GETTY IMAGESand 1986/87 he was jettisoned. He also
had to inject himself with insulin during
his career to combat diabetes.7
Paul Gibb
MS Dhoni has been known to wear
sunglasses on a particularly bright day
in India. Jack Russell also wore them up to
the stumps. But generally wicketkeepers
are not seen in glasses. This might give
some indication as to the controversy
when Gibb, an excellent batsman for
Cambridge University and Yorkshire,
was chosen in place of the injured Les
Ames to keep in three Tests in 1946 – two
at home to India and one at Brisbane.
On both occasions he lost his place to
Godfrey Evans. Gibb had played Tests
as a specialist batsman before the war.
Later on he turned professional – the fi rst
Oxbridge Blue to do so – for Essex and
occasionally kept wicket.8
Daniel Vettori
Vettori played more than 100 Test
matches and nearly 300 ODIs for
New Zealand and has worn glasses since
he was three years old – long before specscame back in as a fashionable symbol
of hipsterdom. The left-arm spinner,
who took 362 Test wickets and 705 in
all internationals, has an allergy to the
disinfecting solution applied to contact
lenses, meaning that he had to play in
glasses. He became accustomed to them
and said it would be strange to have ever
played without them.9
Alf Valentine
The Jamaican left-arm spinner made
his debut during the seminal 1950
tour of England. During the tour it was
discovered that his eyesight was so bad
that he could not read the scoreboard
at some grounds. Fortunately the NHS
had been set up two years earlier, and
Valentine was able to obtain a pair of
glasses, applying sticking plaster to his
temple to ensure they did not slip o .
After a slow start to the tour, Valentine
came into his own and captured 33
wickets – in the second Test at Lord’s
he captured 7 for 134 and fellow spinner
Sonny Ramadhin 11 for 152, to become the
calypsonian Lord Kitchener’s “two little
pals of mine...”10
Jack Leach
The left-arm spinner who made
his Test debut earlier this year at
Christchurch bats, bowls and fi elds in
glasses. The 26-year-old paid tribute
to fellow cricketers who wear glasses,
including Somerset team-mate Marcus
Trescothick and fellow slow left-armer
Vettori, and said if it is good enough for
them it’s good enough for him.11
Bill Bowes
Bowling spin in specs is one thing,
but Bowes used to run in and bowl
fast in them. He was famously part of the
Bodyline series, even though he took only
one Test wicket on the tour, as Bradman
hooked him on to his stumps at Brisbane
and Douglas Jardine did a strange jig.
“There has probably never been a great
cricketer who looked less like one than
Bowes,” wrote Wisden on his death. He
lost four and a half stone in the North
Africa campaign of the Second World
War, and was not really fi t for fi rst-class
cricket thereafter. He contributed
regularly to The Cricketer magazine in
the 1950s.6
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