Dorset Cricket Society

Dorset Cricket Society

Résumé of events 2011-12

Year

Month

Day

Speaker

Topic

2011
Oct
6th

Douglas Miller

After members had stood in memory of Brian Page, Douglas Miller started the season off by talking about the art of captaincy, with particular reference to captains immediately after World War II, when it was more important to have an amateur captain than a successful county side. He discussed the three attributes of a captain; their contribution, usually, with the bat, their tactical awareness and their leadership. In many cases all three were lacking! He then went on to look at the career of Jackie Bond of Lancashire, who was reluctantly elevated from 2nd XI captain to lead Lancashire to one of the most productive periods in their history. An entertaining afternoon to start the new season.

13th

Warwick Rust

Warwick gave us another amusing talk on cartoons and caricatures. His theme was mostly 19th Century cartoons on the family and politics and their links with cricket. The talk resulted in many questions and much discussion.

20th

David Clutterbuck

David took us back to the glorious summer of 1947, the first post-war season of county cricket. The batsmen flourished against mainly aging bowlers. After covering the tour of the South Africans, who were beaten 3-0, he went on to the county players, particularly Bill Edrich and Denis Compton, who both scored over 3000 runs. A nostalgic afternoon, with added insight from Alan Rayment, who played with and against many of these players.

27th

Phil Brightwell & Richard Mockridge

Phil & Richard Mockridge retold the career of local player Doug Foyle, who had a long, post-war career in local cricket. He played mainly for Wimborne and also for the Dorset Minor County side. He was a gentleman who took great pride in keeping meticulous records and press cuttings. These, along with the recollections of some of his family and several members who had played with or against him, provided a fitting tribute to a fine player who died earlier this year. It was a poignant pleasure to have Doug's widow, Olive, in the audience on what would have been their 60th anniversary.

Nov
3rd

Richard Mockridge

Richard acquired the autograph book of a Yorkshire lad from the 1950's. Living very close to Headingly, he had collected many autographs of cricketers, footballers and rugby league players between 1951 & 1956. As well as much meticulous research on the players, Richard also include a number of advertisements of the time, sparking many memories amongst the audience.

10th

Tim Heald

Tim is an author of cricket books, royal biographies and fiction. His latest book studies the tour of India in 1933-34 and the part played by the England captain, one Douglas Jardine, rather better known as the captain of England on the infamous 'Bodyline' tour. Still highly competitive, the book's cover shows him leading the team out onto the field, all wearing pith-helmets! The fast bowlers of the previous tour had mainly stayed at home, but of course the standard of Indian cricket was not as high in those days and England had a fairly comfortable winning series. After Tim's talk, a lively question & answer session ensued.

17th

Jimmy Adams & Giles White

The Society were delighted to welcome not only the new Hampshire captain, but also the coach. Jimmy briefly looked back at last season, before he and Giles gave their views about the 2012 season. A lively question and answer season lasted nearly an hour covering such topics as pitches, corruption in cricket, the young players in the Hampshire team and the five year plan to be back challenging for the Division 1 championship. The highest attendance of the season was well merited.

24th

John Barclay

John Barclay is a man of many talents: a former 1st class cricketer, captain of Sussex, President of MCC 2009-10, an England Tour Manager and also raconteur extraordinaire. He thrilled our largest audience of the season, with a talk that contrasted his sadness at the death of Basil D'Olivera and Peter Roebuck, with the joy of taking the first Somerset wicket at Taunton, only to see Viv Richards swagger to the crease and dispatch the next two balls into the adjacent churchyard, while Dickie Bird stood increasingly further from the wicket. His self-depreciating humour and boundless energy made for a magnificent afternoon's entertainment, for which we are extremely grateful.

Dec
1st

Don Crossley

Don returned with a small selection of his wonderful memorabilia collection. Football programmes, autographed photos and numerous signed books were all displayed. Even more fascinating were the stories behind some of the acquisitions, particularly the tale of the 61 books for signature!

