Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 12, 2005

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brian Close is the youngest man ever to play cricket for England. He went on to play 22 Test matches for England, captaining them seven times, winning six times and drawing once. Close also captained Yorkshire to four county championship titles, the main honour English county cricket clubs play for. He later went on to captain Somerset, where he is widely credited with turning Somerset round to a hard-playing team that helped mould Viv Richards and Ian Botham into the cricketing greats they became. Yet despite his successes, Close was dogged by controversy throughout his career. He was serving a sentence of being "confined to barracks" during his National Service when called up for his first international tour, sacked by England for timewasting, and sacked by Yorkshire for being against one-day cricket and not giving enough support to younger cricketers. He went on to tour apartheid South Africa and white-minority controlled Rhodesia. In short, Close was known as a cricketing gambler; he was prepared to take risks and to court controversy throughout his career.

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