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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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2025
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Oct |
9th
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James Graham-Brown
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Our season started with the best first-day attendance ever. 46 members
gathered, firstly to remember three of our former members who had passed away during
the summer, Dai Davies, Frank Fortey and Warwick Rust, then to hear from James Graham-Brown
- a man with three careers and two names!
James started off telling us about the end of his career as a county professional
when he just failed to clear Harry Pilling (5’0”) on the long off boundary in his
final game for Derbyshire. He lamented that, like politicians, most sporting careers
end in failure. He claimed that his started, continued and ended in failure, doing
himself rather a dis-service. It had all started aged 11 when he watched Colin Cowdrey
score two centuries for Kent against the touring Australian side, little believing
that 13 years later he would be playing with the same man. James attended Sevenoaks
School where the coach was a great believer in youth, bringing boys into the 1st
XI at the age of 13 or 14, thus setting James on his cricketing journey. In 1970
he was selected to play for Young England against the West Indies and even opened
the bowling. This would have appeared slightly incongruous a few years later when
his bowling had declined as his batting improved. In fact in a team which also included
Geoff Miller and John Emburey he was actually the leading wicket taker. At that time
Kent were totally ignorant of his presence and it was only when Middlesex asked permission
to invite him to play for their 2nd XI that Kent took an interest. Rejecting Middlesex’s
approach, Kent invited him to play for their 2nd XI and at the end of the season
offered him a contract for the following season. It had been James’ intention to
go to Oxford University to get a Blue for cricket, but the dons saw through his scheme
and didn’t offer him a place, so the Kent offer was accepted. His first season was
in 1971 and Les Ames gave him some sage advice part way through the season. He said
”You’re never going to play for England, you should go to university. So Kent arranged
for James to take his degree at Kent University, paid for by Kent and with a tutor
who was a cricket enthusiast who would tutor him during a match when James wasn’t
batting, so plenty of time for learning there then! After 4 matches where he was
12th man, including one occasion when a dog-bite to a fellow team-mate looked as
if it would be an opportunity to play, James finally made it into the team. As James
didn’t drive at that time his nearest neighbour was Colin Cowdrey, who drove him
to matches in the Daimler, MCC 307. On one occasion when late for an away match Colin
organised the coin toss over the phone. Needless to say Kent won the toss! James
also related the time that he was playing for the 2nd XI on a rather sporty pitch
at Dover. He was number six in the order but found himself in during the 3rd over
with only 1 wicket down. The others had all retired hurt thanks to one Anderson Roberts
of Hampshire who was steaming in to bowl far faster that anything the 2nd XI normally
produced. In 1974 James got his breakthrough into the team when Bernard Julian was
injured and he had a good run in the side, which managed to get to the Gilette Cup
final against Leicestershire. He was originally picked for the team, but the whole
of Saturday was washed out by rain, they then had to play a Sunday League game where
he went for 68 off 12 overs, a massive amount at the time. Fortunately his rival
Richard Elmes went for over 70 off his overs so James retained his place when the
game was played on the Monday. It was probably the highlight of his career, as the
weather was overcast, the wicket was green and James bowled 12 overs 5 maidens and
took 2-15. The cricketing fates are fickle though and by the end of the following
season he was out of favour and moved to Derbyshire, which culturally was a complete
change. There he played under Eddie Barlow, who dragged Derbyshire up from the bottom
of the County Championship. James tells how he once bowled to Geoffrey Boycott who
defended an over of fairly rank bowling, mainly tapping it back to James. At the
end of the over Geoff tapped him on the shoulder and said “That’s the last time you
will bowl a maiden over to the greatest batsman in the world” - and it was! When
James was offered the opportunity to captain the 2nd XI for the following season,
he recognised that his time was up and started his second career as a teacher. He
taught at Bournemouth School and later became a Headmaster in Truro and finally in
Bath. While teaching he played Minor Counties cricket for Cornwall and Dorset, including
playing with Julian Shackleton. In his latter years of teaching he turned his hand
to playwrighting and has written over 30, including some memorable sporting ones,
particularly about Colin Milburn -‘When The Eye Has Gone’ and Chris Lewis -“The Long
Walk Back’. James himself lost the sight in one eye a while back. He talked about
the mental health of cricketers, particularly of the older generations who found
it difficult to cope when the attention a'd adulation had gone. His plays, both supporting
the Professional Cricketers Association, were intended to appeal to a young audience,
rather than the more traditional theatre audience. In fact his play about Chris Lewis
was first staged at Portland Prison and Chris Lewis attended every performance to
talk about his experience. James is still writing plays, he has two or three at different
stages in their creation and also wrote the biography of Dennis Amiss. In a long
Q&A session he was asked why he wrote under a different name, Dougie Blaxland.
