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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. |
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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. |
|
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|
31st
|
Graham Jones
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|
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. |
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|
Nov |
7th
|
Garry Richardson
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|
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
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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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|
Peter Mason, author of many books and journalist at The Guardian,
came to tell us all about his book on Clyde Walcott, one of the famous “3W’s”, Worell,
Walcott and Weeks of the West Indian team of the late 1950’s and 60’s. Clyde was
born into a black middle-class family in Barbados in 1928. His family rented a large
house, their backyard included a large area where cricket could be played and so
Clyde grew up with that influence. In fact the 3W’s were all born within 1 square
mile of each other within 18 months of each other, though it took many years for
them to all meet. He was one of the great batsmen, with a Test average of over 56
when he retired, which would have been more if he hadn’t kept wicket as well, in
the early part of his career. How did he get there? He was so good that he played
in the Barbados League from the age of 12. In 1942 he played for Barbados against
Trinidad, keeping wicket, by 1948 he was playing for West Indies. He was invited
to play for an invitation XI in New York for a period of three months playing exhibition
matches. Having done this twice his government job was given to someone else and
he came to England playing in the Lancashire League for Enfield, near Accrington.
He played from 1951-54. At 6’ 2” and fifteen stone he was a powerful batsman though
his bulk did impinge on his wicketkeeping at times. His first Test was against England
at Bridgetown and the West Indies won the series 2-0. An away tour to India followed,
where he became established as a main batsman. 1950 was a landmark year for Walcott,
168 in the 2nd innings at Lords and the West Indies won the series in England for
the first time. West Indies went to Australia in 1952-53, unfortunately racial undertones
started to undermine the team. The captain was a fairly average cricketer, a white
man called John Goddard, he was inexperienced, while the 3W’s ran things on the pitch.
The 3W’s felt that he got too much credit for the win in England, there were 3 or
4 white players in the team, all the selectors were white, as was the Barbados board.
Some of this was mirrored in England where an amateur captain was selected for England,
it wasn’t until 1954 that Len Hutton, a professional, became captain. This gradually
affected the relationship between the 3W’s, as there was a certain amount of jostling
for who might be the first black captain of the West Indies. In 1957 Walcott was
appointed vice-captain for the tour of England, but the West Indies lost three nil.
In the final Test he captained but the West Indies were dismissed for under 100 in
each innings, He then scored 5 centuries in 6 Tests against Australia at home before
a final series against Pakistan before he retired in 1958. In 1954 he was appointed
by the sugar producers association in (British) Guyana as a cricket organiser, as
most of the workers were of Indian origin. He built a structure for cricket in the
area as well as playing for Guyana, also finding new talent, for example he found
Rohan Kanhai, Joe Solomon, Basil Butcher amongst others. He became social welfare
organiser, improving schooling, housing etc and did that until 1970, when he returned
to Barbados, where he became senior personnel officer with the Barbados Shipping
Company and rose to head of the Barbados Employers Association. His sympathetic employer
allowed him the time to become involved with cricket administration, which lead to
him being the manager when the West Indies won the 1st World Cup in 1975. He became
involved with the ICC, widening its geographical influence and making it more commercialised.
He became Chairman and increased the influence of countries outside of England and
Australia, including quarterly tele-conferencing to improve the speed of change.
He stepped down in 2000 and he retired back to Barbados where he lived until his
death in 2006. There followed a Q&A session which included discussion of a rebel
tour to South Africa by West Indian cricketers and inter-island rivalry amongst many
other topics. Many thanks to Peter and to Derek for hosting the meeting. |
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28th
|
Fraser Stewart
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|
Fraser Stewart believes he is very lucky, because he has a dream job
as head of Cricket at Lords. On Thursday he told us of his cricketing journey to
this achievement. He started his career at Compton House cricket club near Yeovil,
playing for the U-16’s when he was 8 or 9. He went to school in Somerset and went
to Taunton to watch the likes of Botham, Richards and Garner. He played junior cricket
for Somerset which included opening with Marcus Trescothick. At 16 he moved on to
play for Sherborne and played there for 6 years until he finished university, in
his time he played 4 or 5 games for the county side. He also played for the Dorset
Rangers and for his university in Manchester, before he moved to London and played
in the Middlesex League. At school, just before his A-Levels, he played against MCC
and was invited to play the qualifying games to become a playing member of MCC. Fast
forward a few years and just before he was 30 he was appointed to a dream job at
Lords, manager of the cricket office, which runs over 500 matches a year against
schools and adult teams, as well as overseas tours. Another aspect of his job is
to be manager of the laws of cricket, assisted by a committee including high-profile
names such as Simon Taufel. He apologised if there was any Law of which we disapproved.
