David English, fundraiser, cricketer, writer, and actor, died on November 12, 2022, aged 76. He was remembered in the 2023 Wisden Almanack.
ENGLISH, DAVID STUART, CBE, who died on November 12, aged 76, was the unstoppable force behind the annual Bunbury Festival, a cricket week that brings together the best Under-15 players in England, and whose distinguished alumni include Test captains Andrew Flintoff, Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Ben Stokes. “It’s an extraordinary week in your life as a young cricketer, the first time you see every player in your age group in the same spot,” said Cook. The festival, run by the English Schools Cricket Association, was struggling financially when English was asked to come to its aid in 1987. He had written a series of children’s books about the cricket-playing Bunbury rabbits, later turned into a successful animated TV series by Channel 4, and his only condition was that the festival be rebranded to match the name. He also launched a Bunbury celebrity XI for charity matches, which drew big crowds and raised bigger sums. He was a crazy character nicknamed “The Loon” by his best friend Ian Botham. The Daily His Telegraph called him “an avid curator of his own mythology”.
English attended the same Hendon School as Dennis Compton and had ambitions of following Hero into the Middlesex team. He failed to get past two games in the second eleven, despite being a handy left-armer who later played for Finchley. After a trip to Europe, where he claimed to have danced with Brigitte Bardot, he joined the Daily Mail as an entertainment reporter and began filling out contact books with names that would one day support his charity work. He signed with Decca Records, Tom He took on his PR duties for artists such as Jones and the Rolling Stones, and still found time for him to perform with MCC and Cross He Arrows.
In 1973, he was invited by impresario Robert Stigwood to run the new RSO label, which also included the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton. The company achieved great success in his mid-1970s. English recalled standing in Times Square looking at a neon sign listing America’s top 10. Five of them were by his RSO artist. However, he left to try his hand at acting and had a brief role in the star-studded World War II blockbuster A Bridge Too Far in 1977. English helped alleviate boredom on set by arranging cricket matches and introducing Robert Redford to the game. One of his favorite stories is about how producer Joe Levine had to reshoot the film’s most expensive scenes after watching it again. As Allied paratroopers landed on Dutch soil, a cricket match could be seen in the corner of the screen.
English found further success with advertising for Head and Shoulders shampoo and became wealthy enough to focus on his philanthropic work in cricket. Thanks to his connections, Banbury’s charity matches were well supported, with Clapton and chain-smoking Rolling Stone’s Bill Wyman often filling in alongside the cricketers. In 2003, he published an autobiography titled Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Confessions of a Loon. But his U15 festival, often held at private schools and attended by his four teams from the region, was his legacy. Although the cricket was fiercely competitive, English made it an enjoyable week. For him, the highlight was the trip to Nando’s, and he recalled the year Stokes poured peri-peri sauce into Root’s Coca-Cola. “Cricket is the most wonderful bonding sport of all,” said English. “It teaches you that the team is more important than the individual.”
Around 100 Bunbury graduates have played Test cricket, including 10 in the 2005 Ashes winning team and nine in England’s 2019 World Cup winning team. In 2018, the ECB took over the management of the competition and the competition was renamed the ECB David English Bunbury Festival. He died the day before England faced Pakistan in the T20 World Cup final in Melbourne, the day the team wore black armbands. Captain Jos Buttler paid tribute to him: “One of the greatest people to ever live and he was so much fun and producer to spend time with some of England’s best cricketers at the fantastic Bunbury Festival.” did. The two remained firm friends. “Good luck to those already in heaven. Loon is on the way!” Botham tweeted.
David English was, among other things, the force behind the Bunbury Festival.
