bob willis auntie england you know we got miserable bob willis he was so far from being miserable he was desperate most passionate english fan follower out there to be honest he loved england doing well i've lost count of the amount of cricketers who played with bob and said he was so helpful and generous with his time when they first came into the dressing room we'll come on to bob's book in due course but ian botham has written the forward to that book and bob helped him enormously in his test debut he was enormously helpful to me when i started with skype same with me same with ath he doesn't suffer fools gladly to be honest and he's not a man of many words he'd often be at the back of the convox with his paper and he'd look up and give you the one-liner there was that time that i left him i think i left you all at headingley we were supposed to leave the hotel at eight o'clock and i left it like one minute to eight and there's me and bob and there was just a one word i so wish i had recorded that it would have made anything he's done on the verdict or any commentary absolutely redundant but i'm afraid we probably couldn't have published it no he certainly couldn't use the word he called me that that was bobby doesn't suffer falls gladly but he was such a good company a company with a glass of wine as well and the stories coming out well i mean just a night out it was an adventure and you'd get a call sometimes when we were on downtime and we had a little bit of time off should we have a spot of lunch that were all day he got he'd find a restaurant he'd get the table he'd sort it all out you'd have a ball wonderful he could certainly bowl too as well don't forget absolutely his cricketing achievements and how would you put into perspective how good bob was with these numbers i mean i know broad's gone past 500 anderson now but at the time well important and pacey quick and that long maisy run that he had he was right up there if you were picking an england 11 all time you you're getting bob in there's a lot of people will put bob in for the pace he's a big fella i mean we knew bob when he retired but you played against him he was fit and strong and his knees went in the end but he was a real handful such a tall guy with a high action and bounce aurad and he had a sort of iconic aura about him the run-up arm going behind his various people the big barnet running in at you the glazed eyes when he got a wicket you know beefy had various celebrations bob's eyes were just like glazed over and obviously headingly 81 anyone of our era just remembers that game and that series just brought cricket to the forefront of this looks pretty cool this is something that we want to do it's amazing he's mentioned our era though but remember alastair cook famously took a test wicket impersonating bob willis and that was not you know alistair cook was not or bob willis was not part of aleister cook's era no but no one no one will forget headingley in the same way that what ben stokes did at headingley last year there will be generations that talk about stokes's innings no one will forget both them and willis at headingley now bob has a book out um a cricketer and a gentleman the forward is written by ian botham it's a fantastic read very funny and charting some of his great successes on the cricket field and as the character off it it's in support of prostate cancer which sadly that's what bob passed from that's why we're wearing these badges this book was launched a few days ago at the oval and all his friends were there [Music] it's really really special for us we've worked really really hard on the book and um it's not been easy to organize such a thing in these times and obviously we could only have um you know a few people socially distanced but it's uh special for us to have marked it the overall been so generous at hosting this and the response has been amazing because it's a testament to how much everybody loved bob bob was a absolute font of of so many anecdotes and he'd experienced so much in his career when he started in 1970 that surprise call-up to the ashes and finished in 1984 with england it's an amazing period of transition for cricket uh that was and then he had a very distinguished uh broadcasting career with skye and a few other people um so his life really was one of two halves really up to the age of 34 35 being this outstanding cricketer and then almost the exact 50 second part of his life was spent as you know a very trenchant analyst of the game yeah all the proceeds from the book go towards prostate cancer research which is become lauren's aim now i think to try and help other people with prostate cancer and further research into the disease prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the uk and we only announced that as a charity in june this year there's 400 000 men living with prostate cancer uh in the uk and one man dies from the disease every 45 minutes so you get a real understanding of the context of of this disease that one in eight men in their lifetime will be diagnosed from it so we're at the oval today you know at least one man in each cricket team in their life more likely over the age of 50 will get diagnosed with this disease and with one man dying every 45 minutes from it and we have a real battle on our hands to to turn the tide on that it's a hideous disease people say to me oh i didn't know you could die of prostate cancer well you can well i lost two members of my family to prostitute cancer my father and my brother luckily my father got prosecute cancer very late in life he was approaching 80 by the time he got prostate cancer so you know when you in your 80s you're not expected to live many many more years after that but my brother got it when he was in his 60s and of course it took him took him out as well so i know a lot about prostate cancer in that it's