The Full Toss Meets Devon Malcolm

At one point I didn’t think I’d live to tell this tale. The venue was the Lord’s Academy. The bowler was Devon ‘you guys are history’ Malcolm, and the batsman was, erm, little old me. And to think that I actually volunteered.

The occasion was a promotional event for Play With A Legend, a company that’s teamed up with the PCA to give ordinary cricket fans the chance to play with their heroes. The format can be flexible but it usually involves a game somewhere followed by a chinwag with the chosen legend. Everybody wins really. Blokes like me get to wax lyrical about their experience, and ex-pros get a chance to connect with the fans and earn a few quid.

Our experience involved an indoor game of T20 at Lord’s, with a Devon Malcolm bowling master-class between innings, followed by a few beers. The game itself was a good laugh (although predictably my team lost) but the highlight for me was facing a couple of overs from Dev. He needed a batsman at the other end to showcase his skills, and given my big ears, bushy tail and enormous front teeth, I was chosen as his rabbit.

Although Devon is now 53 years old – although you wouldn’t have guessed it judging by his incredible physique – he can still crank it up. I remember when he was clocked at 90mph at the age of 40. Fortunately he went easy on me (I wasn’t wearing a helmet) although he still seemed quite sharp to an amateur like myself.

It wasn’t the pace that bothered me though. It was Devon’s ability to swing it. By his reckoning, 80% of the first class wickets he took came from swing bowling – especially during the later years of his career. Most deliveries started on a middle and leg line, but swung considerably and finished outside off-stump. I have to admit that he turned me around and beat the bat a couple of times.

I just about managed to survive the examination of my technique, but it wasn’t easy. And of course, I managed no scoring shots at all. He gave me absolutely nothing to drive, and my reactions weren’t quite quick enough to punish the one shortish ball with a bit of width I received. I’m sure he’d still clean up at most levels of competitive league cricket.

© Play With A Legend

After the game we were lucky enough to share a beer with Devon and pick his brains. Friend of the site Toby Richardson and myself also had the opportunity to interview him for this article. We only had 15 minutes, so there wasn’t time to talk about the current England side, but we did manage to talk about his international career and his famous 9-57 against South Africa. Devon was in good form – and seemed like a really good guy – so it’s well worth listening to the audio file below.

Away from the microphone Devon was just as congenial and laidback. He also told us a few crazy stories about England tours past – including a few hilarious anecdotes about guys like Gough and Tufnell.

If you’d like to know more about Play With A Legend, here’s a link to their website. It’s a good idea for a stag do or birthday bash, and quite a few big names have signed up, including Darren Gough, Matthew Hoggard, Ryan Sidebottom, Simon Jones and Marcus Trescothick.

James Morgan

8 comments

  • Not sure if you discussed it……..but I always wondered if that story about them testing his eyesight after several years of FC cricket – and finding he was as short sighted as Mr Magoo – was true (or just a good story)? I do remember him as a rather underrated test bowler, probably because all quickies at that time had the misfortune to be measured against the likes of Marshall.

    • He wore glasses on his test debut so I imagine they tested his eyes at some point. Maybe they deteriorated?

      Devon was a good England bowler who played in an era when selection was all over the place and man management was often poor. I didn’t have the heart to ask him how he felt when Ray Illingworth said to him “As for you, you bowled like crap and cost us the match”! Although I think that said a lot more about RI than it did about DM. I think he probably would’ve thrived in today’s environment, although his overall test record wasn’t too bad considering.

  • Well done but a shame your reverse sweep was not unleashed to brake the shackles of his bowling.

  • I am and have always been a fan of proper fast bowling and I liked Devon a lot. However his batting amused me greatly. There was always the likelihood that any innings he played would be over very quickly but on those occasions when he slammed a few boundaries it was great, great fun.

  • I still treasure the moment during a Radio 5 athletics commentary of a 100m race involving Marlon Devenish and Christian Malcolm losing to a couple of Americans when the commentator, as he tried to tell the story in 10 seconds, said that Devon Malcolm was in third place.

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