Ken Shuttleworth announced his arrival in first-class cricket by taking the prize wicket of Geoffrey Boycott. True, the Yorkshireman had by then made 131 in the 1964 Roses match before the raw 19-year-old debutant fast bowler induced a nick to the keeper. Nevertheless, as first wickets go it was a propitious start.
Six years later, on the Ashes winning tour of 1970-71 under Ray Illingworth, he was awarded the first of his five England caps. Opening the bowling with John Snow at Brisbane, he took five Australian wickets in an innings, the first Englishman to achieve the feat on Test debut since 1962. “I just took it as another game,” he said. “We got stick, which you expect when you’re out there, but we were the first team since Douglas Jardine’s to win [back] the Ashes in Australia.” On that same tour he also opened the bowling against Australia in cricket’s first one-day international, taking England’s first wicket in the new format when he smartly caught-and-bowled Keith Stackpole.
Perhaps it was due to such an eye-catching list of firsts that he ultimately came to be regarded as a bowler who never quite fulfilled his early promise and should have achieved more. Yet any accusations of underachievement really only applied to his short England career. As a county stalwart between 1964 and 1980, he took 623 first-class wickets and another 174 in limited overs cricket. However, after the 1970-71 winter tour of Australia and New Zealand he played only one more Test and after appearing in the inaugural one-dayer, he never played for England again in a limited over international.
Shuttleworth left Lancashire after the 1976 season and moved to Leicestershire where he played for four seasons
ALAMY
In 2020 The Daily Telegraph compiled a list of “Cricket’s wasted talent XI: The England stars who fell by the wayside”. Comprised of the best postwar players whose chances were limited to five Tests or fewer, Shuttleworth was nominated to open the bowling with Surrey’s Martin Bicknell.
With a mop of Brylcreemed hair that evoked the era of Denis Compton, he was in many ways the victim of circumstances. An injury which sidelined him after the second Test on the Australian tour opened the door for the 21-year-old Bob Willis who replaced him to win the first of his 90 caps and with a crop of other young fast bowlers coming through that included Chris Old and Mike Hendrick, Shuttleworth’s opportunities faded.
As a tail-end batsman his motto was “hit out or get out”. The result was mostly the latter and he batted as if he wanted to get his pads off and his bowling boots back on as soon as possible. For “Shuts” loved to bowl and at a strapping 6ft 4in with an extravagantly long run-up and a text-book sideways-on action that could generate scorching pace, he was a match-winner in county cricket.
One whispered it quietly on the Lancastrian side of the Pennines, but that classical bowling action was reputedly modelled on Yorkshire’s finest, Fred Trueman, and it enabled him to take five wickets in an innings 17 times for Lancashire and on three further occasions at the end of his career for Leicestershire.
He was also a phenomenal limited overs bowler who helped Lancashire to become the best one-day side in the country. Marrying penetration to a niggardly line and length that gave him an impressive economy rate, he was a key part of the Lancashire side that in the space of four seasons between 1969 and 1972 won the Gillette Cup three times and the John Player Sunday League twice.
His death came as a shock for only the previous day he had been assisting the editors of Wisden with an obituary of Peter Lever, his former Lancashire and England team-mate (obituary March 28, 2025), which will now appear alongside his own in the 2026 Almanack. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and daughters Sara and Hannah.
Kenneth Shuttleworth was born in 1944 in St Helens, Lancashire, and began his career in the Lancashire Leagues, playing for St Helens Recs while working as an apprentice at Pilkington’s glass factory. His success soon attracted the attention of the county club. “I came into work one morning and the personnel office told me to go home and get my kit because I was going to a trial at Old Trafford,” he remembered.
The club’s chairman Rupert Howard was waiting outside in his Jaguar and took him to the ground for a two-day game against Cumberland. He took four wickets and was offered a contract on £10 a week plus travel expenses. However, with the England seamers Brian Statham and Ken Higgs taking the new ball and Lever, who was four years older, also on the staff, he struggled at first to win a regular place in the Lancashire side. His breakthrough season came in 1967 when he took 50 wickets and he was awarded his county cap the following year.
His first selection for England came in 1970 bowling against a Rest of The World side that included Garfield Sobers, Graeme Pollock and Clive Lloyd but the series was subsequently ruled not to be of Test status.
He left Lancashire at the end of the 1976 season after suffering a bad case of what bowlers call the “yips”. “I lost my confidence in a match against Yorkshire when the ball swung all over the place and I couldn’t control it. I kept bowling wide after wide and didn’t know what was going on,” he remembered in 2020. “The fear never really left me after that — bowling went from being a natural thing to do to becoming very hard.”
After four seasons with Leicestershire, he retired from the professional game in 1980, and took a job in marketing with British Coal while continuing to play club cricket and doing some coaching with Lancashire’s youngsters. He also had a brief spell as an umpire.
Modest and with a dry sense of humour, he could usually see the funny side but an exception came in a championship match at Ilford in 1970 when the Essex spinner Ray East came in to bat at 232 for 8 on a spicy pitch and with Shuttleworth on fire. Unwilling to risk life and limb, East whispered to him that if he bowled one full and straight, he would contrive to miss it, enabling him to return to the pavilion in one piece. Shuttleworth nodded and duly bowled a half-volley on middle and leg. East swung wildly and unintentionally connected, sending the ball over long-on for six.
Firing off a terrible cuss, Shuttleworth stomped back to his mark and stormed in to exact retribution. Knowing what was coming, East threw away his bat and dived to the ground. As the predicted bouncer flew harmlessly high over the prostrate batsman, harmony was restored and even the affronted bowler could not resist a huge grin.
Ken Shuttleworth, cricketer, was born on November 13, 1944. He died in his sleep on August 19, 2025, aged 80