David Foot column: Bill Frindall will be much missed
As a member of radio's Test Match Special panel, he was, in his way, a national celebrity. Yet many of the admiring listeners didn't know what he looked like – apart from the fact that he had a beard and, for the most part at least, he fielded the occasional barbed comments from fellow occupants of the box with good humour.
Not, you suspect, that he always approved of some of the more childish and distracting japes that used to come mostly from cream-cake recipient Brian Johnston.
Frindall, who died last weekend from Legionnaires Disease, seemingly picked up in a Dubai hotel, was the country's finest cricket statistician.
From that often crowded and noisy commentary box, his attention never wandered. He clocked every stroke, every mathematical detail of significance, as well as the obscure margin notes of Test Match history. His knowledge seemed infallible.
He may have been TMS's most anonymous figure, yet no-one within that tight team was more important. His stream of facts carried a kind of biblical solemnity as they were passed to the commentators.
And from his hotel rooms around the world long after the close of play, he would phone home to wife Debbie and daughter Alice for the latest news from Wiltshire.
His home was Urchfont, near Devizes. This was where he used to open the bowling for the village side or lean on his generous frame to belt a few fours. His wife was head of nearby Steeple Ashton Primary School.
My wife and I were lucky enough to be fellow guests at one small dinner party in Wiltshire.
Would Bill – or Bearders as he was often called – be as discreet about his professional colleagues as he normally appeared to be?
I hoped not; we'd all heard, after all, murmurs of personality clashes and even the rare stinging observation from John Arlott about Johnston, for instance, that got on to the air.
Bill's company was a delight, reflecting his popularity. The stories, never malicious, rattled away faster than boundaries in a game of Twenty20.
Well yes, we knew that Arlott and Johnston didn't really get on – their backgrounds and schooling were too diverse. Trevor Bailey didn't have too much time for the Australians. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, hopeless at technology, was once seen trying to phone home on his TV remote control. Henry Blofeld was the victim of a practical joke by Bill's wife with a distinct sting in the tail. Aussie commentator Alan McGilvray didn't seem to be anyone's friend.
And Frindall also jocularly churned out one of my favourite Gloucestershire anecdotes – of the day in Bristol when farmer Billy Neale and Jack Crapp walked out together for the county.
Without the merest suggestion of a snigger, the Basingstoke burr of Arlott intoned: "There they go – a good Neale and Crapp!"
The funeral service will be held at Urchfont next Friday. The church will be crowded with famous faces. All will agree that Bearders or the Bearded Wonder is going to be much missed in the West Indies and then for the Ashes series.
A thousand mostly forgotten facts have gone with him... the TMS box is going to appear very empty.
The column's recent discussion on lack of discipline in football brought a lively response. One former experienced Class 1 referee (Cliff Hallett, Chard) was the victim of a particularly unpleasant assault from a player.
With some irony, when the indefinite ban for the player was lifted, his comeback game was again refereed by Cliff. "I gave a penalty against him and he actually threatened me once more !"
Well-known sports fan and administrator Jack Endacott (Chippenham) advocates the introduction of the sin-bin in football. "The crowd would then not be cheated and the match ruined…I quite agree that the red-card count is simply appalling." The sin-bin proposal is maybe a realistic proposal to which we can return.
Comment on this story