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Ageing gracefully? Martin Johnson salutes those determined sportsmen and women for whom retirement is not an option
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icture, if you will, a chap getting last minute instructions from his wife before leaving home for a Test match. “Now then dear. Got everything? Bus pass? Walking stick? Hearing aid?” Not difficult is it? Except that on this occasion his next conversation is with the steward manning the players’ entrance. “Morning Jimmy. Weather’s nice and overcast this morning, so I reckon you’ll get a hatful if we win the toss and bowl.” The Jimmy in this instance is not necessarily a fictitious one. The number one bowler in the world rankings has been at the height of his powers against India in this summer’s Test series, and at the age of 36 – positively decrepit for a fast bowler – no-one talks any more, as they once did, about how much longer England’s James Anderson can possibly keep going. Come to think of it, when it comes to the modern sportsman or woman, 36 isn’t much of an age at all. Roger Federer is 37, and in January won his 20th Grand Slam title in Australia. He’s so old he even has a single-handed backhand, even though it’ll take some doing to catch Martina Navratilova, whose birthday cake when she retired in 2006 required the blowing out of 50 candles. Anderson also has a few years to catch up with Colin Cowdrey, hard though it is to compare like for like given that Cowdrey was a batsman, and spent most of his fielding career (no Twenty20 in those days) standing at first slip, a position in which it is pretty difficult to expend too many calories. As was fairly evident by his girth. Cowdrey’s Test match swansong came in 1975 when, at the age of 41, he was flown out as an emergency replacement to Australia to face the fearsome pace of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in their pomp. “Good morning Mr Thomson,” he said when walking out to bat. “Cowdrey’s the name. Pleased to meet you.” Thommo is alleged to have replied: “Being nice isn’t going to save you fatso”, but Cowdrey came through the series not only with a respectable number of runs, but also – unlike most of his fellow batsmen – only one bruise. He might have been a little slimmer had he been around in George Foreman’s day. George’s “Lean, Mean Fat Reducing Machine” grill has earned him an estimated $200 million, far more than his boxing earnings when he retired, for the second time, in 1997. In 1974, when he was knocked out by Muhammad Ali in the “Rumble In The Jungle”, the BBC’s Harry Carpenter was beside himself. “Oh my God. He’s won back the title at the age of 32!” yelled Harry when George was counted
out, but Ali was just a pup compared to Foreman, who was still boxing at a serious level until he was 48. Peter Shilton was the same age as George when he was still keeping goal for his 11th club, Leyton Orient. He began his career with Leicester City and played 1,005 league games. Mind you, it’s easier to play football in middle age (Stanley Matthews was 51) than American Football, especially as a quarterback, a position in which you spend every Sunday afternoon waiting to get hit (often when you’re not looking) by a couple of blokes who could make a serious dent in one of Eddie Stobart’s lorries. Tom Brady, of the New England Patriots, is still going at 41, and in a sport which inflicts its competitors with more early dementia issues than any other, he’s taken out some handy medical insurance, not only with earnings of $180 million, but also by marrying supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who’s worth $390 million. If you really want to go on into your dotage, though, you really need to play something like snooker, when the height of your physical exertion involves applying chalk to your cue. Jimmy White is still going at 56, Steve Davis carried on until he was 58, and Fred Davis (no relation) was 70 when he last played at the Crucible in 1984. Then he got his second wind, and only retired when he lost to Ronnie O’Sullivan in 1993, at the age of 79. Golf is another sport which makes it a bit easier to go on and on, and American major winner Billy Casper was 73 when I followed him at the US Masters in 2005. It was not an occasion he would remember fondly, requiring 106 strokes to get round, 14 of them at a single par three. Augusta, for those who’ve only seen it on TV, is severely hilly, and as Billy puffed and wheezed his way up the 18th, one spectator greeted him with a cheery: “Hi Mr Casper. How y’all doing?” Casper’s reply: “not too good as it happens” seemed to me to be the model of self restraint, but it got worse. “Say Mr Casper. I’ll be playing in your pro-am in Salt Lake City in three weeks’ time!” Billy emitted a low groan, stepped away from his ball, and said (actually, more of a mutter): “well, we’ll look forward to seeing you there.” By anyone’s standards it was an heroic performance. Not the golf so much, as managing to get back to the clubhouse without doing some serious damage to his newly acquired chum. But maybe, at the age of 73, he hadn’t got the energy and, after taking his scorecard – not to the recorder’s hut, as protocol demanded, but the nearest trash can – he promptly retired.
Martin Johnson has been a sports journalist and author since 1973, writing for the Leicester Mercury, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He currently writes columns for The Rugby Paper and The Cricket Paper, and has a book out called ‘Can I Carry Your Bags?’
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