After 21 years of celebrity packed cricket, raising over 10 million pounds for charity, and a schools cricket involvement which gave so many of our test stars the help they needed to make it to the top, it is almost impossible to believe that it all started with an unfortunate bunny rabbit scurrying across the Mill Hill cricket field.

That little bunny inspired “our David” to create such colourful characters as Ian Buntham, Viv Radish, Rodney Munch from Brisbun, and Dennis Lettuce from Melbun, and all those legends as bunnies would live in Bunbury, and the books that followed would beguile thousands of kids for years and years.

But there was so much more than that to come,  Bunbury cricket was born, and it was in the earlier years of this inspired venture that I met young English, and was bowled over by his seemingly boundless enthusiasm and drive.  I soon realised that a challenge didn’t exist, that was too daunting for this charismatic character to meet.

In my 46 years on television, I’ve had the privilege to rub shoulders with some of the greatest names in sport and show business, among them the greatest of all Mohammed Ali, and I have been tremendously inspired by them.  Inspired not only by their skill and athleticism, but also by their innate belief in their own ability.

Mohammed Ali had it all, plus an instinctive flair of marketing himself, that he told me was instilled into him by his Dad, who likened the selling of the then Cassius Clay, to the circus coming to town.  Shout it in the streets – Ali certainly did that; we all remember “I’M THE GREATEST”.

Now I’m not sure of David English’s absolute skill and athleticism.  I know he could get by on a cricket pitch, and move around a bit, but there’s little doubt he has all the other qualities in abundance.  And there’s something else, he also has a magnetic Pied Piper-like ability, that enabled him to persuade some of the greatest names in sport and show business to follow him onto a cricket pitch, for no reward, other than that of helping those less fortunate.  And so this significant slice of cricketing history has progressed and blossomed.

But it is not just the charities that have benefited.  David answered the call when the English Schools Cricket Association sought his help.  This is when his marketing skills came to the fore, and it is almost impossible to compute the benefit this partnership has brought to young and aspiring cricketers over the last twenty years.  Indeed 95% of our test stars set out on their careers having played as youngsters in the Bunbury ESCA annual festival.

So you see there is so much to celebrate on this the 21st anniversary of the Bunburys, and that little bunny would have no idea what he had started by scampering over a crowdless cricket pitch in Mill Hill.