how deadly it can be and i just wish people would pay more attention to prostate cancer it's a deadly disease a silent disease because you don't really understand what it's doing to your body until it's sometimes too late and people need to get that exam done a lot of people especially black men don't like the idea of that physical exam it lasts a few seconds get it done so you know exactly where you are there is a national screening program for prostate cancer that's one of the things that we really want to bang the drum for um to be funded with some urgency when a reliable test is there in the case of the great bob willis here he had psa tests and they were inconclusive and that's the very reason why the psa test is not good enough as a blood test for prostate cancer because it's the best thing we have available in the uk but it's not good enough and men such as bob and many men around the uk like him need need better than that and that's what we that's what desperately we need to have funded lauren bob's wife uh who's terribly committed to the cause she felt that bob was diagnosed late and she's very very keen that any funds that are raised will go into early diagnosis of the illness and research into that sort of area i want bob to have a legacy and he can't do that himself so i want to do it on his behalf and raise money and awareness even knowing him as well as i did i wasn't aware of just how ill he was at times we made a pact that we we wouldn't discuss it and i wouldn't ask him how he was if he wanted to tell me something about it then he would and i think that worked well for him well he was extremely brave about it um there'd be a number of people here today who saw him in his last days including me it was difficult he'd shown amazing stoicism and fortitude never complained about it um and and really that sort of courage and bravery and stoicism that he showed on the field um really came through uh at the end what was a very sad day when i was playing people used to say oh he's not a very friendly person look at him on the field he's never smiling that sort of thing what people didn't know about bullets and if he got to know about willis you would know the type of man that he was and i got to know him quite well that 2000 tour of south africa was my first time of really spending a lot of time with bob and getting to really understand the man and to know the man and he was a good man uh well he was one of my greatest pals and that friendship extended not only um through our playing career but probably blossomed through our broadcasting career when we spent an awful lot of time not only in in england and the uk but travelling the world they say that genius is 10 000 hours of practice we certainly practiced our cricket for ten thousand hours it worked for him didn't quite work for me but uh that's where he did the hard yards in the back garden in the recreation ground in the street we played and played and played and he honed his talent and was very very good i remember clearly headingly 81 i was 13 at the time um bizarrely it was the only game i went to live before i actually played test cricket although it wasn't the great day that bob bob got eight for it was an earlier day in the test but it was the only time i'd been to a test match before i played so so that was very clear in my mind i remember watching the end of the headingley game on a high street in manchester watching through the window of a shop that sold televisions everybody was watching through the shop window big crowd so i remember that very clearly and i think for people of my generation 13 quite impressionable just starting to play the game that particular victory and bob and beefy playing in that game was a kind of standout memory of those years well he was a fantastic fast bowler i think people tend to forget how good a bowler he was when he got to 300 wickets or only test wickets that is there were only three players who'd done that before him fun full of fun you know he'd have as i said he loves his wine i love this wine and bob relaxed away from the public away from frying eyes have a drink of wine and just relax and start talking freely and expressing himself and singing his bob dylan music that's just the way he was he was totally relaxed whenever bob thought the focus was on him until he started doing that show the verdict and he he relaxed a lot more then but until then whenever the focus was on him it was almost as if he didn't want it he was so nervous about the focus being on him but away from the cameras away from the crowd away from cricket totally different man he's going relax laughing having fun well i really liked his sense of humor i think he was he was very thoughtful as well but his sense of humor was good he didn't suffer fools that's for sure he felt passionately about things and inevitably he felt a lot of um a lot of comment a lot of talking heads in sport can be a bit bland uh a bit every day everybody trying to steer the middle course the middle line and he said well you know i've done everything in my game i'm reasonably financially secure i'm not bothered if i say the wrong thing and get fired it's not the end of the world so i'm just going to speak my mind plain speaking that's what i'm about and he started to do this and people tuned in people responded and obviously uh thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he occasionally went over the top occasionally he had to write a letter of apology or something but basically he loved the game he loved the england team but if he if he thought someone had fallen short he was very happy to to tell them what he thought well everybody saw what he was like on the verdict and he could be cutting and harsh and critical but he wasn't like that in real life he's very warm generous funny guy we all loved him dearly enjoyed his company um i