He explained that it gave him a freedom which he didn’t have as a Headmaster and
teacher. More tales of cricketers such as Bob Taylor, Viv Richards and Colin Milburn
followed to round off a wonderful afternoon’s entertainment. Many thanks James and
to Derek for hosting the meeting. |
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|
|
16th
|
Members
|
|
Illness prevented Charlotte Taylor from speaking to us today, so we
had a last minute look at some of the finest cricketers that have worn the baggy
green cap of Australia. Don Bradman of course springs to mind with his unique ability
and thin, nasal voice. The famous statistic of 99.94 batting average in Tests was
freqently mentioned, as was the fact that the next best only manages 60. The war
of course robbed him of almost a decade of Test cricket, leaving lots of what if
questions. Also amongst the greatest of all time is Shane Warne who took over 700
Test wickets, the 2nd highest ever. The 'ball of the century' to Mike Gatting was
pored over as were a vast number of other victims. Rounding off the event was Adam
Gilchrist whose batting at number 7 for Australia often dug them out of a hole. Initially
in the ODI team as an opening batsman Adam soon ousted Ian Healy and became a leader
within the Australian side. |
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|
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23rd
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Tim Shutt
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Tim Shutt, Director of the Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation came
to tell us about the charity he runs and his background. Born in the North East,
Tim spent several years working for a bank before he started to volunteer with Sussex,
which led to a job with the Sussex Cricket Board. From there he progressed to become
Director of the Arundel Castle Cricket Foundation taking over in 2020 from Johnny
Barclay who had run it for 34 years. Tim explained that the cricketing charity sector
was fairly crowded, maybe 250 charities and that the Foundation was a relative minnow
compared to say, Lords Taverners. Turnover was just over £400000 a year compared
to maybe £6 million for Lords Taverners or Chance To Shine. Therefore it is
important to have a unique selling point or USP. Why would a benefactor give money
or sponsorship to them rather than the larger charities? Well Tim explained that
they were not in the business of trying to discover and develop the next Joe Root
or Freddie Flintoff, plenty of other charities were covering that. They were endeavouring
to use the medium of cricket to provide opportunities for deprived children, in many
cases from the London area. They offer three day courses throughout the summer where
cricket is used to bring the children, often from very different backgrounds, together
and to teach them life skills and open their eyes to opportunities. So as well as
the sport, which is only cricket, they will try their hand at pitching tents, maybe
sleeping in them overnight, perhaps some cooking. The children mainly spend the overnight
periods at a local activity centre which has dormitory accommodation and they are
supervised by their teachers who come with them. During the day they are playing
on the Arundel ground and often pitching tents around the boundary! Tim emphasised
just how small the charity is when he revealed that thee were two and a half full
time staff, including himself. When the activity days are being held external, paid
coaches etc are brought in. The charity runs all year, but the activities go from
April to October, while the rest of the year is kept busy with organising future
events and fund-raising. In the Q&A session Tim revealed that about half their
funds come from other charities who exist to give money to facilitate sport or caring
for children, the remainder is raised from individual donors and events such as golf
days and cycle rides. It’s certainly a challenging amount of money which needs to
be raised each year. He was very clear that he wasn’t looking to raise funds from
us, but if you are re-writing your will at present, well…….. Next year will be their
40th year, so a big opportunity to raise their profile, though local interest can
be constrained a bit by the fact that this is being done for children from London
rather the immediate area, which makes fund raising a bit of a hard sell. A lengthy
Q&A session followed with Tim freely giving of his time, until he had to depart
back for an evening appointment. Many thanks to Tim for an extremely interesting
afternoon and also to Huw for organising the visit. |
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30th
|
Roland Butcher
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Roland Butcher stopped off to see us on his marathon journey around
the country and other parts of the world as he promoted his book Breaking Barriers:
From Barbados To England ...And Back which tells of his life story. As he explained
it was intended to be more than a book just about his cricketing exploits, it was
intended to be an inspiration and route map for young people. Roland was born in
Barbados where he lived until he was thirteen, mainly with his grandmother as his
parents and the rest of his family had emigrated to England. Finally his parents
prised him away from his grandmother and he came to live in London. It was a challenging
time, not only did he have to cope with a new country but also effectively a new
family including his older siblings. Where he lived there was a very little cricket
played, it was mainly soccer and Roland showed quite an aptitude for the game. In
fact he finished up as a semi-professional football before he became a professional
cricketer. Fate offered him a chance when he was invited to help make up the numbers
for a 3rd XI match in the local park where he had been playing football with friends.
