My Dad took me to my first cricket match - and it was a pretty special one. Yorkshire were playing the Australians at Bramall Lane, during the 1960-61 series. Before setting out from Batley I'd been taken to the Yorkshire Penny Bank to draw out 2/6d - my 'spend' for the day.
'Fiery' Fred was racing up to the crease to bowl at Bobby Simpson, and the roar that came with every step of his run-up lives with me to this day.
Simpson somehow ducked under a bouncer and my Dad shouted "if you can't get him out, knock him out!"
I read later that Fred would always sign autographs if asked politely. He said he had once had a piece of paper thrust at him and told "'Ere, Trueman, sign that!" (he refused the instruction).
I never got to get his autograph, but I did get Geoff (as he signed it) Boycott's at a Headingley Test in the mid-sixties. At end of the days play a number of us schoolboys had (somehow) got into the car park area and GB was spotted making his way out. Maybe twenty of us converged on him as he got closer to his car and he told us that he'd sign for us all if we "kept away" from his car.
Mine was signed with my blue ink fountain pen. I didn't want to close the book until I was sure it had dried properly.
The one autograph I really had wanted to get - another year, another Test, was that of Basil D'Oliveira. Again at Headingley, a group of us were standing around and 'Dolly' walked out with Tom Graveney.
Graveney might well have been 'an outstanding batsman, a good player of spin and a very elegant stroke-maker' as Richie Benaud put it in his book, 'Anything but .. An Autobiography', but as 'Dolly' was clearly making to move towards the youngsters who had waited patiently for the chance to meet a genuine cricketing hero, Graveney, the old pro (and also the senior county and country player of the pair), put his hand on BD's shoulder and not only stopped him in his tracks but redirected him away from us and towards a cordoned off private enclosure.
Stephen Weeks
Memory added on January 8, 2013
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