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Year
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Month
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Day
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Speaker
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Topic
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2024
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Oct |
10th
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Chris Finch
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Chris Finch reflected on the 2024 season, on a day when England posted
a total of over 800 runs and then took six wickets on the easiest of tracks. Chris
started by reminding us that of the 32 players to have scored a triple century in
Tests, there are three players who have achieved that twice, Brian Lara, Don Bradman
and Chris Gayle. Chris started with his highlights of the season. He thought it was
a pretty good season on the field, but a really worrying one off the field. He mentioned
Sam Northeast's 335 at Lords, to top Graham Gooch’s highest score at the ground,
Jimmy Anderson’s 7-35 for Lancashire and his Test farewell. He also highlighted the
game between Glamorgan and Gloucestershire where 17 wickets fell on the first day,
but went to the final ball of the match where Glamorgan chasing 593 to win fell agonisingly
short with the scores tied as their last batsman was caught. Chris thought that the
player of the year was Liam Dawson, nearly a thousand runs and fifty wickets and
his team of the year was Surrey, who won the Championship for the third year running.
They do have large financial clout but this year they had to use 26 players, in part
due to the number of their players who were called up to play for England. His choice
for worst team of the season was Lancashire who managed to get relegated at the same
time that Yorkshire went in the opposite direction. They lost three matches in a
row by an innings, the only bright spark being Rocky Flintoff, at 16, batting number
4, indicated the weakness of their batting. Chris lamented the passing of Mike Proctor
who played for Gloucester from 1968-81 as Test cricket with South Africa was not
an option. Another close to his heart was Derek Underwood, of Kent of course, 297
Test wickets which could have been more if he hadn’t gone on the rebel tours to South
Africa. He played for Kent from 1963 until 1987 and was MCC President in 2008. Chris
recalled a lunch at Tunbridge Wells when he was sat next to Derek and a introductory
comment from Chris produced a long, but modest account of where Derek had taken wickets,
even though, at that stage, he was starting to suffer from dementia. Sadly towards
the end of his life his dementia caused him to become very aggressive, so totally
different from his earlier life. Chris’s final memory was of Graham Thorpe who had
suffered from acute depression for many years. 16 Test hundreds at an average of
44 in a fairly dysfunctional England team. He also had to face a large number of
very useful bowlers. Chris commented that the high profile cases of mental illness
in cricketers in recent years had predominantly been batsman and he posed the question
as to whether this reflected the difference in pressures on batsman and bowlers in
the modern game. A batsman is only one mistake away from failure while a bowler normally
gets a second chance, or more. Chris finished by expressing his concern about the
probability of foreign interests buying up clubs and franchises and questioned their
desire to provide the opportunities for young players to develop for England. In
all a very comprehensive overview of cricket in England (and Wales) in 2024. Many
thanks Chris for the time researching all of this, both on and off the field. |
|
|
|
17th
|
Nancy Harman
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|
Nancy Harman who has played for Southern Vipers was our guest on Thursday.
She is a middle order batter and leg-spin bowler. Her first experience of cricket
was a pre-school club at primary school run by Chance To Shine, softball cricket
initially. She was then encouraged to join the local club at U-13 level. She was
Sussex based at that time and played for some of the county age-group sides. She
is now going to be part of the Hampshire women’s team, as the ECB are re-organising
women’s cricket along county lines again. Changes are happening so quickly, especially
with Hampshire being sold to Indian backers. The new format means that there will
be 8 teams in the league, with everyone playing each other home and away. There will
be a 20-20 league and a 50 over league, so a total of 28 league fixtures followed
by semi-finals and finals. Finance is moving away from the ECB and towards the counties.