Success came slowly and he was finally recommended to Gloucestershire. They had a
pretty good side at the time and so Roland joined the MCC ground staff at Lords,
which at the time was the equivalent of a cricketing apprenticeship. In time Middlesex
took note of this young batsman and he made his way into the 1st XI. After some particularly
good scores he was selected for England for an ODI and later for the tour to the
West Indies. Thus he became the first black cricketer to play Test cricket for England.
In total he played three Tests, but sadly a serious eye injury affected his sight
permanently, he was hit in the eye while trying a hook shot. As he explained the
injury prevented him from playing at the highest level, but he managed to continue
his professional career for another seven years, which included winning the trophy
for the fastest 1st class century in the 1987 season (off 73 balls) In time he acquired
football coaching badges and worked as a coach in the professional football game
for a number of different clubs, but in 2004 his career went in a different path
when he was invited to become the Director of Sport at the University of the West
Indies in Barbados. As he explained this involved no less than 14 sports which he
was responsible for developing and he was particularly keen on developing women’s
sport. He also became a selector for the West Indies team, as well as being made
a Freeman of the City of London, which entitles him to herd sheep over Tower Bridge!
During the Q&A session he was asked why he chose to play for England rather than
the West Indies and he explained that choosing the West Indies would have made him
an overseas player in county cricket and there were limitations on the number of
overseas players each team could have, especially as Middlesex preferred their overseas
players to be fast bowlers. An interesting afternoon was spent by 61 members and
guests, with many thanks to Roland and also to Mike Vimpany for hosting the meeting. |
|
|
Nov |
6th
|
Vic Marks
|
|
Vic Marks made a return visit on Thursday to a packed audience of
71 members and guests. On this occasion he was talking about his recent publication
the Cricket Captains of England 1975-2005. He started by revealing that he held the
record for the most runs conceded by any bowler in 1st class cricket in the decade
of the 1980’s. However it did mean that he played with or against many of the Test
captains in that era, of which there were no less than 24. Vic referred to the original
book Test Captains of England by Alan Gibson, a writer of great talent, though unfortunately
a drinker of many bottles of wine. Alan had produced the definitive book which extended
to the Centenary Test between Australia and England, but had to quickly add some
more after the Kerry Packer affair meant that Tony Greig was sacked and Mike Brearley
took over. So Vic felt that at least he was familiar with all the Test Captains which
gave him some legitimacy. Starting then with Brearley, he revealed that Illingworth
considered him a lucky captain, not so much on the field as the quality of the opposition.
He never captained against the West Indies, the foremost team at the time and the
Australians had been weakened by the Kerry Packer affair. He also had Botham at his
finest as a fast bowler as well as a young Gower, just about to prosper and Bob Willis,
so he had a good team. He was almost the last captain to be chosen for his ability
to captain rather than his playing record. (Chris Cowdrey being the only other one
in modern times). By contrast Ian Botham captained 12 Tests and 9 of them were against
the West Indies. Of these he lost three and drew six, not too bad looking back. Brian
Close had been fiercely opposed to making Ian captain, fearing that it would be detrimental
to his game whereas Mike Brearley championed him. For once Close was right and Brearley
was wrong. As Vic said Botham took the job, because you never turn down the chance
to captain England, but there is so much more to the job than what happens on the
field. Geoffrey Boycott came and went fairly quickly with his famous dismissal in
New Zealand in a match that England won by 174 runs, thanks in part to Ian Botham
running Boycott out. Geoffrey was too selfish to make a good captain. Botham and
Boycott weren’t talking in the game with an intermediary relaying questions about
bowling and field positions back and forward between them. Bob Willis is really the
only fast bowler to captain England in modern times. Vic went on two tours with Bob
and he recalled how Bob bitterly regretted not following his gut feeling at Adelaide
and putting the Aussies in on a wicket which produce almost no bounce at all. England
did win the following Test in Melbourne to make up for things but Bob had made a
wrong decision for the wrong reason. On balance Bob won more Tests for England than
he lost, so is one of the more successful captains. David Gower appeared very laid
back, but Vic believed that he was far more concerned than he showed whether it was
losing the England Captaincy or being sacked by Sky. In Dehli in 1984, he lost his
rag and berated the team at lunch on the last day saying that the game was stilll
there to be won when India appeared to be playing for a draw. Kapel Dev holed out
after lunch and the spinners mopped up the rest. Then to Madras when double centuries
from Fowler and Gatting followed by Foster taking 6 wickets in the 1st innings and
5 in the 2nd, unexpectedly led to a 2-1 series win. Gower was prepared to pick players
like Edmonds who Willis thought were too much of a problem. Unfortunately the West
Indies were Gower’s downfall, played 10, lost 10. Vic then posed the question how
many Tests did Mike Gatting win? They answer which no-one knew was a measly two out
of twenty three, but they were important ones , Brisbane and Melbourne in 1986, enough
