The Cricket Writers’ Club was saddened to hear of the passing of club member Graham Otway at the age of 72.
Graham was Cricket Correspondent at the Press Association for several years, including during the infamous 1984/85 England tour of India. He took on the same role at Today until its closure in 1995, and then was de facto correspondent at the Sunday Times up to 1998.
He continued to work for the Sunday Times as well as across other national titles including the Daily Mail in the latter part of his career, covering mainly cricket and golf.
Below, his friend and former colleague Mike Walters has penned a touching tribute to the life and career of ‘Otters’.
By Mike Walters
Tensions were running high at the check-in desk in Chittagong’s Hotel Agrabad, where a delegation of English cricket writers arrived to discover their rooms had been re-sold and they had no beds for the night.
Fortunately, one of the disenfranchised travellers was Graham Otway, a formidable presence on tour with personal experience of running a travel business himself, and the stand-off was soon broken.
Otters informed the check-in staff they were “finished” and summoned a tall figure, resplendent in uniform regalia, across the lobby to exert his authority and read the front-of-house employees their fortune.
In truth the bewildered, uniformed hotel porter was no more empowered to restore the hacks’ bookings than an airport baggage handler is qualified to fly a jumbo jet, but after an hour of gunboat diplomacy, with Otters at the forefront of the artillery, the problem was solved.
If you were thousands of miles away from home on tour, and you needed help to be evacuated because of bereavement, personal anguish or being recalled by the office, Graham Otway was a great man to have on your side.
And whether he was chasing a story, holding court at the bar or on the golf course, Otters was one of the great characters on the circuit.
The death of the former Press Association, Today and Sunday Times cricket correspondent on 8 April 2025, aged 72 and just days into the new season, generated immense sadness among those of us who shared press boxes with Graham down the years.
Covering my first Test match as his quotes leg-man, at Headingley in 1989, he introduced me to future colleagues and deadly rivals as his “assistant” – and I will always be in his debt for the wisdom, company and trade secrets he shared for the next 30-odd years.
Like all the best journalists, Otters was – as his successor at PA, David ‘Toff’ Lloyd, attests – never off-duty.
He could start an argument with the speaking clock and always have the last word, but players, umpires, administrators, groundsmen or fellow journalists all confided in him because we all knew he cared about cricket and the people who worked in the game.
Generous with his time and contacts, during an early-season county game at Taunton he once volunteered to call Australian captain Allan Border at home when a story broke which required a response from Down Under.
The conversation, conducted centre stage in the press box, was a slow burner. “Hello, AB, it’s Otters. Graham. Graham Otway. Graham Otway from the Today newspaper. The Today newspaper in England…”
Once the tittering at the back of the class had been contained, mirth among his colleagues that Border had not immediately recognised Otters’ voice soon turned to professional gratitude when he pooled the quotes (which might have been preserved as exclusive by others) – and admiration that he had an Ashes great’s private number in his contacts book in the first place.
On another occasion, checking in his copy about England allrounder Dougie Brown from a one-day tournament in Sharjah, Otters called the sports desk to make sure they had safely received his “Brown stuff.” More tittering at the back of class.
For a time, he helped to operate a small family business with a couple of offshoots, primarily organising hotel accommodation for cricket writers, and once announcing to colleagues at a Test match that “the Otway Group has made a hostile bid for Otway Travel.”
On the Stock Exchange it was not abundantly clear who was being hostile to whom, but it was classic Otters theatre.
Yes, he was the life and soul of the press box – and he could also be the life and death of the party.
On the 2002/03 Ashes tour, Otters and I arranged to have dinner with Australian scribe Malcolm Conn in Subiaco, one of Perth’s affluent suburbs. The waiter had only just taken our food order when the phone rang, Otters disappeared around the corner to conduct urgent legal business – and he never resurfaced. Only he could turn a three-course meal into a four-act drama, but that was all part of the glorious package. A night out with Otters was never dull, nor predictable.
Never happier than when he was unleashing a tee shot with admirable draw, Otters was a founder member of the ‘Gibbons’ club – Mike Selvey, Toff and the late Martin Johnson making up the quartet – who took their golf clubs to Ireland when the 1988 tour of India was cancelled, and their camaraderie would explore distant fairways every subsequent year.
Otway was a single-figure handicap golfer who would arrive on tour with clubs, laptop and luggage – in that order – and head straight to the bar for a debrief.
But he was, first and foremost, a mighty fine journalist with enviable contacts and a fearless resolve to hold authority to account. I learned so much from him, notably his art of sidling up to players or officials and extracting information from them like a putt teasing the cup.
Sleep well, Otters. Your assistant will always be thankful for the sagacity and friendship.
What a nice tribute from Mike. ‘Otters’ was paid a compliment by the great Trevor Bailey during his time as a man of the match adjudicator in one day contests. Trevor tended to spend part of those days at the back of the press box, drink in hand courtesy of the sponsors, and admitted one afternoon at Canterbury that he could not recall the names of most journalists. “But,” he swiftly added, in an approving voice, “I always remember Graham Otway.”
I am late onto this tribute from MGM, and grateful I’ve read it. It really captures Otters. Surely no cricket writer has had so many funny stories told about him. Like the time the press bus on a tour of India was stopped by dacoites (highwaymen) up country somewhere. They blocked the road and were armed with knifes and sticks. Otters claimed guns as well. Otters marched off the bus and demanded they “cleared the road immediately for the England cricket team.” They did, too. Not a rupee paid. So many more… another time maybe. Rest easy.
I, too, am late to Mike’s touching and fitting tribute – thanks Mike. I can only second your emotions. I, too, worked as Otters’s legman, during the four-captain Test summer of 1988, and I can safely say I have never known a reporter, of any subject, more committed to his work. The seafood dinner he took me and my future wife for on a sunkissed evening in Sydney Harbour in 1989 remains one of the most memorable meals of my life.
We only fell out once, and fleetingly at that, after I fell naively prey to a pressbox prank and a complete porky pie of a story involving Peter May and David Gower wound up on the back page of Today with my name atop. I didn’t stay angry for long: how could I? There was something about Otters – the deep insecurity that hounds and inspires so many showmen, perhaps – that made you want to cuddle him every time he put his foot in his mouth.
By the time Today folded I was at the Sunday Times and the sports editor Nick Pitt asked me which of their journos were worth having – a quota was mandatory – I instantly recommended Otters for cricket. ‘You won’t find a better newshound,’ I told him. ‘Or one with a fatter contacts book.’ So we wound up working together on the ST and, later, the FT. If he ever let an editor down, I never heard a whisper of complaint.
Thanks a zillion, Mike.