He appears on Sky or TMS when there are controversies about the Laws. He told us
about the match last year where there was a controversial non-catch followed by the
Bairstow dismissal. Fraser indicated that the behaviour of some MCC members in the
Long Room meant that they couldn’t comment more, along the lines of ’Spirit of Cricket’.
He was heavily involved in the introduction of DRS, which required a lot of research
and some tweaks to playing conditions to cover the fine details which DRS requires.
Fraser has recently returned from visiting bat manufacturers in India, with a view
to seeing whether composite bats could be acceptable, that is a bat where the outer
portions are made from the best English willow, while the centre may be a poorer
quality willow, thus producing a laminate style bat. They are adamant though that
they don’t want bats to become more powerful. The indoor centre at Lords has eight
lanes and is used greatly for coaching youngsters Fraser is general manager of London
Spirit, both the men’s and women’s teams. He suggested that one reason that The Hundred
was instigated was that T20 was predominantly a boozy lads' night, while The Hundred
has been targeted at a family and female audience. He feels that The Hundred has
had a massive influence on women’s cricket. He also emphasised that modern youngsters
are tuned into 5 minute bitesize highlights of games rather than an hour-long package.
Fraser explained that his club has over a hundred youngsters attending on a Friday
night with the All Stars and Dynamos coaching programmes. A lively Q&A session
then ensued, Fraser revealed that the players are actually paid the amount that they
are auctioned for, though their wages in The Hundred are structured with 80% for
playing and 20% for appearances to support the game. Fraser feels that countries
such as India need to take a smaller slice of the financial cake, so that the smaller
countries can thrive and also that India must let their players partake in overseas
competitions to give them experience, which will also make the television rights
more valuable. Batsmen are more concerned with their strike rate than their average.
Much of the decision making around selection is driven by data. He gave an example
where they have software that could simulate matches based on two different players
occupying the same slot in the team. The software can simulate 20000 matches and
work out which of the two players gives the greatest chance of success, which may
be as marginal as 2 or 3%. America is seen as a major prospect for expansion in the
future, in view of the number of ex-pat Asians living there. Fraser was asked about
possible changes to the Laws, but apart from the size of bats and the possibility
of laminated bats there wasn’t much in the pipeline. It was suggested that leg-byes
should be done away, but it was felt that it would make for a more negative game.
In all we had a fascinating afternoon learning lots about the ‘behind the scenes’
aspects of cricket. Many thanks to Julian for organising the event and to Mike and
Fraser for another great afternoon. |
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Dec |
5th
|
Richard Logan
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|
We had another good turn-out for the visit of Richard Logan, a former
Hampshire pace bowler, who is now Director of National Counties Cricket Association.
He had twelve seasons in professional cricket, followed by four seasons playing Minor
Counties cricket. The NCA is the pinnacle of recreational cricket in this country,
a stepping stone for those going into the professional game. He was selected for
England U15’s, U17’s and U19’s and won the World Cup with the U19’s. In those days
he was an opening batsman, but after missing out on selection at U14 level he decided
to add another string to his bow by developing his bowling. He started his professional
career at Northants, but after a falling out with the coach he moved to Notts. He
had four seasons at Trent Bridge alongside the likes of Kevin Pieterson, before moving
to Hants in 2005. He had a mixed time at Hampshire as he had a stress fracture of
his back in the second season and Hants released him at the end of the season. 2005
was quite unreal playing with KP and Shane Warne prior to the Test series. He then
enjoyed several seasons paying Minor Counties cricket, mainly for Berkshire.Richard
has been involved with the National Counties Cricket Association for five years which
organises 3 day, 50 over and T20 matches. Richard feels that they have to repeatedly
prove themselves to the ECB, at least finances are arranged for the next four years.
It will be interesting to see where money from the sale of The 100 franchises goes.
As an example Dorset get about £36000, but need over £50000 to complete
a season. Richard would like to see counties like Dorset showcase their matches around
the county rather than have them all located at the same venue. There are exciting
things in the future, streaming of matches is becoming more common and this could
raise the profile, literally around the world. A new innovation this year was the
NCCA Challengers team, which is the NCCA equivalent of the England Test team, they
play against the likes of MCC, Leicester and Hants. It was hoped that this team might
be invited into a major competition, but so far this has not materialised. They also
have a women’s version of this team. First class county coaches are invited to matches
or training to spot talent who might make their way into First class cricket. In
the Q&A session which followed questions were asked about Richard’s favourite
end at the Rose Bowl, he preferred to bowl into the wind, rather than one particular
end. He related how he once spent an afternoon talking to Curtley Ambrose in the
dressing room, when Richard was 15 or 16. Richard has KP as a close friend and explained
that Kevin is quite insular, he has a close circle of friends but keeps others at
a distance.