to win the Ashes. Gatt took a fairly liberal attitude to things which suited Botham,
Gower and Lamb. This was the famous occasion when Martin Johnson said there’s only
three things wrong with this side, they can’t bat, can’t bowl and can’t field. Some
pundit! Graham Gooch brought a certain discipline to the team with an emphasis on
fitness which didn’t help when Gower flew over an upstate game in a Tiger Moth. This
caused a disproportionate reaction from Gooch and the management despite Gower being
the leading scorer in the Tests to that point. In the time that Gooch was captain
Gower played only 10 out of 39 Tests. A great waste surely as he averaged 54 in Test
over that period? Vic contrasted the 492 balls that Mike Atherton faced at Johannesburg
in 1995 with the 3 in 2 innings four years later. The 1st occasion was an epic innings,
batting for 10 hours. It wouldn’t happen nowadays as England would try to chase down
the 485 target. Atherton only really had the team that he wanted for the first 6
months of his four year reign, as Ray Illingworth was manager. Alex Stewart chose
to ignore certain players like Phil Tuffnell and Andy Caddock, in fact he did captain
Caddock once when standing in for Nasser Hussain and Andy Caddock took 5-16. Nasser
Hussain was a captain who won more than he lost, his timing was good, he took over
when England were bottom of the pile, eighth out of eight in the Test table. He had
the benefits of central contracts coming in and he had a supportive manager in Duncan
Fletcher. He was followed by Michael Vaughan who carried on the improvement leading
to 2005 and the Ashes triumph, which then fell apart, partly through injuries. There
followed a couple of less successful captains in Flintoff and Pietersen. Freddie
had been desperate to be captain, Kevin less so. Duncan Fletcher pondered how he
could manage Flintoff if he wasn’t captain and hence the choice was made. As far
as Kevin Pietersen was concerned, Vic was so convinced that they had made a big mistake
that he wrote an article in The Guardian. The thrust of it was that by opting to
have the same captain for all three formats, Test, ODI’s and T20’s it only left one
possibility. Andrew Strauss wins the Ashes home and away, that’s pretty good, he's
a candidate for being one of the best. Cook and Root both had four year stints, a
reaction to 1984 where there were four captains in one year. They both probably went
on too long. Rooit had 64 Tests in charge, but of his last 17 he lost 11 and won
1, otherwise his record would have been quite good. Then to Ben Stokes, if he can
win the Ashes then he is right there as one of the best, but is it possible? So much
depends on fitness and questions surround the lack of practice before the Test matches.
A lengthy Q&A session then followed to complete an excellent afternoon’s entertainment.
Many thanks to Vic and to Mike Vimpany for hosting the event. |
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13th
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Richard Isaacs
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Richard Isaacs returned to the Society after an eleven year gap to
open our eyes to a vital but often overlooked component of the professional cricket
broadcast. Richard can best be described as a professional scorer, but even more
crucially, a statistician. His job involves feeding the commentators with all the
relevant statistical information which makes them look very clever! How did it all
begin? Well Richard was born into cricket, his dad, Vic, was the scorer for Hampshire
for 36 years and Richard reckons he was around cricket grounds from the age of about
2! He fondly remembered Northlands Road in Southampton and Dean Park. He would sell
the scorecards at Dean Park and when a bit older was entrusted to journey to the
local chip shop for 30 portions of fish and chips to feed the players, umpires and
officials who had grown tired of the official catering. After university he took
a job with HMRC or the Inland Revenue as it then was. A number of uneventful years
passed where Richard played a bit of local cricket but not much more. A transfer
to Manchester proved the catalyst for a complete change of career. In 2005 Richard
was sacked from HMRC on account of his sickness record, not helped by an unsympathetic
manager. Returning to the family home, a chance meeting with a guest at his parents'
home led to him being invited to work for Sky. What started as a summer contract
continued for another eleven years. So what does Richard do exactly? Well he maintains
a record on paper of the match in progress, useful if the electronic gadgets lose
power, but his primary function is to provide a stream of interesting statistics,
which the commentators can then intersperse in their broadcast. When he first joined
Sky full time it was 2006, he and another statistician were told that between them
they would be covering the Ashes in Australia and the 2007 World Cup in the West
Indies. Richard was sent to Australia and was there for the full debacle as England
surrendered the Ashes 5-0. To facilitate the flow of statistics, Richard produces
a data sheet of possible interesting facts in advance of every match, these can be
inserted at the appropriate time into the commentary. Of course the path of cricket
never runs smoothly, so the commentators may wish to quote some interesting stats
around something which happens in the game. To assist him, Richard has access to
four databases, the most crucial one contains the details of over 119,000 matches,
a number which is steadily expanding. Given a little time he can dig into these and
come up with the salient information. So for a number of years Richard spent his
summers around the cricket grounds in England and then wintered on overseas tours.
