Bryan 'Bomber' Wells

Off-spin bowler with Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire who was celebrated for his eccentricities and took 998 first-class wickets

8:46PM BST 10 Jul 2008 Daily Telegraph Obituaries

Bryan "Bomber" Wells who has died aged 77, was an off-spin bowler for Gloucestershire and Nottinghamshire, and one of the funniest and most eccentric county cricketers of the 1950s and 1960s.

Overweight and undertrained, Bomber Wells could hardly have looked less like a professional sportsman. This unathletic impression was confirmed by his bowling run-up, or rather his lack of run-up. As he himself explained, he took two steps when he was cold and one when he was hot; and sometimes he simply delivered the ball from a stationary position.

Bomber was ordered to start his run from eight paces back. He obeyed but then bowled the ball – spot on to a length – after taking only a couple of paces. "Sir Derrick went berserk," Bomber recalled with satisfaction. "He dropped me for two matches, but it was worth it."

Inevitably, many batsmen were unprepared for Bomber's delivery. Playing as a young man for the Gloucestershire Nondescripts against Witney, he bowled out a batsman called Len Hemming, who was immediately called back as he had not seemed to be ready.

With the next ball Bomber bowled him out again. "If you think I'm staying here for him to get his bloody hat-trick," Hemming told the fielders, "you've got another think coming."

Years later Hemming was asked about this story. "I've no recollection of it at all," he said, "but I'm all in favour of it."

Playing against Essex in the county championship, Wells encountered a young amateur who stepped away from the crease whenever he began to bowl.

So, in Bomber's own words, "I ran all the way round the square, past mid-on, square leg, behind the 'keeper, back to mid-off, and I shouted, 'Are you ready now?' And I bowled him first ball."

These, and many other stories about Bomber Wells are to be found in Stephen Chalke's wonderfully evocative memoir, One More Run (2000). The book also makes it clear, however, that Bomber Wells was a very fine bowler.

Oddly for such a thickset man, he had small hands, and seemed to spin the ball from the palm rather than the fingers.

"He was the only bowler I've ever seen," remembered his Gloucestershire colleague Arthur Milton, "that made the ball pitch further up to you than it looked. He had such a quick arm action that the ball would be on you, half a yard further up than you thought."

Many batsmen were trapped LBW on the back foot. It was Wells's misfortune, though, that in his time Gloucestershire had two other fine off-spinners in John Mortimore and David Allen, both of whom played for England. In order to be sure of regular county championship cricket Wells moved to Nottinghamshire in 1960.

Yet his bowling average for Gloucestershire – 544 wickets at 21.18 each – was better than either Mortimore's (1,696 wickets at 22.69) or Allen's (882 wickets at 22.13). Many county cricketers, including so hardened a professional as Brian Close, felt that Wells's unpredictability made him the most dangerous of the three.

He was always changing his pace, and would mix off-spin with away swingers and leg breaks. "It used to bore me silly to bowl two balls the same," he said.

What counted against him in some eyes was his inability to be anything but his own man, or to play the game for any other reason but enjoyment. A man capable, during tense moments on the field, of creeping up behind his fiercely disciplinarian county captain George Emmett in the dressing room and saying "Boo", was never going to be entirely acceptable in the grim grind of professional cricket.

Bryan Douglas Wells was born in Gloucester on July 27 1930 into a radical Socialist household. His father, ostracised after leading a strike at the local Wagon Works (which made coaches and trucks for the railways) worked on the barges. Though calm enough at home, he would, as Bryan recalled, "fight the world" when he had been drinking. His wife, for her part, fought injustice by giving away her last penny to whomsoever elicited her sympathy. Bomber would be a lifelong member of the Labour Party.

The family lived in New Street, Gloucester, a road of two-up, two-down terrace houses. A peculiar system of nomenclature prevailed among the Wells: Bryan was called "Bronc"; his older brothers David and Geoffrey were addressed as Jerry and John, while his sister Jean was known as Sally. The nickname "Bomber" was bestowed on Bryan in homage to the boxer Bombardier Billy Wells.

Bryan grew up to hear his father and brothers talking about Gloucestershire cricket; no one doubted that Walter Hammond was the greatest batsman who had ever lived. Later, in 1951, Bryan would play in Hammond's last match for Gloucestershire. Alas, the maestro, long, long past his prime, scraped around for a miserable seven.

Wells first played cricket in New Street, using a tennis ball and a makeshift bat. Windows were frequently broken; to acquire glass to replace the shattered panes, he and his friends used to buy huge Victorian pictures for a song at the local junk shop: "we had enough prints of shaggy Highland cattle to open an art gallery."

At St Paul's Elementary School Bryan took part in a trial for a cricket match, and found himself reprimanded for hitting the ball out of the playground. His attitude to batting never changed. He had one shot – the slog. "If I hit the ball," Bomber explained, "it went a long way and the crowd and I were happy. If I missed it, well, I was that much nearer bowling."

Team mates were frequently driven to fury by his running between the wickets. "Can't you say anything?" Sam Cook once shouted, stranded in mid-pitch by Bomber's failure to call. "Goodbye," Bomber volunteered.

Though there was little cricket at Linden Road Secondary School, the headmaster lent a bat which the boys used for knock-abouts in the park. The problem of obtaining a ball was solved by pinching missiles from the local coconut shy and wrapping them with insulating tape to make them the same size as cricket balls.

During the Double Summer Time of the Second World War Bomber would bowl from five to 10 every evening. Since his companions, having no pads or gloves, objected to his bowling fast, he slowed his pace, and dispensed with a run-up in order to maximise the number of deliveries.

