• Lancashire’s legendary bowler Lever dies aged 84
• Hard worker played in 17 Tests for England

Peter Lever’s life changed one day in the nets at Todmorden, his local cricket club. He was in the team as a batter who kept wicket, and bowled the occasional off-break. Trinidad’s Sylvester Oliver, the club’s professional, wanted to practise with someone bowling at him with a bit of pace. With none of the club’s seamers present, Lever had a go. “I managed to knock his castle down a few times,” he recalled, “and from then on off-breaks and keeping wicket were out so far as I was concerned.”

Lever, who has died aged 84 after a short illness, was 19 at the time; within a year he had signed for Lancashire. That it was Lever who happened to be in the nets at the time was probably no coincidence: the Australian spinner Neil Dansie, who played for Todmorden as a professional in 1955 and 1956, remembered him being “first to arrive and last to leave. I said with that dedication and enthusiasm this boy is destined to go far in the game. Fifteen years later there he was, getting off the plane to represent England in Australia.”