However changes were afoot! As Sky became more profit conscious, they looked to see
where economies could be made and after eleven years Richard was made redundant,
so he decided to go freelance, which he still is to this day. Increasingly the fragmentation
of sporting rights has changed the broadcasting landscape. This year Sky didn’t even
bother to bid for the Ashes, as they thought that the numbers watching live from
Australia in the middle of the night would be few and hence the advertising revenue
that they could generate would be adversely affected. Increasingly, commentary is
done remotely with the commentators looking at screens rather talking live at the
ground. Whereas I can appreciate that Richard’s job can be done from afar, as it
frequently is these days, I do question whether remote commentators can adequately
capture the atmosphere of being on the ground. Richard explained that he was currently
scoring for the New Zealand ODI series against West Indies in New Zealand and reckoned
that it would probably cost up to £15000 for the company to send him to New
Zealand, with air fares, hotels travel etc. Of course Covid played a large part in
this development forcing the remote working. Richard explained the equipment which
he has at home and even passed around a photo so that we could see his set-up. He
communicates with the commentary team and the producers either by an audio feed or
via a WhatsApp group. Occasionally there may be a power cut or problems with the
internet and then the commentators are on their own! Throughout the afternoon’s talk
and Q&A it was obvious how much of an influence that Richard’s dad, Vic, had
been in his life, which was touching to see. In the Q&A, changes to laws, making
the Test Championship more equitable and remote commentators were all subjects that
were discussed, but I can’t end without repeating my favourite quote of the afternoon.
‘A bored Ian Botham is a dangerous man’.
Many thanks to Richard for a fascinating insight into an overlooked aspect of cricket
broadcasting. |
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20th
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Peter Hardy
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Peter Hardy, Chairman of The Cricket Society came to speak to us.
He started by explaining how he came to love the game. His father was a keen supporter
of Surrey and encouraged his children to continue the support, Peter recalled some
of his earliest experiences of watching professional cricket, such as watching Surrey
against Yorkshire as Fred Truman was coming to the end of his career. Fred was not
amused when he took a wicket with two successive balls, only for them to be no-balls!
Then in the same game Ken Barrington took a very rare 5-for. Peter also attended
his first Test match that summer as England took on Pakistan whose batsman Asif Iqbal
scored 146 to delay England’s victory until late on the 5th day. Peter attended Marlborough
College and made his way into the school team. When playing against other public
schools he came across the likes of Paul Terry. At that age Paul didn’t stand out
as being a particularly talented cricketer, but he obviously had a determination
to succeed where other initially more talented players didn’t. He also told the story
of playing against Eton when all their fast bowlers leapt in the air in their delivery
stride. Why? Well their coach was Vic Cannings, formerly of Hampshire, and that was
how he bowled! Peter’s playing career came to a halt after marriage and children
appeared on the scene and it wasn’t until he was in his 50's that he started to actively
participate again, playing for the Cricket Society. He found that as team secretary,
he was usually selected! He recalled playing locally at Burley, where the square
is protected during the week by heavy wrought iron fences which have to be removed
by the players before each game and then re-positioned at the end, all the time carefully
avoiding any droppings from the horses, donkeys and even cows that frequent the outfield.