Nancy talked about the differences between the women’s game and the men’s. In women’s
cricket there are only 4 fielders outside the 30-yard circle and so batting tends
to revolve around skill rather than power. She talked about coming onto the ground
at Lords as a substitute fielder and finding it difficult to hear the captain’s instructions
with all the crowd noise. Nancy is a leg-break bowler, she described her love/hate
relationship with the art, after 15 years she still has days when the ball doesn’t
do what she wants and the batters make hay. Other times she loves the ability to
turn the ball past the bat. Women’s cricket coverage depends on what is currently
happening the men’s game, but generally the media coverage has greatly improved,
what with streaming and double-header matches. She talked about the downside of social
media with players receiving abuse, though her profile wasn't high enough to attract
much attention.The new teams with have a minimum of 15 full-time professionals, with
some counties spending extra to increase their numbers. Nancy is full time, though
she is also working on a university degree. This is a massive change from them having
four or five jobs and fitting training into a busy schedule.Nancy compared The 100
with T20 and felt that they were very much the same. The skill sets for both were
pretty similar. Initially the novelty of one bowler bowling 10 balls was different,
but that happens far less frequently, as the physicality of bowling such a continuous
spell tended to make them more expensive as the bowler tired. There then followed
a long Q&A session. Amongst the answers we found that in the winter many of the
players go to Australia, but Nancy is doing a Master degree as well as winter training.
A typical week of winter training would be about 90 minutes bowling, 2-3 hours of
batting and a couple of hours of fielding, with most of the training being in the
gym or running. Even during training there are limits to the amount of time spent
bowling, to avoid injuries. There is the Women’s Big Bash in Australia and a Women’s
IPL, but generally there aren’t so many opportunities overseas. Some cricket kit
manufacturers are heavily involved in producing kit specifically for women, whereas
others show little interest. Cricket spikes generally have a minimum size of a seven,
so the ladies are forced into using boys’ versions of cricket shoes. However these
haven’t been designed to be worn by adults and so tend to be less comfortable and
robust, particularly when worn for a 100 over game. All told it was a very interesting
afternoon, as Nancy became only the fourth lady to address the Society. Many thanks
Nancy and to Derek for chairing the meeting. |
|
|
|
24th
|
Pat Murphy
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|
50 members and guests turned up to hear Pat Murphy, legendary sports
broadcaster and journalist tell us about his career (and his latest book!). In total
he has written or ghosted over 40 books. Not everybody knows him that well, as he
related about a Yorkshire farmer who introduced him by saying “I don’t know who this
bloke is, as I don’t listen to the radio, here he is, Pat Murphy. Pat has been with
the BBC for 50 years next month, he worked with the likes of John Arlott, Chris Martin-Jenkins,
Cliff Morgan. He already knew John from writing Basil D’Olivera’s book, John wrote
the forward to the book. He worked for Radio 2 in the Midlands and Arlott helped
him greatly, even though he lived in Alderney. Arlott consumed his usual allocation
of wine and put Pat into a Q&A about Alderney. When Pat wrote about the 20 players
who had scored a double-century in a Test (at that time), John knew 18 of them. He
gave Pat a massive amount of useful advice, including to imagine that he was describing
the scene to a blind listener. When Pat wrote his book “BBC Sports Report” it spanned
a time scale which encompassed Clement Attlee to Liz Truss, the NHS was born the
same year as Sports Report. Arlott was the first football commentator on the programme,
commentating on Southampton. He revealed that the famous signature tune was only
decided on a few minutes before the show went on air. For 6 months in the early 70’s
the management dropped the theme tune, before the likes of Des Lynam demanded its
return. He talked about the problems of Press Officers, who keep reporters at arm
length and the difficulties of getting players on air in the shorter timescale of
today’s programme. He explained that some of the modern managers from abroad are
a problem, because their foreign accents don’t come over well on radio. At Leicester
recently Caleb Okali was put forward for interview, unfortunately he spoke very little
English and Pat wasn’t fluent in Italian! Jobsworths are always a problem, Ian Bothan
had arranged tickets for Sebastian Coe to be collected on the gate. Seb turned up
at the WG Grace Gates, but there were no tickets for him there. The jobsworth suggested
that they might be at the North gates and if really was who he said he was, then