8th

Members

Members brought a wide variety of items to the meeting, including autograph books, photos of Hampshire players, scorecards of distant matches and from Warwick Rust, a fake print which he intentionally bought! Richard Mockridge managed to display two extremely rare books, they haven't been officially printed yet! Another trophy was a match ball with engraved plaque commemorating a hat-trick in 1926! An extremely varied afternoon with a humorous tale or two!

15th

Xmas Lunch

28 members gathered for the annual Christmas buffet and enjoyed a long lunch. Thereafter our brains were tortured by another of Derek Hopkin's fine quizzes, many thanks to him, before afternoon tea and a free raffle brought the season's events to the half-way stage, For those attending, the next event is the ladies lunch at Canford Magna Golf Club commencing 12.30 pm on the 5th January 2012. Merry Christmas to all.

2012
Jan
5th

New Year Lunch

Our 2nd annual Ladies Lunch was well attended with 71 present. An excellent meal was enjoyed at the Canford Magna Golf Club, admirably MC'd by Derek Hopkins and with Alan Castell, one of that dying breed - an English leg-spinner, to entertain us into the afternoon with tales from his career, the New Year got off to a flying start. Many thanks also to David Hain for all the organisation.

12th

Patrick Ferriday

Patrick is the author of a book - Before The Lights went Out, about the only Test match tournament ever held. He started by giving us an historical and sporting perspective. South Africa were the fledgling team, while the Australian players could make themselves wealthy through a tour. A series of nine Test were held, each team playing the others three times. In addition South Africa and Australia criss-crossed the country playing two county matches a week. The summer of 1912 was wretched, with record rainfall. With a growing realisation that South Africa were out of their class, the media became increasingly disillusioned. Finally the last Test between England and Australia became the decider, played over six days rather than three, if necessary. It was ironic that a spell of 5 wickets for 1 run by an Australian bowler, GR Hazlitt, gave England the time to win on day four, just before a deluge of biblical proportions. A thoroughly entertaining afternoon's history lesson!

19th

Alan Edwards

Alan researched Hampshire captains from 1863 to 1939 and gave an insight into their character and cricketing prowess as well as the other exploits at home and overseas. In the early years of Hampshire cricket the captain was god and probably organised everything. This was overtaken by the committee and the chairman, but the amateur captain still reigned supreme. From Captain Wynyard to Lord Tennyson; from Clement Booth to our own Dick Moore. Alan's favourite came through as E.M.Sprot who would be a worthy subject as a sequel to his biography of Tennyson.

26th

Brian Grey

Brian's subject for his talk was Adam Gilchrist. He suggested that the amount of cricket that the modern international plays means that the all-rounder position is now much more likely to be a wicketkeeper-batsman, than a batsman-bowler. In this category Gilchrist must reign supreme - his tally of dismissals neared 1000 in Tests and ODI's and batting at number 7, he added immensely to the Australian batting lineup in the years post 2000. In addition he holds the record for the 2nd fastest Test century of all time, just two balls slower than the incomparable IVA Richards. More importantly, he was one of a very rare breed, an Australian 'walker'. He played the game in the right spirit. Brian interspersed his talk with video clips from Gilchrist's innings, including a World Cup 149. In fact he played in 3 World Cup finals. It is only sad that Gilchrist became disillusioned with international cricket and now plays only in the IPL.

Feb
2nd

Julian Shackleton

Julian brought along a mass of memorabilia that had belonged to his late father, Derek, of Hampshire & England fame. It was fascinating to see the original letters from the MCC inviting Derek to play for England in 1951 and then on his recall in 1963 against the West Indies. England blazers, ties and caps were all on display, along with many photographs from Derek's career that we were able to project on the big screen. Derek took 100 1st class wickets in a season for 20 consecutive seasons and in one season bowled over 10000 balls. After his retirement from the 1st class game he had a varied career including coach at Canford School and umpiring on the first class circuit. A first-class afternoon!

