“Can you pass me one of those chocolate biscuits? You’re not doing very well with ‘em.”
David Steele is 83 and getting up out of his armchair is not as easy as it used to be. “I love the game. The game was me. I’ve been with it all the way through but it has worn out my legs. I’ve got a stick. I get up and down out of my chair like this, 50 times a day,” he stands up and back down again. “It is hard but back of your mind you know it has got to be done. I’m still going, I’ve got a few more overs in me yet. I’m batting well.”
Steele approaches old age with the same determination he did with fast bowling.
He plays an imaginary straight drive with his walking stick, his left elbow high and straight – technically spot on – as if Dennis Lillee were still running in and calling him “Groucho” because of his grey hair and glasses. “I go down to the village cricket club because it is good to get out and walk and, although it’s bloody hard, I swing my stick [like a bat]. I can still hit it.”
He is prepared for this interview, with a list of notes to jog his memory of his deeds of 1975 when this drily humorous and unassuming man won the nation’s hearts with a series of brave performances in a losing Ashes series.
Across an hour, bolstered by coffee and biscuits brought in on a tray by Steele’s wife of 54 years, Carol, and aided by his notes, he chats away about cricket and those he met.
There was Len Hutton, who supposedly called him Derek on debut rather than David. “I don’t care. He was Len Hutton.” Lillee and Jeff Thomson: “One day when I was batting, Rodney Marsh said ‘you’re driving Lillee round the twist’. Why? What’s up with him? Well, he can’t get you bloody out for a start.” On Ian Chappell: “He refused to walk at Northampton. We then had lunch and there was a real atmosphere. He asked for cheese after his pudding. It wasn’t allowed, you could only have one thing for dessert and he’d already had his. The waitress said no. He said: ‘Stick it up your a--- then.’ That was the captain of Australia! But he went out and scored a hundred.”
Steele on Eric Morecambe: “He came in the dressing room [before the Lord’s Ashes Test] because I think they thought we needed a bit of humour before going out and facing that lot.” He pays respect to Sir Geoffrey Boycott. “Tough bugger, like me.” On Colin Milburn: “Treated appallingly by the selectors but what do they know?” More about Steele’s views on selectors later.
And then there is his sporting family. His uncle Freddie played up front for Stoke City with Stanley Matthews and scored eight times for England – “football was proper in those days, winger beats full-back and crosses it to uncle Fred. My dad used to take me to watch ...
