Bob Willis - A great trier who captured the nation’s hearts at Headingley

HERO: Bob Willis, left, and David Gower who were members of England's greatest Test Team to mark England's 1000th Test Match at Edgbaston last year. Picture: Stu Forster/Getty Images

THEY CALLED it “The Miracle of Headingley ‘81”, with the odds on an England victory against Australia reaching 500-1.

But then Ian Botham scored 149 not out and Bob Willis took 8-43 to lead the hosts to a dramatic 18-run triumph after they had been forced to follow-on in the Leeds Ashes Test.

Now, just weeks after “The Miracle of Headingley ‘19”, when Ben Stokes inspired England to a similarly improbable win against the old enemy, Willis has died at the age of 70.

The former England captain was diagnosed with prostate cancer three years ago and his health deteriorated in the last two months.

Bob Willis (centre) leading the side off after England's sensational victory over Australia in the Third Cornhill Test at Headingley in 1981 as the fans run on to celebrate.

He had been a notable absentee from the Sky Sports television programme The Verdict during England’s  recently concluded tour to New Zealand.

If it was as an acerbic pundit that Willis was chiefly known to younger cricket fans – with a predilection for telling it how it is a la the great Fred Trueman – it was as one of the game’s finest fast bowlers that he is mainly remembered by those  fortunate enough to have seen him play.

Willis was only the second Englishman after Trueman to take 300 Test wickets, while his final tally of 325 is still the fourth-best by an Englishman behind James Anderson, Stuart Broad and his great friend Botham.

In all first-class cricket, the Sunderland-born Willis – who played county cricket for Surrey and Warwickshire – captured 899 wickets at an average of 24.99.

Bob Willis celebrates being the leading wicket-taker of the 1977 Ashes Test series with an armful of champagne at the end of the 5th Test match between England and Australia at The Oval. Picture: Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive

A giant at 6ft 6ins with long curly hair, he suffered with injuries and rarely bowled without some sort of pain.

But Willis was a great trier who captured the nation’s hearts in 1981.

He’d almost missed the Headingley Test due to a bout of flu, only to famously force himself down the hill from the Kirkstall Lane end in  near-frenzied fashion to  deliver the performance of his life.

He said of that storybook day: “People said I was in another world, in a cocoon of concentration; the modern cliche would be ‘in the zone’. I didn’t want to be distracted by having to set the field or by celebrating wickets; I just wanted to get back to my mark as fast as I could.

Bob Willis takes the final wicket at headingley against Australia in 1981, clean bowling Ray Bright to give the hosts an unlikely victory over Australia.

“Mike (Brearley, the England captain) said ‘just bowl as fast as you can’ because the pitch was deteriorating and it was pretty unpleasant batting against a fast bowler on that surface.”

Willis, who played 90 Tests and 64 one-day internationals, had a distinctive long run-up which seemed almost to start from the sightscreen. Countless schoolboys tried to emulate his approach to the crease which he himself described as “resembling a broken-down biplane”.

Willis – survived by wife Lauren, daughter Katie, brother David and sister Ann – had eclectic interests away from the sport and was a huge fan of musician Bob Dylan.

He even made “Dylan” his third name by deed poll in the 1960s, becoming Robert George Dylan Willis.

A gentle soul behind the stern pundit’s exterior, Willis will be sorely missed. One tribute from Derek Pringle, the former England all-rounder, summed it up perfectly. “Bob Willis was my first England captain and a legend of England cricket,” he wrote on Twitter. “Headingley 1981 was as much his triumph as Beefy Botham’s. RIP Big Bob.”