An Extraordinary Ordinary Man: Remembering Graham Dilley

When I was a small boy I had a poster of Graham Dilley over my bed. He was side-on in his delivery stride; every limb, muscle and sinew as stretched and taut as could be. His head was tilted; only his cheek and that mane of curly blond hair visible. Most notably the only part of him touching the ground was the toe end of his right boot as the picture caught him in that extraordinary slide that prefaced every ball he bowled.

There were other heroes on my wall: Botham, Richards, Willis, Border, Gavaskar, all of them like supermen to a cricket-mad schoolboy, but Graham Dilley had pride of place because he was different. Because I thought he was like me.

He should have been a superman like the others: he had the blond hair, the blue eyes, the good looks, was an England fast bowler, potentially the golden boy of a generation, but there always seemed to be something anchoring Graham Dilley to earth; an ordinariness that kept him in our realm rather than the stratosphere of Botham and Richards.

There was something of us all in Graham Dilley. You wanted him to do well not just for the England cause but because he was somehow one of us; from the small boys like me dreaming of playing for England to the club cricketers standing on street corners on Sunday mornings waiting for their lifts, he was representing every one of us on the biggest stage.

He came from Dartford, just down the road. He played for Kent, as unspectacular a county side as there was at the time. He plodded back to his mark with a heavy-footed gait after every delivery. His bowling action was a coach’s nightmare.

Yet when he thundered in on that long, curved run to the wicket, hair streaming behind him, just fleetingly, just for the split second when his whole body was cocked for delivery, his eyes were fixed on the batsman and his toe slid along the crease, then, then he was a superman.

His slinging action should have been inelegant and unwieldy. Most of it was, to be honest, but just for that fraction of a second when his delivery arm was pulled right back, his left arm pointed at the sky, his head tilted and his whole being was perfectly balanced, the very tip of the toe of his boot the only thing in contact with the earth, then he was beautiful, then he was graceful, then he was a superman.

I’d spend hours trying to emulate that toe-end delivery slide in the back garden, flinging a golf ball down at the trellis in the gathering gloom as blood orange sunsets made skeletons of the trees, ruining plimsolls and more often than not falling flat on my face. I was hoping to feel just a sense of that split second when time seemed to stand still, that moment when Graham Dilley became a superman. It never happened.

It’s probably appropriate that what Graham Dilley is best remembered for is being at the other end in the famous Headingley test of 1981 as Ian Botham clawed England back from the brink of defeat to inspire one of the greatest victories in the history of test cricket. He didn’t look like Graham Dilley - he was batting for one thing, and the mass of blond curls had been somehow subjugated beneath a helmet. He looked awkward and ungainly, but, as Ian Botham said later, he was enjoying himself. He played his shots and his 56 was the cushion between defeat and famous victory.

He was the ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. He was one of us.

Graham Dilley died this morning at the criminally young age of 52 after a short illness. When the conversation turns to great England bowlers it’s usually a while before his name comes up, but to me as a small boy, he was up there with and above the legends.

He was my hero.

He was Graham Dilley, he was all of us, and in that moment caught on the poster above my bed, he ascended from the ordinary to the superhuman. As of this morning, he's in that moment forever.