Lives in Cricket No 24 - Edgar Willsher

5 Foreword by Derek Underwood, MBE When I began my Kent career as a 17-year-old in 1963, I was fortunate enough to be captained by my boyhood hero, Colin Cowdrey. Already we were a promising side and as the 1960s wore on we developed into an outstanding one. England internationals such as Brian Luckhurst, Mike Denness, Alan Knott and Bob Woolmer were joined by overseas allrounders like John Shepherd, Asif Iqbal and Bernard Julien to form the dominant county squad of the 1970s. It was a golden era for Kent cricket, and I am proud to have played a part in it. Since my retirement, the county’s fortunes have been in decline, but there is no reason why it cannot be successful again in the future. I was struck by this thought when reading the story of Edgar Willsher, a fellow left-arm bowler from a much earlier era. Unlike me he played in a poor Kent side, and had to bear the brunt of the attack with little support for a quarter of a century, from 1850 to 1875. But he just missed out on forming part of the all-conquering sides of the 1830s and 1840s, whose great names included the legendary Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn. What an attack it would have been if Willsher had been born a decade or so earlier! From the account given in Giles Phillips’ biography, it seems clear that Willsher was one of our greatest-ever bowlers and on that count alone this book deserves a wide audience. But there is a lot more to the story than that. Just as I played at a time of great upheaval with the introduction of the one-day game into county cricket, so he saw huge changes during his lifetime, including the transition from round-arm to over-arm bowling, and the beginning of overseas tours. All this makes me feel a much closer connection to Willsher and the cricketers of his time, and gives me hope that great players like him will emerge in time so that Kentish cricket can thrive once again. Paddock Wood, Kent January 2012