have to say he's a perfect colleague because when i arrived at sky there was a little bit of a changing of the guard and you know myself and nass were coming on so bob didn't always get some of the plum gigs and never any hint of bitterness towards us he was a perfect colleague he was a great man bob he was a in all aspects not only was he a fantastic cricketer but he was a top bloke [Music] he was a he was a great teacher he was a great listener um and he was one of my best mates [Applause] a great man that was at the book launch at the oval of bob willis a cricketer and a gentleman available on amazon and all good book stores and of course it's helping raise much needed funds for prostate cancer we'd love you to help if you possibly can if you'd like to donate text bob to 7004 to donate 10 pounds to prostate cancer uk please help us if you can you were very generous earlier in the west indies series with the roof strauss foundation we'd appreciate your support if you can with this one how many letters of apology did actually have to write because we mentioned one to criticism it was a few i mean his brother there david he's so eloquent and he he captured bob that's exactly him the three of us alex is big monkey alex is big mate and the three of us went on a steam train walking holiday in north wales it was like the last of the summer he finished he but you know bob had a big stride if you were out i couldn't you could walk with the problem you cannot keep up with when he got going you you don't have a little jog and a skip to keep up with him and he set across this field and paul allen said leave him just leave him let him go and he's romped and chomped across this field of cows he got to the and shouted come along walter he just said you're going the wrong way it's this way brilliant loved his wine too you like the glass of wine yeah you're very passionate about it just the one for me not a boss when he was born uh yeah i mean i thought just on change attack actually thinking with last game we put that feature on of um you hosted it of willis and botham sitting down with anderson and broad and i thought that was a really important thing to do of getting one generation in another generation the last two great bowlers of a previous generation were williston both make no mistake about that and the two that are still going here anderson and broad had a chance to sit down with them discuss chew the fat doesn't really matter what was said but the fact that anderson and broad got to realize your question you asked a few minutes ago did the players finally realize what bob was like i think when they had that contact with him they realized that willis was a special bloke i remember when we saw jimmy anderson here when he'd come from burnley and he's playing lancashire it'd be a one-day game and the pitch i think was the other way around i think yeah and we were over there and he pressed his lazy switch as he saw anderson and he got in the edge of his seat did bob is that speed gun right this young man's bowling 90 miles an hour and that really lifted him he liked pace and that sit down he'd be absolutely thrilled bob that he was sitting down with those two lads he was also quite nervous going to meet them hey bob bob was really nervous and shy and until you became in that inner circle when you when you're a mate you're a mate and his passions were opera yeah wagner very loud wagner so i hear you not everybody's cup of tea but bob loved it and of course bob dylan and he liked to be here he liked to really heal and he'd have his real book as to where he could get one and the wines we i mean we really miss him he played 90 tests and if you ever want to know what 90 tests bowling fast does to your body watch him get out of a car or watch him put his ball down on a golf tee he literally had to go down in instalments the knees everything every part of his body was creaking and that was one of the great things we did actually and it's a bit sort of about ourselves this but we went on that golf holiday to spain and he'd had a few glasses of wine and we bought that mini bus back to the hotel and bob just held court and everyone just hung on every word should we do it should we do it after three after three you know what i'll call you after everyone's saying no you don't matter after three one two three but tennis used to play in a trilby or something he'd play golf and tennis in a drill bit and he played he was key it's all keen on golf and he'd play off 21 and as many times you finish and he said you know i can't remember feeling hitting one of them took him on a trip to port rush actually that's quite tough golf course that was a bridge too far the stories we could tell about bob would definitely get i mean he said there on that piece he doesn't mind if he got fired yeah the stories we could tell we would be good so we better leave it there bob willis a cricketer and a gentleman available from amazon all good bookshops it's supporting prostate cancer please help if you can as i say text bob 27004 to donate 10 pounds to prostate cancer and please if you can buy the book

Channel: Sky Sports Cricket

Views: 102,222

Rating: 4.9402537 out of 5

Keywords: sky sports, sky, sports, sky sports cricket, cricket, bob willis, bob willis tribute, england cricket, pakistan cricket, england cricket highlights, england pakistan highlights, england cricket stream, sky sports highlights, sky sports stream, cricket highlights, cricket stream

Id: h-gMH8pctks

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Nark_Narkins]

This is a absolutely beautiful thing.

I always liked Bob as a pundit but I always felt he could be a bit of a cunt if the mood took him.

Clearly I’m a shit judge of character as every single sky pundit who has spoken about him seems to be on the verge of tears. What a man. Thanks bob you wonderful bloke.