Josh Baker was 20 when he died. He was Lisa and Paul Baker’s only child, a loving son and a fiercely talented young cricketer. Two years on, and the shock and anguish do not leave them.
“We wake up every morning thinking about Josh,” says Lisa.
“He’s our first thought in the morning, and our last at night,” says Paul. “We’ve probably dreamt about him, too.”
Such a shattering event changes perspectives on life.
Lisa, a services manager for a packaging company, recently decided to retire. “I just thought, what’s the point?’ I now have these moments where I go for it. One was in Australia during the winter. Paul and I had gone on this wine tour and, on the coach, there was a family. Their girl said, ‘I’m jumping out of a plane tomorrow, if you fancy joining me?’
“I did it. I don’t like heights, I don’t like small planes, but it was brilliant. Apart from spiders, I have no fear now. Nothing can hurt me like I’ve been hurt.”
Paul listens, then takes a deep breath.
“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, but you get to the stage where how you look at the world is completely different,” he says. “We know what we’re missing, and what we can never have — it’s best if people don’t tell us, because we are aware of that.”
Josh Baker playing for Worcestershire in 2021 (Jacques Feeney/Getty Images)
Josh passed away on May 2, 2024.
A promising spin bowler for Worcestershire, he had already made 47 appearances for the county across all formats — including 22 first-class games — and represented England at junior level. That morning, his close friend and team-mate Henry Cullen was supposed to pick him up from home on their way to play in a second-team match.
Josh was a stickler for timekeeping and seldom late. But he was on that day.
Cullen’s messages went unanswered and, with time ticking on, he and his dad contacted Paul, knowing Josh’s silence was uncharacteristic. Paul phoned Spencer, a good friend from Australia who was staying with the Bakers that summer while he played club cricket in England. Spencer was the only person in the house with Josh but, when he picked up, he was unaware of any issue. The shower was running upstairs, and he had assumed Josh was in it.
It was only then that he put two and two together and realised it had been on for an hour and a half.
After receiving no response as he banged on the bathroom door, Spencer barged in and found Josh unconscious. He tried desperately to resuscitate him, but to no avail.
“I was in a meeting, and Paul had been ringing my phone,” Lisa says. “One of the girls got me and said, ‘You need to go home.’ I pulled in round the corner. There was a fire engine and two ambulances blocking the road.”
Josh had passed away from sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS) — when someone dies following a cardiac arrest and no obvious cause can be found in the post-mortem, with the structure of the heart appearing normal. He was gone in a matter of seconds. SADS affects around 500 people in the United Kingdom every year.
“The undertakers were carrying him out of the house, and we were in the garden,” recalls Paul. “It was just so surreal. ‘What the f*** do we do now? Where do we go?’
“I wanted to be at Worcestershire’s ground and to sit in the same seats we were sat in when he took his first senior wicket, (Warwickshire’s) Sam Hain. It was us and three friends, just wailing in those seats.
“If I look back to that day and the conversations I had, some things happened that are crystal clear. But then there are things in the proceeding weeks, the decisions we made, I have no idea of. But I think that’s how your brain deals with trauma.”
Worcestershire’s players conduct a minute’s applause for Josh Baker while wearing No 33 shirts for their County Championship game at Kent in May 2024 (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Paul and Lisa were left contemplating why. Why did it happen? Why Josh? They were questions that were unanswered even as the family held a celebration of Josh’s life on June 10 that year, a month after his passing.
“Most of your life, things happen for reasons, and I was trying to get answers as to why it happened. The longer it goes, there is no answer,” says Paul. “We went to therapy for 18 months, which was offered to us by the PCA (Professional Cricketers’ Association). It started every couple of weeks, then we pushed it to every month, and then every three months.”
Quite astonishingly, even through their own first wave of grief and shock, Paul and Lisa returned to the cricket ground a few days later wanting to see Josh’s team-mates and to check on them.
“We were keen right from the word go to be visible,” Paul says. “If that helped the players to see us there, I don’t know, but I didn’t want to be hiding away from it.”
Josh, as a precocious and professional cricketer, was in the public eye. His family, along with the PCA, needed to move quickly to put together a press release announcing his death, but that limited the window of time to inform all those who had known and loved him of the devastating news.
“By 11am he was pronounced dead, and by 12pm he was being carried out of the house by the undertakers,” says Lisa. “By 3pm there was a press release going out. For most grieving families — to be honest, we weren’t even grieving at that point, because it was shock — they wouldn’t have to deal with all that.
“But on the flip side, after that, we needed to use his status as a way to keep his memory alive and to do something good for other people.”
