also had immediate success as Yorkshire captain, winning the County Championship in 1963. His successes saw him named as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1964, acknowledging his impact on the 1963 season. Close went on to captain Yorkshire to the county championship in 1966, 1967 and 1968. He first met his wife Vivien, an air stewardess with BOAC, in Bermuda whilst touring there with Yorkshire in 1964, when she was engaged to someone else. He pursued her relentlessly, even though initially she considered him not to be her type. Brian gambled with his love life too: on New Year's Day 1965 he told her that if she didn't agree to marry him, he would never see her again. They married the following March. They went on to have one daughter, Lynn, and a son, Lance. England captaincy After the fourth Test of their five-Test series against the West Indies in 1966, England were 3–0 down and had lost the series. Needing someone to come in to revitalise the squad, the England selectors turned to the successful Yorkshire captain, Brian Close. Close knew why he had been selected, and also why many of his men had been. At the pre-match dinner he said, "I shouldn't be here if we hadn't made such a mess of the series. What's more, neither would a few of you. You are here because you are all fighters, and we are going to keep the pressure on and keep it on for five days." What Close did was to engender a battling spirit for the final Test Match. So, when England were 166 for 7 in reply to the West Indies' 268 all out, they did not give up. Instead, centuries from Tom Graveney and John Murray, and half-centuries from Ken Higgs and John Snow, saw England to a score of 527. The highlight of the match was when West Indian captain Gary Sobers, who had a batting average in the series of well over 100, came in to bat at 137 for 5 with his side still 122 runs from making England bat again. Close knew that Sobers was a fine hooker, and he knew how he wanted to approach him, so he asked Snow to bowl a bouncer first up. Everything went to plan: Sobers hooked, edged the ball into his body, and it rebounded to Close at his