The Cricket Society started life as Cricket Statisticians and has just celebrated
it’s 80th Anniversary, so well ahead of us. Peter is the 14th Chairman and as well
as organising meetings and having a playing side they also have the Cricket Society
Trust, a charity, which works to enable state school cricket to flourish. In the
second half of his talk Petr passed around a number of photographs for members to
peruse as he described their significance. There then followed a lengthy Q&A
session including questions about the validity of certain people’s statistics and
which games actually count as 1st Class or Tests. Thank you Peter for an interesting
afternoon covering a wide range of topics and thanks also to Huw for hosting the
meeting. |
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27th
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Mike Smith
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Mike Smith, a Yorkshireman who played some 15 seasons for Gloucestershire
was our guest speaker. In his career he played and won five finals at Lords and played
once for England. After retiring from cricket he became a solicitor and has, in recent
years, become an ECB Match Referee. It was on this job that the first part of the
meeting centred. What is a Match Referee, what do they do, how many are there? Well
there are about a dozen who are appointed to County Championship matches, one day
matches, T20 matches, both male and female. Their duties can be broken down into
about five parts. Essentially they are there to watch every ball and adjudicate on
a number of matters. They sit off the field, with live streams of the game on their
laptops, Firstly they have to mark the pitch, from very good, good, above average
(these are all ok) down through below average, poor and unfit (then the county is
in trouble.) An unfit pitch would likely cause the game to be abandoned. They speak
to the ground staff, to better understand any problems they may have had in preparing
the pitch. Of course Hampshire were deducted 8 points last season and it nearly cost
them relegation. Some pitches can be too good and they become a batsman’s paradise,
with no turn or seam movement. Not too good for the spectators. Next responsibility
is to mark the umpires, on about 10 different criteria, such as their preparation,
their decisions, how they dealt with pressure, their communications. Marks vary from
very good to major development needed. Match referees look at discipline on the field,
have the umpires stepped in when necessary, could they have intervened earlier? There
are four disciplinary levels and a County which gets a total of four penalties in
a season will lose points. Sometimes a single incident may incur two penalties, such
as raising the bat towards the umpire when given out LBW to indicate that the batter
has hit the ball, then knocking off the bails when leaving. That would be two Level
1 offences, thus being half way to the club losing points. The Match referee will
also intervene with the umpires if he sees something they have missed. The Match
Referee will also adjudicate on concussion substitutes, in so far as who the replacement
might be. As far as possible it should be a like for like replacement. You can’t
bring in a fast bowler for a spinner etc. It is the physios who actually decide whether
someone is concussed or not, the Match Referee plays no part in that. Finally they
are responsible for keeping a check on the over rate and ensuring that the counties
bowl a minimum of 16 overs per hour spread across the day. So those are the responsibilities
of the Match Referee and they can be appointed anywhere in the country with travelling
days either side of the games, plus up to 80 days of actual play. Mike is also a
member of the Cricket Disciplinary Committee, where his legal training comes in useful.
We then heard about his playing career. He had been in the Yorkshire age teams all
the way through school and although Yorkshire showed an interest they decided that
he was too small and not fit enough to be a professional cricketer. Instead he joined
Gloucestershire and put himself to work building up his strength and technique. He
was the first to admit that he didn’t know how he swung the ball, he just did. He
freely admitted that he wouldn’t be able to coach anyone to bowl like himself, as
he didn’t how it happened. He played initially while still at university and didn’t
expect his cricketing career to last long, but it did. 1997 was a very successful
year and after taking 10 wickets at Headingly, Mike was brought into the England
team for the Headingly Test against the Aussies. Little did he know that the otters
players thought that Andy Caddick should have been selected instead. Even when Michael
Atherton tried to carve him out of the nets, he still didn’t realise the significance.
A dropped catch in the Aussies' 1st innings which would have left them 50-6 meant
that he went wicketless in the only Australaian innings, as they won comfortably
and Mike was never selected again. In the Q&A session that followed we learnt
that Mike was a Leeds United supporter, but we won’t hold that against him, as both
they and Bournemouth lost this weekend! Many thanks to Mike for an interesting insight
into a overlooked aspect of the game. Thanks also to Vimps for hosting the meeting. |
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Dec |
4th
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Members
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11th
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Jamie Cox
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18th
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Andy Murtagh
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2025
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Jan |
8th
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Members
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15th
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Andy Coleman & Luke Webb
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22nd
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Eddie Jack & Felix Organ
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29th
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Ian Darke
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Feb |
5th
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12th
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19th
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Paul Farbrace
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26th
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March |
5th
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Mark Peel
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12th
|
John Barclay
|
|
|
| |
|
19th
|
Andy Moles
|
|
|
| |
|
26th
|
Derek Hopkins
|
|
|
