“He said: ‘Right, we’ll have that then’ and that was it.” “I remember the magistrate asking me how much the bet had been for and I said £20,” he told the Independent. Angelow, though, did not get to hold on to his winnings. Such was the attitude at the time that Angelow returned to Lord’s the following day to watch the conclusion of the match (Australia comfortably batting out for a draw to maintain their 1-0 lead in the series). I think it was handled pretty well at the time – there was quite a laugh from everyone on the field, but then it was back to business.” “The players managed to forget about the interruption pretty quickly. Times have changed since then, whether for the good or the worse I don’t know. It’s probably fair to say that cricket in England was a bit formal. “They were really quite commonplace back home, but you certainly didn’t expect that kind of behaviour in England, certainly not in those days, and at Lord’s of all places. “No one at Lord’s had seen a streaker before, but I’d seen quite a few back in Australia prior to that,” noted the Australia batsman Doug Walters, who had been on the field at the time. Angelow’s amble across the Lord’s pitch had created a little bit of history: he was the first streaker at a Test match in England (the equally-coveted First Streaker at a Major Sporting Event title having gone to Michael O’Brien at Twickenham in 1974). Perhaps their hesitation was borne out of inexperience. The police, taking a fairly laissez-faire approach to the spectacle (it’s fair to say any Edgbaston interlopers this week will not experience quite the same relaxed attitude – an Australia fan was jailed for a week in Sri Lanka after streaking during a rain delay in the first Test), eventually caught up with Angelow after he had wandered over to the Mound Stand and escorted him from the ground. There he is, buttocks shining proudly in the sunshine, a hand (rather than a more personal appendage) poking out jauntily between his legs, fingers spread as if to say: “Ta da!” Such is the picture’s pop-culture cache that it adorns the cover of the Duckworth Lewis Method’s second album, Sticky Wickets. “What I should have said was that perhaps his greatest disappointment was not being deprived of further cricket for the day, but that he actually managed to straddle the stumps without even dislodging a bail.”)Īngelow had shed his clothing and, wearing nothing but a pair of black socks and his white Adidas trainers, leaped over both sets of stumps, in doing so creating one of the great cricket photographs. “No, I blew it,” he told David Rayvern Allen. (That may be one of the most famous pieces of cricket commentary in existence but years later Arlott felt he had missed an opportunity. “He’s now being marched down in the final exhibition past at least 8,000 people in the Mound Stand, some of whom perhaps have never seen anything quite like this before. And this may be his last public appearance but what a splendid one. And now he’s being embraced by a blond policeman. The police are mustered, so are the cameramen, and Greg Chappell. And I would think it’s seen the last of its cricket for the day. Those around the country tuned into Test Match Special were treated to John Arlott’s description of what happened next, made all the more memorable by his failure to remember the word “streaker”: “We’ve got a freaker! We’ve got a freaker down the wicket now.
“I didn’t have any plan, just to keep running.”
Angelow, 24, and a cook in the merchant navy, stepped up to the challenge. A member of the antipodean party came up with an idea and offered £20 to the man bold enough to carry it out. The question of livening up the soporific proceedings had been raised. The immediate past had featured several pints of ale and some good-natured back-and-forth with a group of Australia fans who has also been enjoying the sun and the refreshments.
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