Peter Lever, who has died aged 84, bowled quick for England in 17 Tests. But there are fast bowlers and there are fast bowlers, and Lever was the opposite of the popular image of mean and nasty.
It says much about his inner nature that Lever spent his last years far from his native Todmorden, in south-west England, planting the seeds of wild flowers in roadside verges.
Had he been mean and nasty, Lever would have made a fine English response to Dennis Lillee, Australia’s champion. Both of them ran a long way, longer than anyone today, and bowled their outswingers flat out. But Lillee was not afraid of hitting batsmen, who were unhelmeted until the late 1970s, whereas Lever was devastated when he hit New Zealand’s number 11, Ewen Chatfield, in a Test in Auckland with a bouncer. Last-second resuscitation by England’s physio Bernie Thomas saved Chatfield’s life.
It could have been so different if Lever had played now, mild nature or not. Born in 1940, he was bowling 600 overs per first-class season by 1963, for Lancashire, not conserving his energies for his country – and he was still clocking almost 600 overs in the 1974 season, when he was selected to spearhead England’s attack in the Ashes that winter, instead of John Snow who had been deemed too difficult for his captain to handle.
Given a central contract, therefore, or even one of the contracts that the ECB awards now to promising bowlers of real pace, Lever would have played many more than 17 Tests.
Another reason why Lever’s record of 41 Test wickets at 36 each could have been signally better: in 1970 the Tests between England and the Rest of the World, replacing apartheid South Africa, were announced as official Tests. Lever made his debut for England in the fifth of them and, against a line-up that batted down to Mike Procter at number eight, he bowled superbly, taking seven wickets for 83 in the Rest’s first innings: Eddie Barlow, Graeme Pollock, Mushtaq Mohammad, Sir Garfield Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Procter and Intikhab Alam.
As Wisden recalls: “Lever soon made his mark by dismissing Barlow and Mushtaq in his first nine overs but his effort, and everything else on the second day, was overshadowed by the artistry of Pollock and Sobers, who put on 135 in the last two hours… On Saturday the crowd rolled up to see Pollock and Sobers continue their assault; instead Lever took the limelight. Pollock, who was restricted to 10 runs in 45 minutes, was the first to fall to the Lancashire bowler, who later also took the wickets of Sobers and Lloyd. His command of perfect length and direction made him a formidable opponent and only Procter of the later batsmen made progress against him.”
All that effort, charging in, flaxen hair flowing, off a very long run, and he bowled 32.5 overs in that Rest of the World innings alone – nowadays he would have been prevented from entering the “red zone” and a spinner put on instead. But England’s captain was Raymond Illingworth and he contented himself with only 15 overs on a belter of an Oval pitch against the world’s best batsmen on the go.
And then they said it was not an official Test at all. What would have been his best Test figures did not count.
At least Lever was included in the England party for the 1970-71 Ashes in Australia. He and Bob Willis supported Snow at his most venomous and, according to Wisden, “against Australian batsmen surprisingly vulnerable to fast bowling”. Snow, Willis, Lever: as quick as any trio England have fielded in Australia to date. As Corporal Jones said: “They don’t like it up ’em.”
Instead of one or two hundred wickets for England, Lever took 796 in first-class cricket, mainly for Lancashire, supported by Ken Shuttleworth. He enjoyed Lancashire’s most glorious years under Jack Bond when Lancashire were the first county to specialise in limited-overs cricket. In all he took more than a thousand wickets.
In later life, after Illingworth had been appointed England’s head coach, he was chosen to be England’s bowling coach on their tour of South Africa in 1995-96. Perhaps it was Illingworth’s thank-you for the long spells that Lever had bowled for England, in Tests and that unofficial game. However, a gap, or rift, opened up between Illingworth and the fast bowler Devon Malcolm, and it would have taken a diplomat as well as a bowling coach to fill it.
His wife Ros said: “It is with a heavy heart and deep sadness that Peter Lever has passed away peacefully today. A beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
“An enormous thank you to everyone that has been caring and considerate in supporting Peter through these difficult recent times.”
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