KEITH ANDREW
Keith
Andrew
was one of the finest wicket-keepers of post-war English cricket, a purist on
whom the more acclaimed Bob Taylor modelled himself. The legendary ‘Tiger’
Smith, who kept for England before the Great War, had no doubts about the
abilities of the two of them. “Alan Knott and Godfrey Evans gave England great
service,” he said, “yet neither had the class of Keith Andrew or Bob Taylor
behind the stumps.”
Keith
became
a highly successful county captain. “His quiet, gentle ways,” Norman Yardley
the former England captain wrote, “blended the useful, rather than
spectacular, players of Northants into a fine fighting unit.” Or, as his
greatest talent Colin Milburn put it, “He had a way with every member of the
side, and he could read a match as well as any skipper I played under.”
In later years
Keith was in charge of the National Cricket Association, looking after all the
country’s cricket below the first-class game. “I was Chairman of the NCA for
twenty years,” Don Robson says, “and Keith was the best. He brought a real
professionalism to the job.”
Keith is an
intelligent man who grew up in relative poverty in Oldham and worked hard to
become an engineer. Yet a happy series of chances took him into a lifetime of
cricket.
He is a quiet,
self-effacing man. “Few cricketers of his considerable gifts,” John Arlott
wrote, “can have been quite so modest.”
He is also a man
with an undimmed passion for the game. “I was besotted by cricket,” he
reflects. “I never really thought I was, but it was always on my mind.”
Here in this warm
book he shares that passion, mixing the story of his life with some challenging
opinions on the present state of English cricket. “Shane Warne,” he says.
“Had he been born in England, we’d never have heard of him.”
Share these pages
in his company, and you will understand better the often neglected life of the
wicket-keeper. You will relive with him that roller-coaster ride of August 1965
when his little-fancied Northamptonshire side sat all month at the head of the
championship table. And you will think afresh about the game we are passing on
to future generations.