Interview: Touring with England’s Cricketers, with Phil Neale

Our guest this time around is Phil Neale, who enjoyed a 47-year career in professional sport. Having played 369 games for Lincoln City and 354 first-class matches for Worcestershire; he’s believed to be the last man to play both professional football and professional cricket at the same time.

But it’s his post-playing role that we’re mostly discussing in this episode, first as county-level coach and then with the England A setup, before moving on to become England cricket’s first-ever operations manager. Appointed to help out Duncan Fletcher and captain Nasser Hussain in 1999, it’s a role he stayed in for over 20 years, encompassing 257 Test matches, 422 ODIs and 110 T20Is. He was also there throughout the tenure of six head coaches and 11 Test captains.

During our chat, which took place as the early stages of the 2023 Cricket World Cup unfolded in India, the man who became known to England’s top cricketers as Uncle Phil talked about his versatile yet integral role behind the scenes. He recalls his memorable experiences, including five Ashes series victories, the 2010 T20 World Cup triumph, and, of course, the famous 2019 World Cup win at Lords.

Phil describes being peppered in the nets by Freddie Flintoff, navigating a floundering Michael Vaughan through an Indian airport, and revealing which cricketer’s bag was the only one he lost in over two decades. There are also tales from that infamous Germany boot camp ahead of the 2010 Ashes and the time he tried his best to keep a lid on post-World Cup celebrations in 10 Downing Street.

Many thanks to Phil for taking the time out to speak to me, and also to Luke Thornhill and Donald Nannestad at Lincoln City for putting me in touch with their former player.

If you know of someone who’d make a good subject for a future Unsung podcast, get in touch with a recommendation at unsungpodcast.com.

Quotes:

"Alistair Cook sat down with me, towards the end of my time with England, and we were rained off one day, and he said, 'come on Phil, let's work out how many days you've spent on a sports field'. And we worked it out that I'd spent basically 10 years of my life, 24 hours a day, day and night, on a cricket field. Never mind getting into the football."

 "I really enjoyed those first five years with Duncan Fletcher, where I had a fair bit of responsibility on the cricket side as well, I became the throw down guy. I did some throws with Freddie Flintoff, which was a nightmare because Freddy's way of practicing was, I only want to hit straight drives. I just want to hit the ball hard and straight so you throw it and get out the way as quick as you can. I've got quite a few, got quite a few bruises on my shins from Freddie peppering it back at me. 

 There was one period where he was out of form and then he got some runs in the one-dayseries and won the man of the series and he presented me with his jeroboam of champagne as thanks for getting him into nick. So it was nice when those little bits of appreciation came back."

 "Monty Panesar was in front of me. And Monty was on the edge of this cliff facing with his back down the cliff, holding onto the rope. And I watched Monty, and his feet were moving, but he wasn't going backwards. He was walking on the spot. He just couldn't get himself to go over the edge. And I watched him for about five minutes, and he pulled out in the end. And I said, right, I'm ready to go now. And I thought, I can't be any worse than that."

 "One of the things I've done since I've retired is look back and see what the common factors are in the teams that have been successful, and the teams that haven't. Good senior players are one, but planning and preparation definitely is part of it. And Andy Fl