Another interesting afternoon looking at aspects of cricket both within the professional
and amateur game. Many thanks to Richard and to Mike for organising the afternoon. |
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12th
|
Annie Chave
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|
Annie Chave is a cricket writer, commentator and editor. Her interest
in cricket started around the age of 8 or 9 when her father, who played for the local
team, took her along to his club. Early success was thwarted when the coach finally
realised she wasn’t a boy! She learnt to score and was soon scoring for her team
which she still does, they currently have 66 fixtures a season. She played in London
after university, but many years had passed which meant her progress had been limited.
She did however manage to get Charlotte Edwards out on one occasion. Her love of
county cricket came from watching Viv Richards and Joel Garner playing for Somerset.
Many years later she started to post cricket related matters on social media. A blog
site got in touch and asked her to write an article for them, which led to further
requests including writing for the Cricketer. She was then approached by Guerrilla
Cricket who ran Test Match Sofa where a radio commentary was made by watching a game
on the TV and commentating on it. She soon found herself out in Barbados (2019) working
for a Caribbean radio station alongside the likes of Vic Marks and Tino Best. She
met Garfield Sobers and chatted to him over a couple of rums! However, undoubtedly,
her first love is county cricket and the four day match. Annie believes that a proper
game of cricket must consist of two innings. Before the game she ponders over how
the pitch will play, who will win the toss, when will the first wicket fall, what
will be the 1st innings lead? She laments the downgrading of the 50 over one day
competition and in November 2020 the first edition of Country Cricket Matters magazine
appeared focusing on The Hundred. She surmises that the eight counties associated
with the Hundred will grow stronger at the expense of the remaining counties, as
they become mere feeder teams. This would ignore the rich history of county cricket.
Annie reviewed the past season and was pleased that matches started consistently
on Fridays, though the abysmal weather in April meant that many of the early rounds
were drawn. The Vitality Blast lasted for months and then had a massive gap to the
Finals Day. The last set of county matches were woven between various International
matches and the end of The Blast. She rounded off with some bizarre facts from the
history of the County Championship. Who knew that Lord Raleigh (who discovered Argon)
was President of Essex? A lengthy Q&A followed with many suggestions coming from
the audience. Topics covered including the expansion of cricket in America, whether
a deadline for signing players should be introduced a la the Premier League in football.
We wondered whether a future franchise competition might be The One Ball, as T10
is now quite common. As it is, Hampshire has just played in a competition in Guyana,
while their captain was in the Middle East. A very thought provoking afternoon with
Annie, for which we give many thanks to her and to Huw for facilitating the afternoon. |
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19th
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Members
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Members gathered for a tasty buffet for our last meeting before Christmas.
Many thanks to all those who brought along edible items. Once we were repleat we
then settled down to a documentary about Shane Warne, which although overlooking
his many Hampshire contributions was highly watchable. A final round of tea and coffee
enabled us to clear the buffet decks, before we set off home for the Christmas break.
Many thanks to Mollie and Sue for their help with the catering. |
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2025
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Jan |
9th
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Members
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Our annual lunch was held at the Hermitage Hotel in Bournemouth once
again, with over 50 attendees. It was a glorious day to be beside the seaside, in
a great setting with a very enjoyable meal and good company. Many thanks to Peter
Braim for organising the event again this year. After the meal, a fund-raising game
of Higher-Lower was played which raised £112 for charity. Which charity will
be decided by the committee this week. Thanks to all who supported it and for the
many prizes donated to the free raffle. |
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16th
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Christine Drew
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Chris Drew, a member of our society, has been a scorer for 47 years
and she came along to tell us all about her experiences and to encourage us to volunteer
for this essential task. At an early age she became a scorer for Colehill due to
the influence of a former boyfriend who played several days a week. The captain's
wife was a very reluctant scorer and after watching her for half a game, Chris was
left the book after tea to take over. This she then did for 30 years, scoring over
2000 matches until Colehill merged with Wimborne and Chris was offered the chance
to score for the 2nd XI! After a couple of years, Colehill’s Jim Welch suggested
that Chris took the official scorer’s exam. He didn’t reveal that she would need
to learn the 42 Laws of Cricket! She passed with a mark of 99.75%, the loss of 0.25%
because of a pedantic difference between ’10 wickets’ and ‘all out’! The following
year she joined Mike Hain doing the umpires exam. Only then did she learn that Ken
Bishopp was retiring as county scorers' officer and she was ‘invited’ to take over.’