9th

Derek Barnard

Derek is a cricketologist - a lover of cricket in many different ways. He is a player, an administrator, a spectator, chairman of The Cricket Society, a quizmaster and an author to name but a few! In the space of an hour we were led through all these delights of the game and it was easy to recognise Derek's enthusiasm for the sport, even though he lamented the lack of younger people who were prepared to take on the responsibility for its future development. A fine afternoon in the presence of an authoritative speaker.

16th

Anthony Gibson

Anthony spoke about his father, Alan, who was the cricket correspondent for The Times, a broadcaster on Test Match Special and an author of books on cricket. However his cricket commentaries and daily reports were far more than the facts and figures of the match. He would paint a picture of the match, or the ground, into which he would weave the scores. He travelled by train and the station at Didcot got as many mentions as the players. Alas, his love of the grape exceeded his ability to hold it and there was a sad decline towards the end of his career. A fascinating story told with great integrity.

23rd

Richard Mockridge

Our President, Richard, is an enthusiastic photographer of Hampshire's matches. Over a number of years, the development of digital cameras and the refining of his photographic techniques have enabled him to take photos which really put you in amongst the action. In fact to call some of his efforts 'photos' does them a disservice, as they are montages of batsmen, bowlers, fielders and the state of play. Subsequently he gets them signed by the players featured and many of them are in great demand from their subjects. A normal day's play may involve 1500 photos, which means lots of time spent downloading, printing and analysing.

March
1st

Chris Saunders

Chris has perhaps the largest collection of cricket books in the country. He buys and sells, mainly in the niche market of specialist publications, such as limited editions. He had many tales to tell of the value of collections; a complete set of original Wisdons could easily be worth £80000! He is also a publisher of some of the obscure and ancient writings from days long ago. After 70 years the copyright expires, which then permits reproductions to be made.

8th

Chris Finch

Chris had researched 30 Kent & Hampshire players of the early 20th Century to 1939. His selection covered famous players, those that had their one moment in the sun and the plain quirky! An interactive afternoon ensued, with the audience and speaker choosing different players to be featured. Thus we heard of Colin Blythe, Frank Woolley, Les Ames and Hopper Levett of Kent and Henry Smoker, George Brown, Harry Altham and Gerry Hill from Hampshire. An interesting concept, to be continued in the future with the post-war players.

15th

Twickenham Visit

The Society enjoyed another splendid day out, this time to Twickenham, two days before the final 6 Nations Test of 2012. Once again the organisation of the day was in the capable hands of David Hain and members much appreciated his efforts.

22nd

Michael Simkins

Michael Simkins, actor, journalist and author held his latest audience in the palm of his hand as he related his early life, partly from his first book 'Fatty Batter'. His talk encompassed the delights of hitting the sweet spot on a bat, to the experience of working with Meryl Streep (in the Iron Lady) and the life of an actor - going home at the weekend to give his wife 'a good listening-to'! In amongst the humour it was also interesting to hear Michael's take on the difference between being an actor on stage and a film star. The members were most grateful for Michael taking time out from his performances in 'Yes Prime Minister'

29th

AGM

The annual general meeting and lunch was attended by 26 members, Prior to the formal business, Richard Mockridge presented a detailed analysis of the members survey which had been circulated around the New Year. Generally members were happy with the present time, venue and format, with a realistation that some high-profile speakers asked a high price and it was felt that this was not the right avenue to pursue. The meeting concluded with the formal election of officers for the next season. Particular thanks were offered to John White & Chris Finch for the excellent speakers obtained this year.

April
5th

Derek Hopkins

The season concluded in usual fashion with one of Derek's quizzes followed by the delightful cream tea tradition. Please remember the De Zoete finals day at Dean Park on Thursday 2nd August. The new season will commence on the 1st Thursday in October, which is October 4th.

