COLOUR PICTURE SIZE WIDTH 65 CM, HEIGHT 49 CM

Bob Willis was one of England’s greatest fast bowlers. His 325 wickets from 90 matches place him at number four in the list of all-time English wicket-takers in Test cricket. Yet you would never have guessed that if you looked across the dressing room at the exhausted figure in the string vest after a long day in the field.

His most memorable performance was, of course, at Headingley in 1981. On that Test’s rest day he feared it would be his last since England were in a hopeless position and he had bowled so poorly. He once described himself as “a born pessimist” and this was a case in point. Perhaps those eight wickets did help to prolong his career by three years but remember he took 317 other Test wickets all around the globe. He could bowl fast and, as time passed, he could bowl accurately.