That traumatic day is what has led us here, to New Road, the home of Worcestershire County Cricket Club. It is July 31, over two years since Josh died, and they are hosting Middlesex in the Royal London One-Day Cup. The game, the day and, in fact, the whole weekend with the women’s team playing on Sunday, are staged in honour of Josh as part of the initiative ‘Blue for Bakes’ to raise money for the JB33 Foundation.
JB33 — Josh’s shirt number at Worcestershire — was set up after his passing. Its objectives were hazy at first, Paul and Lisa admit, yet there was conviction behind their intentions. They wanted a foundation to honour Josh’s legacy. A vehicle to remember their son.
The weekend is a celebration of Josh’s life.
“The women’s game is at Astwood Bank (a cricket ground just south of Birmingham), which was renamed the Josh Baker Oval last year,” Paul says, smiling.
In between the matches, the foundation encourages those playing Saturday club cricket to wear blue, taking photos and helping to spread awareness. “This event is something to work towards,” says Tom Underhill, one of the foundation’s trustees. “It’s always incredibly emotional, but it’s great to see so many people wearing blue.”
The Athletic first met Paul and Lisa a month earlier, on June 26, ahead of Birmingham Bears’ Vitality Blast match against Worcestershire at Edgbaston. We sit in a nearby pub.
Perhaps noting this correspondent’s nerves at knowing how much to ask about Josh, Paul and Lisa move to reassure. Cards on the table: they are happy to talk about anything. Tears may flow during the conversation, but that does not mean they do not wish to share joyful memories or even recall the dark days.
Paul has the number 33 and dates tattooed onto his arm. There are other tattoos, too.
“We were at Drayton Manor Park when Josh was young, and somebody had taken a photo of us,” he says. “It’s me holding his hand walking away. Josh had a Birmingham City shirt with ‘Baker 7′ because that’s how old he was. I’ve had it changed, so it’s ‘Baker 33’ and us walking towards the cathedral at Worcester.”
The cathedral can be seen in the background at New Road (The Athletic)
“That’s his handwriting,” says Lisa, pointing to her wrist. “It was from a card, and the tattooist traced it. Then that’s our three hearts, with JB33 and his fingerprint.”
Now inside the ground, Henry Cullen is the Bears’ 12th man, sitting on the boundary edge and running drinks out to the middle. Paul and Lisa smile and wave.
“Every Mother’s Day, Henry sends me a message saying, ‘Love you’,” says Lisa. “He doesn’t need to, but it’s lovely. It means the world. Those are the hardest days.”
It was poignant — beautiful, even — that Cullen was the one who scored the winning runs when Worcestershire claimed the One-Day Cup against Hampshire last season. The victors that day had the JB33 Foundation emblazoned across the front of their shirts. “We speak a lot about Josh in our changing room,” captain Jake Libby told reporters after the game. “He was a special kid, and it was devastating what happened.
“It’s been a very tough couple of years. We wore him on the front of our shirts today, so it seems apt we will be lifting the trophy.”
Paul and Lisa were in attendance and the players, who dedicated the victory to Josh, made a beeline to celebrate and lift the trophy with them.
“You can feel strong,” says Paul. “You can wake up, it’s a good day, and I’m doing nice things. And then something, whatever it is — it might be your own thoughts, something you hear, or see — hits you. It is just a kick in the stomach.”
“For us, it is songs,” says Lisa. “Josh couldn’t sing, but every morning he would go in the shower, take his music in with him, and sing his heart out. One of my great memories is during lockdown, which now I’m so grateful for, because he was at home and we got to spend time with him.
“It was Harry Styles, Watermelon Sugar. He’d have the bathroom window wide open, we’d be out in the back garden, and that’s all I could hear.”
“We’ve never set a charity up before,” says Paul. “With the best will in the world, I wouldn’t want to set this charity up, but we are where we are, and we want to do this. I want it to be the best charity it can be.”
It was decided that The JB33 Foundation should give children the opportunity to play cricket. If they or their families faced challenges, financially or for other reasons, the foundation would be there to remove those hurdles.
At Josh’s middle school, they named the annual sports award after him. Paul and Lisa have asked if they can help the school in any way, be it a visit and a talk in an assembly or buying cricket equipment.
“Lisa had a club come back this week who run cricket summer camps for kids, and have two families that know their kids would love to go, but they can’t afford it,” says Paul. “With the foundation, we would support that. If it means two, three or four kids are playing cricket for five days in the summer, who wouldn’t have had the opportunity, we want to do it for them.”
New Road goes Blue for Bakes (Worcestershire CC/Neil Duggan/JB33 Foundation)
The foundation now has eight trustees who meet every month, with Blue for Bakes weekend a landmark moment in the year.