To see memories of the previous year's programme click here
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Year	Month	Day	Speaker	Topic
2011	Oct	6th	Douglas Miller	After members had stood in memory of Brian Page, Douglas Miller started the season off by talking about the art of captaincy, with particular reference to captains immediately after World War II, when it was more important to have an amateur captain than a successful county side. He discussed the three attributes of a captain; their contribution, usually, with the bat, their tactical awareness and their leadership. In many cases all three were lacking! He then went on to look at the career of Jackie Bond of Lancashire, who was reluctantly elevated from 2nd XI captain to lead Lancashire to one of the most productive periods in their history. An entertaining afternoon to start the new season.
		13th	Warwick Rust	Warwick gave us another amusing talk on cartoons and caricatures. His theme was mostly 19th Century cartoons on the family and politics and their links with cricket. The talk resulted in many questions and much discussion.
		20th	David Clutterbuck	David took us back to the glorious summer of 1947, the first post-war season of county cricket. The batsmen flourished against mainly aging bowlers. After covering the tour of the South Africans, who were beaten 3-0, he went on to the county players, particularly Bill Edrich and Denis Compton, who both scored over 3000 runs. A nostalgic afternoon, with added insight from Alan Rayment, who played with and against many of these players.
		27th	Phil Brightwell & Richard Mockridge	Phil & Richard Mockridge retold the career of local player Doug Foyle, who had a long, post-war career in local cricket. He played mainly for Wimborne and also for the Dorset Minor County side. He was a gentleman who took great pride in keeping meticulous records and press cuttings. These, along with the recollections of some of his family and several members who had played with or against him, provided a fitting tribute to a fine player who died earlier this year. It was a poignant pleasure to have Doug's widow, Olive, in the audience on what would have been their 60th anniversary.
	Nov	3rd	Richard Mockridge	Richard acquired the autograph book of a Yorkshire lad from the 1950's. Living very close to Headingly, he had collected many autographs of cricketers, footballers and rugby league players between 1951 & 1956. As well as much meticulous research on the players, Richard also include a number of advertisements of the time, sparking many memories amongst the audience.
		10th	Tim Heald	Tim is an author of cricket books, royal biographies and fiction. His latest book studies the tour of India in 1933-34 and the part played by the England captain, one Douglas Jardine, rather better known as the captain of England on the infamous 'Bodyline' tour. Still highly competitive, the book's cover shows him leading the team out onto the field, all wearing pith-helmets! The fast bowlers of the previous tour had mainly stayed at home, but of course the standard of Indian cricket was not as high in those days and England had a fairly comfortable winning series. After Tim's talk, a lively question & answer session ensued.
		17th	Jimmy Adams & Giles White	The Society were delighted to welcome not only the new Hampshire captain, but also the coach. Jimmy briefly looked back at last season, before he and Giles gave their views about the 2012 season. A lively question and answer season lasted nearly an hour covering such topics as pitches, corruption in cricket, the young players in the Hampshire team and the five year plan to be back challenging for the Division 1 championship. The highest attendance of the season was well merited.
		24th	John Barclay	John Barclay is a man of many talents: a former 1st class cricketer, captain of Sussex, President of MCC 2009-10, an England Tour Manager and also raconteur extraordinaire. He thrilled our largest audience of the season, with a talk that contrasted his sadness at the death of Basil D'Olivera and Peter Roebuck, with the joy of taking the first Somerset wicket at Taunton, only to see Viv Richards swagger to the crease and dispatch the next two balls into the adjacent churchyard, while Dickie Bird stood increasingly further from the wicket. His self-depreciating humour and boundless energy made for a magnificent afternoon's entertainment, for which we are extremely grateful.
	Dec	1st	Don Crossley	Don returned with a small selection of his wonderful memorabilia collection. Football programmes, autographed photos and numerous signed books were all displayed. Even more fascinating were the stories behind some of the acquisitions, particularly the tale of the 61 books for signature!