At 13 Wells left school and was apprenticed to a printer, though all his spare time was still given to bowling. It was a lucky day when some American GIs who had been stationed in Gloucester presented their baseball before leaving for D-Day. Soon afterwards Bomber played his first properly organised game, for St James's Youth Club, and for the first time in his life bowled with a real cricket ball. He took nine wickets.

By the late 1940s Wells was turning out for the Gloucestershire Nondescripts, and in 1951 he was selected for the county's second XI. He did well, taking six wickets. Soon afterwards, he recalled, "I was out in the park in Gloucester, "It was a lovely evening, about half past nine or 10. We were eating fish and chips, and this huge chap came across, old Tom Goddard. 'Are you Bomber Wells?' Goddard demanded. 'Get down to Bristol tomorrow, you're playing against Sussex'."

Evidently Sir Derrick Bailey did not have much confidence in the newcomer, for Bomber came on as sixth change bowler. Almost immediately, however, he claimed his first victim, David Sheppard, the future bishop of Liverpool. At the end of the innings his figures were six for 47. "Well," he told his new team mates in the pavilion, "I can see if I'm going to play for this side, I'm going to have to do a lot of bowling. I shall have to cut my run down."

Two years National Service, in the Royal Ordnance Corps, followed in 1952 and 1953, but in 1954 Wells took 95 first-class wickets and won his county cap. He was even more successful the next two seasons, with 122 and 123 wickets respectively. Now a seasoned professional cricketer, he used to play his gramophone in the dressing room, until someone threw it out of the window. "I took the hint," he observed.

Many counselled against the move to Nottinghamshire, arguing that the wicket at Trent Bridge was too favourable to batsmen. But Bomber found he preferred it to the slower pitches at Bristol, and claimed 120 wickets in his first season at Nottingham. He also preferred the food at Trent Bridge, finding it a great advance on "the little salads we used to have every day at Bristol, one slice of cold meat so thin you could see through it." Eating, he confessed, was his second pastime.

Wells retired in 1965, having taken, as he was told, 999 wickets in 302 first-class matches. Offered a game against Gloucestershire to make up the thousand – "somebody down there will give you their wicket" – he demurred.

"Plenty of people have got a thousand wickets," he reflected, "I bet no one's got 999." Later, however, it was discovered he had only taken 998. They cost him 24.26 apiece. His career batting average was 7.47; he did, however, once hit a hundred in 35 minutes when playing for Stinchcombe.

Wells's autobiography, Well, Well, Wells (1981) became a prized item on the second-hand book market, while his zest for anecdote made him a popular speaker at charity dinners.

He did not look with favour on many of the developments in cricket since his day. In 1998 he suffered a stroke which left him dependent on a wheelchair, but failed to dampen his spirit. He died on June 19. His first wife predeceased him; he is survived by his second wife, Mary.

On his death PWT wrote about Bomber

It must be nearly 30 years since Bomber Wells began to talk me into writing his ‘autobiography’. The precise circumstances elude me. Bomber was a talker. I spent hours at his home in Ruddington going through the essays that he had written for The Cricketer magazine and then more hours trying to match his stories with actual events on the cricket field.

I can’t remember whether he ever was a fisherman, but some of his yarns belonged to the angling fraternity. Not that they were in any way boring, his soft Gloucester tones were heard at a thousand cricket lovers gatherings over the whole of the U.K. and his popularity was such that he would be invited to the same venues again and again.

Listening to a well-told yarn is entertaining, but putting those yarns down in cold print inside hard covers is a different matter. Brousing through the pages again after a lapse of more than quarter of a century, I can see the validity of John Arlott’s comment at the time, that I hadn’t really got to the bottom of Bomber. Twenty years later Stephen Chalke had a second go and made a better fist of it. But neither book covered Bomber’s 25 years in Nottinghamshire – it had been intended that my effort would be only volume one of two and the reason volume two never appeared was certainly not due to the lack of sales for the initial effort – one winter circuit of the cricket societies by Bomber cleared the shelves of volume one.

Bomber Wells was born in Gloucester in 1930, his father, perhaps aptly, worked at the Wagon Works – the firm’s ground was used for County matches. After playing for several local clubs and picking up a host wickets with his off breaks, he made his debut for Gloucestershire in 1951, taking the place of the injured master-spinner, Tom Goddard. The following summer saw him serving his country in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and in 1953 being stationed in Nottinghamshire at Chilwell Ordnance Depot, he played for the Army and the Combined Services, as well as sneaking off for the occasional Gloucestershire county game.

His first full summer with Gloucestershire came in 1954 and in that season, plus the two which followed he took 95, 122 and 123 wickets. They were to proved the most productive of his career. In 1959 he lost his place in the Gloucestershire side to David Allen – at that time the county regularly fielded three spinners together – Allen, Cook and Mortimore. In 1960 therefore Wells elected to move to Trent Bridge. In that first summer he took 120 wickets and bowled 1,354.3 overs.

Most readers will recall that he bowled with virtually no run-up and many batsmen complained he bowled before they were paying attention! During his first winter in Nottingham, he went with Jim Swanton’s side to West Indies, but he never looked likely to play Test cricket for England. His batting comprised a heave for six, which too often resulted in a miss and a bowled. Well built he was not the most athletic of fielders and rather too fond of chatting to spectators on the boundary.

In 1961 and 1963 he took in excess of 90 wickets, but in 1965 his wickets were costing over 30 runs each and he was left out of half Notts games. In 1966 he was appointed as mentor to the Notts Colts side which played in the Notts Amateur League. His task was to act as captain and help the youngsters develop their full potential; unfortunately Bomber couldn’t resist the temptation to bowl himself as soon as the youngsters found the going a bit tough.