“At another club, the dad had an industrial accident,” Paul continues. “He’s been off work for 18 months. Young kids all play softball cricket, where you don’t wear pads or a helmet. When you get to 12 or so and above, it’s replaced with a hard ball and suddenly there’s a helmet, pads and bat you have to pay for.
“There are twins who are now 12, and they want to play hard-ball cricket, but the dad financially cannot do it. So we’ve given them some money to buy equipment. So it’s that type of thing we want to support.” Over the winter, the foundation helped fund a young Afghan player in Worcestershire’s under-18 programme.
Paul looks across the table and at Lisa. “You’ve got something you’re keen to do, haven’t you?” he says.
“My North Star is to build a performance centre, so cricketers have somewhere to train, especially in the winter,” says Lisa. “We don’t know how it will look. We know we want it and we know it will get used, but we would need a manager. We will fund it, but give the centre to somebody to run.”
Another purpose of the foundation is to educate and assist with the use of defibrillators.
Paul and Lisa confess a defibrillator would likely not have saved Josh. His passing was cruel and without warning. Yet if they could help to train, in any way, and ensure people know where the closest defibrillators are, then it would mark another addition to Josh’s legacy.
Lisa has met with Resuscitation Council UK and is currently contacting various cricket clubs, establishing whether their defibrillators are on The Circuit, the national network which provides ambulance services with information about defibrillators across the UK.
“If somebody dials 999 and they need a defib, they can go onto The Circuit and find out where the closest one is,” Lisa explains. “But if any cricket club says they have not got one, we will fund it.”
Lisa and Paul Baker at the mural at New Road which spectators had helped to colour in (Worcestershire CC/Neil Duggan/JB33 Foundation)
Lisa laughs when recounting how Josh’s demeanour changed. Following the end of play that day, he had come through the door and headed straight to his bedroom. But then, after Stokes’ message, Josh returned downstairs, beaming from ear to ear.
Paul and Lisa would love to tell Stokes how much his message meant. Hopefully they will one day. But the former England captain has signed a scorecard which will be auctioned for The JB33 Foundation.
Other high-profile cricketers have lent their support, too. Former West Indian captain Jason Holder donated a jersey and recorded a video message, while Joe Root’s brother Billy, now of Glamorgan, is helping to arrange equipment to sign. Jacob Bethell, who bumped into Paul and Lisa in Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast over the winter and remembered them from when he used to play cricket against Josh, offered his support.
Bethell’s England team-mates, Josh Tongue and James Rew, also recorded video messages.
The players warm up in blue No 33 tops (Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)
Blue for Bakes weekend begins on Friday morning.
The weather is fine for a day’s cricket. New Road, with potentially 3,000 in attendance, is decked out in blue with many wearing JB33 bucket hats. Both teams warm up with JB33 proudly on their backs. “My friend sent me a photo of someone wearing blue at the train station,” Lisa says.
There is a pop-up shop which had already raised a great amount of money before midday. David Webb, the artist who designed the foundation’s logo and the images to promote the weekend, is busy colouring in a pre-drawn mural. Anyone, including The Athletic, is welcome to help with the colouring.
The mural, once complete, will adorn a wall at the Josh Baker Oval.
“I didn’t know Josh well,” says Webb, who serves as creative director at We Are Beard. “I would say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’, but that was it. The first time I met Paul was at the end-of-season awards. He rolled up his sleeve and it was a tattoo of the logo on his arm. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react because it was a very unusual situation.
“He had a little cry, and then I did, and we’ve known each other since.”
Paul and Lisa Baker with artist David Webb (Worcestershire CC/Neil Duggan/JB33 Foundation)
Middlesex are batting first. They make a solid start, Josh de Caires scoring an impressive century, but Worcestershire maintain a degree of control.
In the 33rd over, play stops, allowing for a round of applause to ripple around New Road as those present remember Baker.
Spectators stand to applaud in the 33rd over (Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)
The visitors set their hosts a challenging 294 to win in 50 overs and, for long periods, the game is in the balance. Libby, badly in need of runs after a difficult season, takes his time to find his rhythm but finds a willing ally, appropriately enough, in Cullen.
The 23-year-old plays with freedom, smashing 73 off 68 balls with eight fours and two sixes. He thrust the game back towards Worcestershire and, inspired, Libby sees his team home with an unbeaten century and eight balls to spare. The captain departs at the end to be greeted by his team-mates, all wearing their blue No 33 shirts.
It is a fitting way to end a special first of a three-day Blue for Bakes celebration; one that is tinged with sadness, but also pride. Pride in Josh, of course. Pride in the foundation, and pride in the legacy he created, supported by Worcestershire, the trustees and Paul and Lisa.
Parents of a son who would be so proud of them.