		8th	Members	Members brought a wide variety of items to the meeting, including autograph books, photos of Hampshire players, scorecards of distant matches and from Warwick Rust, a fake print which he intentionally bought! Richard Mockridge managed to display two extremely rare books, they haven't been officially printed yet! Another trophy was a match ball with engraved plaque commemorating a hat-trick in 1926! An extremely varied afternoon with a humorous tale or two!
		15th	Xmas Lunch	28 members gathered for the annual Christmas buffet and enjoyed a long lunch. Thereafter our brains were tortured by another of Derek Hopkin's fine quizzes, many thanks to him, before afternoon tea and a free raffle brought the season's events to the half-way stage, For those attending, the next event is the ladies lunch at Canford Magna Golf Club commencing 12.30 pm on the 5th January 2012. Merry Christmas to all.
2012	Jan	5th	New Year Lunch	Our 2nd annual Ladies Lunch was well attended with 71 present. An excellent meal was enjoyed at the Canford Magna Golf Club, admirably MC'd by Derek Hopkins and with Alan Castell, one of that dying breed - an English leg-spinner, to entertain us into the afternoon with tales from his career, the New Year got off to a flying start. Many thanks also to David Hain for all the organisation.
		12th	Patrick Ferriday	Patrick is the author of a book - Before The Lights went Out, about the only Test match tournament ever held. He started by giving us an historical and sporting perspective. South Africa were the fledgling team, while the Australian players could make themselves wealthy through a tour. A series of nine Test were held, each team playing the others three times. In addition South Africa and Australia criss-crossed the country playing two county matches a week. The summer of 1912 was wretched, with record rainfall. With a growing realisation that South Africa were out of their class, the media became increasingly disillusioned. Finally the last Test between England and Australia became the decider, played over six days rather than three, if necessary. It was ironic that a spell of 5 wickets for 1 run by an Australian bowler, GR Hazlitt, gave England the time to win on day four, just before a deluge of biblical proportions. A thoroughly entertaining afternoon's history lesson!
		19th	Alan Edwards	Alan researched Hampshire captains from 1863 to 1939 and gave an insight into their character and cricketing prowess as well as the other exploits at home and overseas. In the early years of Hampshire cricket the captain was god and probably organised everything. This was overtaken by the committee and the chairman, but the amateur captain still reigned supreme. From Captain Wynyard to Lord Tennyson; from Clement Booth to our own Dick Moore. Alan's favourite came through as E.M.Sprot who would be a worthy subject as a sequel to his biography of Tennyson.
		26th	Brian Grey	Brian's subject for his talk was Adam Gilchrist. He suggested that the amount of cricket that the modern international plays means that the all-rounder position is now much more likely to be a wicketkeeper-batsman, than a batsman-bowler. In this category Gilchrist must reign supreme - his tally of dismissals neared 1000 in Tests and ODI's and batting at number 7, he added immensely to the Australian batting lineup in the years post 2000. In addition he holds the record for the 2nd fastest Test century of all time, just two balls slower than the incomparable IVA Richards. More importantly, he was one of a very rare breed, an Australian 'walker'. He played the game in the right spirit. Brian interspersed his talk with video clips from Gilchrist's innings, including a World Cup 149. In fact he played in 3 World Cup finals. It is only sad that Gilchrist became disillusioned with international cricket and now plays only in the IPL.
	Feb	2nd	Julian Shackleton	Julian brought along a mass of memorabilia that had belonged to his late father, Derek, of Hampshire & England fame. It was fascinating to see the original letters from the MCC inviting Derek to play for England in 1951 and then on his recall in 1963 against the West Indies. England blazers, ties and caps were all on display, along with many photographs from Derek's career that we were able to project on the big screen. Derek took 100 1st class wickets in a season for 20 consecutive seasons and in one season bowled over 10000 balls. After his retirement from the 1st class game he had a varied career including coach at Canford School and umpiring on the first class circuit. A first-class afternoon!
