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Jimmy Ellis: the actor who loved cricket.

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Belfast born-actor James Ellis sadly died last week, Robin Walsh remembers a true cricket lover who took to watching Ireland’s exploits on the pitch in recent years.
Cricket Ireland President Robin Walsh and the Belfast-born actor James Ellis who died at the week-end were good friends, not least through their mutual love of cricket. The two men were together when Ireland won the Intercontinental Cup in May 2007 and the following article appeared in Sunday Life at the time.

No Finer Man to Grace us with his presence – Sunday Life May 27, 2007.

OF the small group of Irish supporters watching the Intercontinental Cup triumph, no one was more interesting and few were more interested in the proceedings than the familiar figure sitting in front of the pavilion at the Grace Road ground in Leicester. The distinguished Ulster actor and writer James Ellis rose to national prominence in “Z Cars”, the weekly police drama that enriched the black and white days of BBC television back in the Sixties.

He has had a lifelong passion for cricket — fuelled more than 65 years ago when his father would take him “over the bridge” from East Belfast to the old North ground on the Ormeau Road to watch the overseas Tourists of the day and the indigenous talents of the EDR Shearers and Stuart Pollocks.

At 76 Jimmy Ellis now lives a gentle, English village life with his wife Robina on the Nottingham-Lincolnshire border and when the invitation came to watch Ireland play Canada not so far away, it was accepted with enthusiasm. Illness in recent years, from which he is making an excellent
recovery, may have slightly slowed him up, but his mind and memory remain as sharp as ever.

Particularly when it comes to cricket and the many matches he played up and down the country —including Lord’s and The Oval — for the Lord’s Taveners, the charity that aligns the sport with the world of entertainment. He reminisced: “I played a little bit of House cricket at Methodist College. I could pass myself as a batsman and a bowler but, even if I say so myself, I was quite a nifty fielder close to the wicket.”

As Jimmy Ellis developed the career in the theatres and studios of London that was to make him one of Ulster’s best loved sons, so he struck up long standing friendships with the cricketing fraternity and especially with old Middlesex players like Denis Compton and Bill Edridge.

And somewhere in the vaults of the Lord’s Taverners headquarters there is an old scorebook that includes a dismissal that reads: DCS Compton c JM Parks b J Ellis. “In fairness to Denis his prime had passed and he really did telegraph his famous sweep shot before I had delivered the ball. I managed to change the flight of the ball and it popped up in the air off the outside edge and Jim Parks took one of the easiest catches of his career. Denis had also scored quite a few runs at the time but still I never tire of telling the story.”

And tell it he did more than once as he happily signed autographs, watching Ireland record another international success. It was an enjoyable day in the sun for the man who has followed Irish cricket from a distance — a pleasant meeting with captain Trent Johnston and a close-up view, as he put it, “of the team which has done us all so proud in the World Cup”. More material for that memory bank .