Miles Kington: Why cricket held a great appeal for Luciano Pavarotti

In the wake of the death of opera star Luciano Pavarotti, I have received many letters in tribute to the great man, and I would like to bring you a few of the most revealing today.

From Sir George "Gubby" Trotter

Sir, I am amazed that in all the praise heaped on our old friend Luciano Pavarotti, nobody has mentioned his passionate love of the English game of cricket.

I first met Luciano in the 1960s when I was touring Italy with an amateur cricket team called "The British On Tour" and one of the teams we played was called "The Opera Stars On Strike", for even in those days opera singers were given to sudden diva-like moods, and Luciano was one of the players in this prestigious Italian cricket team.

(He was not, in fact, a first choice for the team. He was picked because a tenor called Octavio Bassetto, who had expected to open the batting had had a fit of temperament when told he was going in at Number 5 and had stormed out of the team. Luciano replaced him at very short notice.)

There was an extraordinary incident during our innings when our batsman Trevor Askwith (later Bishop of Warrington) played forward at the first ball of the over and missed, and there was an appeal for lbw, turned down. During the rest of the over there was a low humming noise coming from somewhere which nobody could quite identify.

At last it was traced to Luciano at slip, who had appealed with everyone else, but who had gone on singing the phrase "How's that" to see how long he could sustain it for. It must have been the longest appeal in cricket history and, amazingly, it worked, because Askwith was given out by the umpire who had changed his mind about the decision meanwhile.

Yours etc

From the ex-Bishop of Warrington

Sir, I remember the incident well, and have forgiven Luciano many years ago (though not the accursed umpire). When Luciano and I met in subsequent cricket matches we often laughed about it. But I did once ask Luciano what attracted him, a hot-blooded southerner, to such a melancholic northern pursuit.

"My friend," he said, "I might just as well ask you British what on earth you see in opera, an art form which is more suited to warm evenings and the al fresco life than to your fur coats and goose pimples. Whenever I sing opera in Britain, I thank my lucky stars that, being on stage, I can move around and keep the circulation going.

"Yet opera and cricket have more in common than you might think. For a start, everyone in both wants to be a star and therefore nobody likes each other. The only reason everyone is close together in opera is that the stage is so small. If the opera stage was as big as a cricket field, the singers would be as far from each other as cricketers are when fielding. That is why I love cricket. I can be alone. Also, I do not look over-weight in the outfield."

Yours etc

From Monsignor Alessandro Tomasso

Sir, As captain of the Vatican's short-lived cricket team in the 1980s, and a frequent opponent of Luciano Pavarotti on the field, I can vouch that his physical size did cause the famous singer some awkward embarrassment.

I can remember once when he was chasing a ball to the boundary, and fell over on top of it just as it was about to go over. The ball was stuck underneath him, where nobody could extricate it, and by the time he had levered himself to his feet, the batsmen were already running their fifth run. With extraordinary quickness of mind, Pavarotti kicked the ball over the boundary, thus cleverly restricting the runs to four!

Yours etc

More tribute letters to the great man tomorrow, including an insight into how a cricket-loving tenor felt about being hi-hacked by soccer and the Three Tenors for the World Cup.

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