		9th	Derek Barnard	Derek is a cricketologist - a lover of cricket in many different ways. He is a player, an administrator, a spectator, chairman of The Cricket Society, a quizmaster and an author to name but a few! In the space of an hour we were led through all these delights of the game and it was easy to recognise Derek's enthusiasm for the sport, even though he lamented the lack of younger people who were prepared to take on the responsibility for its future development. A fine afternoon in the presence of an authoritative speaker.
		16th	Anthony Gibson	Anthony spoke about his father, Alan, who was the cricket correspondent for The Times, a broadcaster on Test Match Special and an author of books on cricket. However his cricket commentaries and daily reports were far more than the facts and figures of the match. He would paint a picture of the match, or the ground, into which he would weave the scores. He travelled by train and the station at Didcot got as many mentions as the players. Alas, his love of the grape exceeded his ability to hold it and there was a sad decline towards the end of his career. A fascinating story told with great integrity.
		23rd	Richard Mockridge	Our President, Richard, is an enthusiastic photographer of Hampshire's matches. Over a number of years, the development of digital cameras and the refining of his photographic techniques have enabled him to take photos which really put you in amongst the action. In fact to call some of his efforts 'photos' does them a disservice, as they are montages of batsmen, bowlers, fielders and the state of play. Subsequently he gets them signed by the players featured and many of them are in great demand from their subjects. A normal day's play may involve 1500 photos, which means lots of time spent downloading, printing and analysing.
	March	1st	Chris Saunders	Chris has perhaps the largest collection of cricket books in the country. He buys and sells, mainly in the niche market of specialist publications, such as limited editions. He had many tales to tell of the value of collections; a complete set of original Wisdons could easily be worth £80000! He is also a publisher of some of the obscure and ancient writings from days long ago. After 70 years the copyright expires, which then permits reproductions to be made.
		8th	Chris Finch	Chris had researched 30 Kent & Hampshire players of the early 20th Century to 1939. His selection covered famous players, those that had their one moment in the sun and the plain quirky! An interactive afternoon ensued, with the audience and speaker choosing different players to be featured. Thus we heard of Colin Blythe, Frank Woolley, Les Ames and Hopper Levett of Kent and Henry Smoker, George Brown, Harry Altham and Gerry Hill from Hampshire. An interesting concept, to be continued in the future with the post-war players.
		15th	Twickenham Visit	The Society enjoyed another splendid day out, this time to Twickenham, two days before the final 6 Nations Test of 2012. Once again the organisation of the day was in the capable hands of David Hain and members much appreciated his efforts.
		22nd	Michael Simkins	Michael Simkins, actor, journalist and author held his latest audience in the palm of his hand as he related his early life, partly from his first book 'Fatty Batter'. His talk encompassed the delights of hitting the sweet spot on a bat, to the experience of working with Meryl Streep (in the Iron Lady) and the life of an actor - going home at the weekend to give his wife 'a good listening-to'! In amongst the humour it was also interesting to hear Michael's take on the difference between being an actor on stage and a film star. The members were most grateful for Michael taking time out from his performances in 'Yes Prime Minister'
		29th	AGM	The annual general meeting and lunch was attended by 26 members, Prior to the formal business, Richard Mockridge presented a detailed analysis of the members survey which had been circulated around the New Year. Generally members were happy with the present time, venue and format, with a realistation that some high-profile speakers asked a high price and it was felt that this was not the right avenue to pursue. The meeting concluded with the formal election of officers for the next season. Particular thanks were offered to John White & Chris Finch for the excellent speakers obtained this year.
	April	5th	Derek Hopkins	The season concluded in usual fashion with one of Derek's quizzes followed by the delightful cream tea tradition. Please remember the De Zoete finals day at Dean Park on Thursday 2nd August. The new season will commence on the 1st Thursday in October, which is October 4th.