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JIMMY GREAVES COULD HAVE BEEN ANOTHER GODFREY EVANS
Brian Scovell
rst met Jimmy
in 1958-9 season when
he was just 17 and he
scored ve goals for
Chelsea in their 6-2 win
over Wolves. Having just
worked for the Wolverhampton Express and Star I knew Billy Wright and after that humiliation Billy told me “that’s it, I’ve retired”.
However, besides being the greatest goal poacher in British football Jimmy Greaves was also an outstanding and enthusiastic wicket keeper. Never playing for a cricket club, he only played in friendly and charitable games. His hero was Godfrey Evans (1920-99), the ebullient, bewhiskered Kent and England keeper.
Everyone loved “Godders” and Jimmy was nodi erent. They got on well together, and bothbecame heavy drinkers. In Jimmy’s case
his career was cut short at 30 after becoming
an alcoholic. When Godders’ career came to
a close after 29 years, he owned a pub The Jolly Drover and advised Ladbroke’s about bets. He laid the 500-1 bet which some Australian players placed and picked up fortunes at Headingley in 1981.
Born in Manor Park in the East End, Jimmy and his friends began playing cricket in the street with soft balls and with stumps marked on the walls, or on spare land. Like Evans, Jimmy was a brave keeper, preferring to stand up.
A longtime friend Norman Giller, formerly of the Daily Express, recounted an amusing anecdote about Jimmy. Norman started out in 1955 as a copyboy at Reg Hayter’s Sports Agency in Fleet Street. Reg acted as the literary agent/nursemaid for the likes of “Godders,” Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Keith Miller, Ian Botham and Basil D’Oliveira. Reg had a stammer and the word cricket often came out as ‘c-c-c-cricket.’ He was an artful slow medium swing bowler who captained the El Vino’s cricket team. When Jimmy re-emerged as a strict tee-total and wisecracking TV star on ITV, he played for El Vino’s.
On this occasion the match was in Derbyshire.
He and Norman spent seven hours driving up and down from London. Jimmy was bowled rst ball
and Reg said “it’s a f-f-f-funny old game.” Norman was his ghost writer at that time and Jimmy
ARTICLES
I
used that catch phrase in the successful “Saint and Greavsie” programme between 1985-92.
Anyway, after the cricket match the local Derbyshire newspaper ran a headline across seven columns “Greavsie Flops with a Duck.” “Damn,” said Jimmy, “that’s a bigger headline than I ever got for anything I did on the football pitch.”
Jimmy su ered a major stroke in 2015, however with the help of patient nurses and carers he is still with us, 81 not out, still battling. I think he should have been knighted years ago.
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