She also ran courses for prospective scorers around the county. There is a shortage
of scorers locally which has benefitted Chris, particularly when scorers are need
for higher tier matches. Through the Welch brothers, Chris became involved in scoring
for the Dorset Colts teams and in 1993 scored her first match for the 1st team against
Glamorgan at Sherborne School. By 2001 she was asked to become scorer for all 1st
XI matches, much to the consternation of Derek Bridges who thought that cricket was
the domain of dull men! In fact Chris experienced quite a lot of misogyny around
the circuit, at Dean Park on one occasion during a minor county game she was told
by the opposition’s scorer “women have no place in cricket”! Since the middle of
2002, Chris has never missed a competitive match for the Dorset 1st XI and has even
been awarded her county cap. Dean Park was her favourite ground to score with an
excellent viewing position. The scorer is very much the poor man or woman of cricket,
with little consideration of the fact that they are required to concentrate throughout
the whole game and then maybe drive to and from matches daily to avoid hotel costs
and it is only in recent years that car mileage has been paid, even then it was less
for women’s cricket than men’s! Dorset were the first county to introduce computerised
scoring and Chris has been heavily involved with the development and improvement
of this type of scoring, though she still maintains a paper record as well in case
of tech problems, which are pretty rare these days. More recently a camera also streams
matches. It took a while to get all the counties scoring electronically but they
all now use Play-Cricket Pro. Chris has had some remarkable experiences while scoring.
In 2014 she was invited to score an MCC match at Lords against the Rest of the World,
the Lords 200th Centenary Match. The best players in the world, the game was being
televised, at lunchtime they were invited to lunch with the players and in the evening
she was invited to a reception in the Long Room. At the end of the match she was
presented, live on air with a commemorative medals and a piece of bi-centennial china.
In the Long Room she was presented with a special book of Lords - A History In Pictures
with an inscription including her name. In fact she was originally given the one
with Shaun Pollock's name in it, so she had to do a discrete swop. Covid times brought
a big break for Chris, she was invited to score at a variety of matches at the Rose
Bowl, including the England Test match against West Indies. Bio-security meant that
everyone stayed at the hotel - except the scorers! Their room had to be accessed
via the fire escape and was sealed off from the rest of the pavilion. Chris scored
a number of matches in different formats and she has the honour of being the first
UK scorer to score in all three formats for both men’s and women’s internationals.
A lively Q&A followed with both technical questions and those of a more social
nature. Many thanks to Chris for talking to us and to Derek for hosting the meeting. |
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23rd
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Tim Lerwill
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Tim Lerwill, OBE, has a distinguished military record, during which
he was fortunate enough to play large amounts of cricket and rugby. Tim attended
Millfield School at a similar time to Julian Shackleton, though he was a year or
so older. They both played for the Millfield School 1st XI. From school Tim then
went into the Army, going to Sandhurst for officer training. He had the possibility
of joining Hampshire, but declined as he felt his cricket was too instinctive and
he didn’t have confidence that he would survive in the professional game. As a result
of him declining a contract Hampshire then engaged a certain Gordon Greenidge. He
did manage to play for the Army and Combined services at cricket and rugby and later
for Hong Kong! One of his more memorable games was playing cricket under Mount Kenya.
