‘First to arrive and last to leave' – remembering England bowler Peter Lever

The Guardian

27-03-2025

Peter Lever's life changed one day in the nets at Todmorden, his local cricket club. He was in the team as a batter who kept wicket, and bowled the occasional off-break. Trinidad's Sylvester Oliver, the club's professional, wanted to practise with someone bowling at him with a bit of pace. With none of the club's seamers present, Lever had a go. 'I managed to knock his castle down a few times,' he recalled, 'and from then on off-breaks and keeping wicket were out so far as I was concerned.'
Lever, who has died aged 84 after a short illness, was 19 at the time; within a year he had signed for Lancashire. That it was Lever who happened to be in the nets at the time was probably no coincidence: the Australian spinner Neil Dansie, who played for Todmorden as a professional in 1955 and 1956, remembered him being 'first to arrive and last to leave. I said with that dedication and enthusiasm this boy is destined to go far in the game. Fifteen years later there he was, getting off the plane to represent England in Australia.'
His first game for Lancashire came against Cambridge University in June 1960: he took no wickets, caught no catches, did not bat and suffered a serious nosebleed. It was a poor start to a fine career, and he stayed at the club until 1976, taking 796 first-class wickets, before returning in the early 1980s as coach. (He made an unexpected and brief comeback in a one-day game against Somerset in 1983: 'All the seamers had gone down injured so [manager Jack] Bond says to me: 'You're last man standing, you're going to have to play.' I said: 'Are you taking the piss? I haven't marked a run-up for seven years.'')
He was known as a hard worker, renowned for the length of his run-up (there was a shorter version, which he called 'the Sunday League run', for when he was knackered). 'I never had any false ideas about myself,' he said. 'I was just another county bowler, and if they wanted someone to do the donkey work I was more than happy to do it. you can't expect to get to the top otherwise. If you want anything in this life you've got to be prepared to wait as well as work at it.'
He made his England debut against a Rest of the World XI at the Oval in 1970, and finished his first innings as an international bowler with figures of seven for 83 – they would have remained his best in Tests had the game not later been declassified. 'I was really nervous before I went on the field, practically shaking,' he said. 'Then it dawned on me: I can't lose here. If I bowl well, I'm on the boat to Australia. If I don't, at least I've had a little taste of it.'
He was indeed on the boat to Australia, and his second debut came that December in Perth, by which time he had turned 30. His selection ahead of the pacier alternative of a 21-year-old Bob Willis was a surprise and widely criticised in the British media: the London Evening News described it as 'a clanger' that 'can please only England's opponents'. But he played five of the seven Tests as England won the series 2-0 (as well as in the 40-over game in Melbourne, hastily arranged after the Test there was abandoned, that has gone down as the first ever ODI), and 17 in all across the following five years.
He is most remembered for a single delivery, the bouncer that struck New Zealand's debutant No 11, Ewen Chatfield, on the temple as England tried to finish off the first Test in Auckland in 1975. Chatfield collapsed, unconscious. He had swallowed his tongue and fractured his skull. Lever sunk to his knees weeping as England's physiotherapist, Bernard Thomas, tried to resuscitate him. 'I honestly thought I had killed him,' he said. 'I felt sick and ashamed and all I could think was that I wanted to retire.' Chatfield recovered to play another 42 Tests; Lever played only two more.