David Stanley Steele (born 29 September 1941) is an English former international

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er.

Tony Greig Anthony William Greig (6 October 194629 December 2012) was a South African-born Test cricket captain turned commentator. Greig qualified to play for the England cricket team by virtue of his Scottish parentage. He was a tall () all-rounder w ...

picked him for

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1975 when he was close to retirement from

county cricket Inter-county cricket matches are known to have been played since the early 18th century, involving teams that are representative of the historic counties of England and Wales. Since the late 19th century, there have been two county championship ...

for

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

. Steele, who was born in

Bradeley Bradeley is a village in Staffordshire, England, in the city of Stoke-on-Trent. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book but became more established as a mining community for the local coal pits in Norton and Chatterley Whitfield. A hostel exis ...

, Stoke-on-Trent, was a

middle-order In cricket, the batting order is the sequence in which batters play through their team's innings, there always being two batters taking part at any one time. All eleven players in a team are required to bat if the innings is completed (i.e., if ...

batsman. In his eight

Test matches Test match in some sports refers to a sporting contest between national representative teams and may refer to: * Test cricket * Test match (indoor cricket) * Test match (rugby union) * Test match (rugby league) * Test match (association football) ...

, he played against fast bowlers including

Dennis Lillee Dennis Keith Lillee, (born 18 July 1949) is Australian retired cricketer rated as the "outstanding fast bowler of his generation".

and

Jeff Thomson Jeffrey Robert Thomson (born 16 August 1950) is a former Australian cricketer. Known as "Thommo", he is one of the fastest bowlers in the history of cricket; he bowled a delivery with a speed of 160.6 km/h against the West Indies in Perth ...

for

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

; and Andy Roberts,

Michael Holding Michael Anthony Holding (born 16 February 1954) is a Jamaican former cricketer and commentator who played for the West Indies cricket team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest pace bowlers in cricket history, he was nicknamed "Whispering Dea ...

Wayne Daniel Wayne Wendell Daniel (born 16 January 1956) is a former cricketer, who played as a right arm fast bowler. Daniel featured for the West Indies, Middlesex, Barbados and Western Australia in his cricketing career. Cricket career Born in St Phi ...

and

Vanburn Holder Vanburn Alonzo Holder (born 10 October 1945) is a Barbadian former first-class cricketer who played in 40 Test matches and 12 One Day Internationals for the West Indies cricket team between 1969 and 1979. A fast-medium bowler, he bowled along ...

for the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

. His arrival followed a period of great difficulty for the national team mired in a difficult

1975 Ashes Following the 1975 Cricket World Cup, the Australian cricket team remained in England in the 1975 season to play a four-match Test series against England. For England, the principal resistance came from veteran opening batsman John Edrich and ...

series. It led to the phrase, coined by

Clive Taylor Clive Taylor (1926/27 – 18 April 1977) was a British journalist who worked as the cricket correspondent of '' The Sun'' from 1964 to 1977. A "slim, handsome man",John Arlott, obituary in ''The Guardian'', 25 April 1977 Taylor was a useful cl ...

of '' The Sun'', that he was like a "bank clerk who went to war". He was appointed as county captain of

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

in 1979 but resigned after six weeks. He played for the club from 1979 to 1981.

Life and career

Making his debut against Australia at

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

in 1975, Steele got lost in the

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

as he went out to bat. He went down one too many flights of stairs and found himself in the basement toilets. Once he did arrive at the crease, fast bowler

gave him a typically Australian welcome. Eyeing Steele's prematurely greying hair at 33, Thomson asked: "Bloody hell, who've we got here,

Groucho Marx Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (; October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, stage, film, radio, singer, television star and vaudeville performer. He is generally considered to have been a master of quick wit an ...

?" That summer, however, Steele scored 50, 45, 73, 92, 39 and 66 against the Australians in his trademark staunch, courageous and steady manner. When presenting Steele his cap in the dressing room before his debut, captain

felt tears fall on his hand and considered that "Here was a man who would fight for me to the death". (at 15:00) His ability to stand up to hostile fast bowling, which other batsmen had struggled to cope with, and attack with the

hook shot In basketball, a hook shot is a play in which the offensive player, usually turned perpendicular to the basket, gently throws the ball with a sweeping motion of the arm farther from the basket in an upward arc with a follow-through which ends ov ...

, raised morale among his teammates and spectators alike. In the following year, he commenced against the even more fearsome

fast bowling Fast bowling (also referred to as pace bowling) is one of two main approaches to bowling in the sport of cricket, the other being spin bowling. Practitioners of pace bowling are usually known as ''fast'' bowlers, ''quicks'', or ''pacemen''. T ...

attack of the West Indies by scoring a century at

Trent Bridge Trent Bridge Cricket Ground is a cricket ground mostly used for Test, One-Day International and county cricket located in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England, just across the River Trent from the city of Nottingham. Trent Bridge is also t ...

. Oddly, he was overlooked for that winter's tour to India based on the theory that he could not play spin bowlers. He duly returned to county cricket and finished his career back at Northampton in 1984 having scored over 22,000 runs, of which 673 came in Tests. Steele was voted

BBC Sports Personality of the Year The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of just one, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. Several new awards have been i ...

in 1975, and was named as one of the ''Wisden'' Cricketers of the Year in 1976.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Steele, David 1941 births Living people BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners Bedfordshire cricketers Derbyshire cricket captains England One Day International cricketers England Test cricketers English cricketers Leicestershire cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Northamptonshire cricketers Staffordshire cricketers Wisden Cricketers of the Year D. H. Robins' XI cricketers T. N. Pearce's XI cricketers