We learnt that there are a number of teams that were available to military staff
when they were back in England. Tim is still playing for the Wiltshire Over 70’s
side and is one of the youngest! His previous clubs include US Plymouth, Free Foresters
and then he was invited to play for the MCC. His military training was tough, he
described an exercise in Norfolk in December where they had to dig a trench and live
in it for 7 days, no such thing as a sleeping bag, just a blanket and two blanket
pins. After he was commissioned he was posted to Cyprus where he was confused with
his cousin who an olympic bronze medallist at long-jump and was involved with the
United Nations Athletics International. However Cyprus did have some advantages as
Tim described how he got to dance with Raquel Welch and Bridgette Bardot on the same
evening. In total Tim made three tours of duty to Northern Ireland during the Troubles
and he described some of the frightening experiences there, though at one time he
did play rugby for one of the Northern Ireland sides for most of the season, when
his identity was a fairly loosely guarded secret.There was one occasion when Tim
was invited to play for for the army on the weekend when the company’s Summer Ball
was being held. Despite considerable pressure Tim declined to play as he had invited
his girlfriend to the Ball and the logistics to do both were impossible. His commander
sent a message on his behalf to say that “Lerwill prefers crumpet to cricket” While
Tim was posted to Hong Kong he got involved with organising the Bangkok International
Sixes Tournament, which undoubtedly helped when he was Tour Manager for some MCC
tours which try to encourage the development of players in a country who are just
below the top level of the game. He visited Tanzania, Malawi and Zanzibar amongst
other countries. In all it was a fascinating afternoon with many thanks to Tim and
to Mike Vimpany for facilitating it. |
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30th
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Members
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Numbers were depleted as members gathered for an internal meeting
where a number of in-house speakers talked about sporting events or people. There
was a wide range of topics including Pele signed memorabilia, sporting medals and
awards won, a history of the Bournemouth v Manchester United FA Cup matches, an analysis
of the current England and Australian Women’s teams, and a Chris Finch piece extolling
the virtues of the cricket writer Raymond Robertson-Glasgow, who was the master of
short character sketches, as Chris ably demonstrated with three examples. However,
the tour-de-force of the day was a dramatic rendition of a poem about The Sporting
Life, as portrayed by Denise King. The performance brought the house down and was
worthy of a larger audience. Many thanks to all who contributed and those who couldn’t
make it don’t know what they missed! |
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Feb |
6th
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Tony Diprose
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In the twenty plus years of the DCS we have only had about a dozen
speakers who were not talking about cricket. On Thursday we had only our second rugby
player, a former England player and captain and a British Lions tourist. Tony Diprose
won ten caps playing for England, had the honour of captaining England on one occasion
and also represented the British Lions on a tour of South Africa. Growing up Tony
was puzzled where his height came from, he finished at 6’5’ even though both parents
were well under 6’. His initial sporting interest was in swimming, at which he did
quite well, he was also keen on cricket, playing once for Essex U11s, but a move
to a rugby playing school and boredom with swimming set him on the rugby path. The
early part of his career was in the amateur era and as well as playing rugby he had
a job for a year as a marketing executive with National Car Parking. and he also
went to Loughborough University, playing for the university team. It was about this
time that rugby started to go professional and Tony was the first to sign with Saracens.
Initially the professional bit was rather overstated as the club didn’t really have
a proper programme for them during the day - well there were only two full-time professionals.
A bit of weightlifting at David Lloyds followed by an ice-cream was the fitness session!
Tony stayed at Saracens for 10 years and in 1997 there was a Lions Tour to South
Africa and an England Tour to Argentina in the same summer. He was picked for England
and was in the side for the 1st Test which was won by about 40 points. Of course
England were warmly welcomed to Argentina, particularly when the national anthem
was played! When he returned home from the tour he had only been home a day or so
and he was phoned to ask him to travel out to South Africa as an injury replacement
for Scott Quinnell. So off he went to join the Lions for the last four and a half
weeks of their tour where he played in some of the mid-week matches. Better still
the LIons won the Test Series! By now rugby was fully professional and after 10 years
with Saracens, Tony moved to Harlequins. He found this a culture shock after Saracens,
who had a bit of a reputation of being city boys, but he thoroughly enjoyed his 5
years with them. At 33 he decided to retire, as he felt that mentally he had given
all he could, He had been very fortunate to go through 15 years without a broken
bone or needing an operation. They offered him the chance to stay at the club on
the coaching staff, starting with the academy side and progressing to the first team
within a year. After 13 years at Harlequins Tony felt ready for a change and five
years ago was appointed Director of Sport and Wellbeing at Canford School. As well
as coaching and referring rugby he is also on the Citation panel for professional
rugby, viewing matches to see whether incidents of foul play had been missed on the
field at the time. Tony spoke of the difficulties of being captain of Saracens when
the South African World Cup winning captain, Francois Pienaar arrived as player-coach,
he also gave his opinion on the likes of Martin Johnson, Clive Woodward and Dean
Richards. He used the Bloodgate scandal as an example of how it was important to
teach youngsters the right way to win. He also spoke of his experiences at Canford,
which is now co-educational and what that meant interns of various sports. He played
one international at Old Trafford and in a Test abroad was pelted with fruit. A great
afternoon with a different sport for once. Many thanks to Tony and to Julian for
organising the event and Mike for conducting the afternoon. |
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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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