it wouldn’t take him long to run around there! However, although the modern game
might bring its difficulties, nothing surpasses being at Hillsborough in 1989 and
seeing too many bodies being taken away. Pat was producing the outside broadcast
on that day. On tours abroad he loved New Zealand once they got there - the Aussie
pilot suggested that they turned their clocks back 30 years, whereas India after
Covid was a nightmare with security checks every 25 yards.Pat was asked about mistakes
that he had made, he replied that he once said that one cricketer had seven craps
for England. Tony Gubba claimed a player had scored 23 goals - exactly double last
season’s tally, John Hartson claimed the Welsh football team didn’t get the Adelaides
they deserved. He thought that of the 4 amazing all-rounders that co-existed in the
1980’s, Botham, Wasim, Imran Khan and Richard Hadlee, Imran was the best, considering
his overall achievements. A lengthy Q&A session followed with questions about
whether New Road is viable as a county ground and how he got a controversial book
past AC Smith, the MCC censor at the time. He had a run-in with Alec Ferguson who
didn’t like another BBC commentator. For his books he used a statistician as he was
more interested in the overall picture, rather than someone’s average. Many thanks
Pat and to Mike who had arranged the visit and Derek who hosted the meeting. |
|
|
|
31st
|
Graham Jones
|
|
30 members gathered to be entertained by the latest edition of Humour
In Sport. A wide variety of sports were covered including cricket, football, gymnastics,
motor racing and snooker to name but a few. Stars performing on our behalf ranged
from Freddie Flintoff, Michael McIntyre, Geoff Miller to Max Boyce, Ian Botham and
Phil Bennett. The video sketch on the naked cricket match seems to be particularly
well received! As ever, the afternoon sought to bring a bit of humour into a grey
November day. |
|
|
Nov |
7th
|
Garry Richardson
|
|
A good crowd assembled Thursday to hear a very polished performance
from Garry Richardson, who has recently retired from the BBC after exactly 50 years
working for them. As a youngster he had trials with a couple of football teams, but
fairly early on realised that he didn’t have the necessary attributes to be a professional
sportsman. On leaving school he became an apprentice electrician at his father’s
firm, a job that he didn’t find appealing. He used to make tapes in his bedroom,
pretending to present radio shows, so when a show advertised the possibility of finding
out more about broadcasting, he made sure that he was at the front of the queue.
In the hour before the broadcast was to go live, the dj offered members of the public
the chance to do a bit of presenting to the audience at the show. Garry seized the
opportunity and linked a couple of records and read a weather forecast. The producer
of the show spoke to him afterwards and offered to show Garry around the BBC if he
was ever in London. Three days later he wrote to the producer and the following Friday
he was shown around the BBC. He was advised that if he was really interested
in doing the BBC he should take any job that was on offer. Initially there were no
jobs in the local area, but after a while a vacancy occurred with the local radio
station and Garry was started on his career. He related the problems caused by being
live on air, once Frank Bruno, who was about to fight Mike Tyson, confused invincible
and invisible and wondered how he could hit Tyson if he couldn’t see him! Garry also
entertained us with several examples of mimicry, with the likes of Murray Walker
coming back to life. In 1982 Garry covered his first Wimbledon where Fred Perry was
very helpful to him. He had his best moment of his career at Wimbledon when he got
the chance to interview Bill Clinton during a long rain break. It was Ladies finals
day and Garry was assisting Sue Barker when he spotted President Bill Clinton arriving
and an idea started to formulate. He quickly dashed off a letter to the Wimbledon
management seeking an interview with Bill Clinton and was surprised 15 minutes later
to get a reply in the affirmative. He wished he had spent the intervening time thinking
of questions! On his way in he managed to quiz Clinton’s security man about sports
he enjoyed and people he knew. Bill Clinton greeted him by name and for the
next 15 minutes Bill was brilliant as he was asked about playing golf and tennis
with some of the stars. At the end of the interview Garry was surprised that Clinton
didn’t just leave, but stayed and started asking Garry questions about his life. Garry
was fortunate enough to cover 6 Olympic Games, with the likes of David Coleman, who
once had to omit the name of a little Madagascan, whose name was just too much of
a mouthful. He also once did a lap of honour around the Silverstone Grand Prix in
1987 alongside Nigel Mansell, who was on the back of a police motorcycle. Garry jumped
in an open top car and followed him around the track.
