Dorset Cricket Society


Résumé of events 2024-25

Year

Month

Day

Speaker

 

Topic

2024

Oct

10th

Chris Finch

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

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

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

 

 

14th

David Graveney

 

 

 

21st

Peter Mason

 

 

28th

Fraser Stewart

 

 

Dec

5th

Richard Logan

 

 

12th

Annie Chave

 

 

 

19th

Members

 
2025 Jan

2nd

Christine Drew

 

 

 

9th

Members

 
   

16th

 

 

 

 

23rd

Tim Lerwill

 

 

30th

Peter Hardy

 

 

Feb

6th

Tony Diprose

 

 

13th

Simon Mann

 

 

20th

Chris Wood

 

 

27th

Dave Allen

 

 

March

6th

Stephen Chalke

 
   

13th

Members

 
   

20th

David Frith

 
   

27th

Derek Hopkins

 

To see memories of the previous year's programme click here
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