Garry told us that his saddest interview was with Mohammed Ali. This was done over
the phone and lasted about 15 minutes, but unfortunately Ali was starting to suffer
from Parkinsons and only about two minutes of the tape was useable. Some of
his favourite anecdotes were about Morecambe and Wise, who were asked that if they
hadn’t been very good what would they have been? Eric quickly came back - we would
be Mike & Bernie Winters! He also had a lot to say about Ken Dodd, how he worked
as a door to door salesman and tried out his jokes on housewives who opened the door.
He said that he had the greatest job in the world, making people happy. There then
followed a great Q&A session to complete a wonderful afternoon’s entertainment.
Many thanks to Garry and to Mike Vimpany for facilitating the event. |
|
|
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14th
|
David Graveney
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|
David Graveney played county cricket for Gloucestershire, Somerset
and Durham in a career spanning 22 years, in which he took 981 1st class wickets.
He also won the B&H trophy in 1977 with Gloucestershire. In later life he was
a Test selector for 12 years including time spent as Chairman and has also worked
for the Professional Cricketers’ Association. He and Julian Shackleton both went
to Millfield School where his love of cricket grew. He wasn’t particularly outstanding
at school, but his father was a county player and his uncle was Tom Graveney. David
was a left arm spinner, while both his relatives were batsman. His first game for
Gloucestershire came when David Allen, who was having his benefit match was dropped
in his favour. The fact that the chief selector was his father caused a few eyebrows
to be raised. In 1977 Gloucestershire triumphed in the B&H final, but more notably
had beaten Hampshire in the semi-final when Mike Proctor has taken a hat-trick and
should have had four in four balls. Mike sadly passed away earlier this year. In
his first county match Basil D’Oliveira ran down the wicket to his 2nd ball to be
stumped, David never did manage to find out whether it was deliberate. In a strange
turn-around when David was sacked as Captain of Gloucestershire the chief selector
was ….. David Allen! and David had taken 14 wickets in his previous match. David
became the first player ever to move from Gloucester to Somerset, before he was invited
to captain Durham, where he had three years playing with the likes of Ian Botham.
The team was made up of seven players who were really too old to play and a few youngsters.
David had been involved for a short while with the Professional Cricketers’ Association,
he was John Arlott’s marker at PCA meetings and had to find the bottle opener for
the lunchtime wine.David explained his reasons for going to South Africa on a rebel
tour, which he felt had caused progress to be made in the country, plus of course
there were the financial reasons to give his family security. David then had a position
within the PCA which allowed him the time to travel around the country, watching
cricket and became a selector for the England Test team. He took over from Ray Illingworth
as Chairman and served for 12 years. During this time England became the lowest ranked
Test team in the world. He found that it was a tremendous honour to be involved with
the England team. Even now he is involved with the England U-19 team. He described
how his dad and Colin Ingleby-McKenzie set up a county match while Colin was staying
with the Graveney household, something which wouldn’t happen these days. David entertained
us with memories of former Hampshire players such as Barry Richards and Gordon Greenidge
and persuading the groundsman at Cheltenham to add a little sand to the wicket a-la
Great Escape, by dropping out of holes in his trouser pockets. It made no difference!
There followed a long Q&A session in which told David told tales of agreement
with Malcolm Marshall regarding short-pitched bowling and I.V. Richards who took
34 off an over. An interesting afternoon learning about the upper-echelons of the
game. Many thanks to David plus Julian and Mike for facilitating David’s appearance. |
|
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21st
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Peter Mason
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28th
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Fraser Stewart
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Dec |
5th
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Richard Logan
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12th
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Annie Chave
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19th
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Members
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| 2025 |
Jan |
2nd
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Christine Drew
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9th
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Members
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16th
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23rd
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Tim Lerwill
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30th
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Peter Hardy
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Feb |
6th
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Tony Diprose
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13th
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Simon Mann
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20th
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Chris Wood
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27th
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Dave Allen
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March |
6th
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Stephen Chalke
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13th
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Members
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20th
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David Frith
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27th
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Derek Hopkins
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