25-years of playing cricket for Worthing Gents.
As the longest serving member of the Gents - and probably the oldest - it falls upon me to write a piece for the Worthing Gents website about some of my recollections of Gents’ matches, tours, events and incidents.
It seems an unusual way to begin, but no one - including me - can remember when I joined the club! Tim (Stato) Everrett has promised to check through the, now many, scorebooks to establish in exactly which year I first turned out for the W.G.s. It was however in the mid-80s and to begin with I was the first-change bowler relieving either Brian Roberts or Pete Jagger. I could still extract a little ‘swing’ in those days and the wickets started to accumulate. I would take three wickets in a game, occasionally four, but never five. After waiting for over 20 years I was able to achieve this feat three times in 13 months! Perhaps after all of these years the opposition have finally taken pity on me.
I have resolutely declined captaining the Gents (apart from on two occasions which I will come to later) but I did organise three tours - one to the Isle of Wight, one to Leicestershire and the last to Wantage, in Dorset. On the first tour I was lucky enough to score my first 50, but it was on an artificial surface and K.C. would have achieved the same result if he had been playing in those days. The tour was marred when Brian Roberts ruptured his cruciate knee ligaments in that same game and if my memory serves me correctly he never played again. We also lost the score book. It is strange how everyone remembers making more runs and taking more wickets for less runs after such a calamity. As you all know I never do the scoring, so I take no responsibility for the loss.
K.C. did feature in the second tour in 1995. Despite my role as tour organiser, I found myself sharing a room with him, and worse was to follow. The room contained a single bed…. and a fold up ‘Z bed’. Foolishly I agreed to toss a coin for the bed - and lost. I demanded a ‘best of three’ … and still lost! K.C. hastily pocketed a dubious-looking far-Eastern coin and I was left to ‘prepare’ the Z bed. After the odd drink or two it is surprisingly difficult to open up a Z bed – and those of you who have erected a tent for the first time after a few bevies will sympathise. The bed collapsed and the two ends slammed together ‘sandwiching’ me and pinning my arms and legs inside. Like the bed, K.C. also collapsed and instead of assisting me, he howled with laughter slapping his hands on the floor for what seemed an age. I was by now also in hysterics, until a knock came at the door. John Yates’ two children - not yet teenagers - stood in the corridor, rubbed their sleepy eyes and pleaded with us to desist from keeping them awake.
As the door closed, like giggling school children we did our best to “keep the noise down”, but failed miserably and it was only after Michael Yates took to banging on the adjoining wall that K.C. finally fell asleep. His snoring kept me awake all night and, after a less than comfortable night fearing that my bed would swallow me again with each turn, I blamed this for my duck the following day against Gilmorton C.C. A year later, Steve Payne organised the tour to Leicestershire and once again I was out for a duck in the corresponding game, but this time with no excuse!
I believe it was this tour that Steve travelled back home from in Damian Myles’ car. At 70 MPH on the middle lane of the M1 the engine dropped out of the vehicle which sent it into a spin. Both survived to tell the tale, though in an accident which could have resulted in multiple fatalities it is incredible that nobody was injured. Steve who, together with John Yates and Malcolm Cracknell, was our best batsman continued to score numerous 50s and some 100s.
The tour to Wantage, I am told, had much to commend it. I travelled down to Wantage to approve the hotel – recommended by Big Rick Willings. He knew a man, who knew a man who would ‘coordinate’ the tour for us, including two opposition teams. A week before the tour, it transpired that the coordination was not all that we had expected and we had no opposition to play against! Malcolm Cracknell (the captain) and I spent the best part of a Saturday afternoon telephoning every club in the West Country in the hope of finding a team or two with a free fixture. With one eye on the rugby test match versus South Africa, we became more and more despondent and finally we had to admit defeat. We were left with no option but to call off the tour. When I put the situation to the team, one of the founding members piped up, “Our first tour was in Wales. It rained for 48 hours, we didn’t bowl a ball, we all got very drunk and it was the best tour ever.”
So the tour to Wantage went ahead after all, the players packing golf bags instead of cricket bags! Several families accompanied the team, the sun shone throughout and apparently everyone had a fantastic weekend. It even rivalled the Wales tour by all accounts. I cannot vouch for any of this. I do not subscribe to the idea of a cricket tour without any cricket, so instead I drove up to the Cropredy Music Festival where I accompanied Brian Sutton (our umpire) for the weekend. Fairport Convention – now those guys can play.
When Carol Heath passed away in Saint Barnabas Hospice in September 1998, Steve Payne was the team captain and he and ‘Stan’ Oxley organised a charity match to raise money for the hospice. In the summer of 1999 the England Ladies’ captain, Claire Connor, Micky Adams, the manager of Brighton FC for his first spell and a host of other luminaries (known to Stan) graced Worthing Cricket ground for a match against Worthing Gents. I captained the Gents and scored my second 50. Again, perhaps the opposition were being unduly kind.
After the match Stan was able to boast that he had taken the wicket of the England Cricket Captain. I prefer to keep the boast of bowling out Micky Adams to myself, however I can confirm that he was a more than able medium-pace bowler. A little-known fact is that Stan also took the scalp of West Indian cricket captain Ritchie Richardson – but this was in a ‘beach match’ during an England Caribbean tour. Stan was bowling with a tennis ball - probably underarm - but hey, if you capture the wicket of an ex-test player using any type of ball, this has to be some kind of an achievement.
Returning to the charity game, a raffle was held that night and a cheque for more than £700 was presented to the hospice. A similar game was organised the following year. I captained the Gents again, but no 50 this time. On a serious note I would like to record my heartfelt thanks once again to Steve and Stan, and indeed all of the Gents players who took part in those matches for their support.
Here are some other memories in brief: Arthur Giles’ wife worked for a Mentally Handicapped charity in Worthing and when transport was short one weekend the Gents borrowed the minibus with the name of the charity emblazoned on the sides of the vehicle. Unbeknown to the team, the exhaust pipe was faulty and leaking fumes found their way into bus, so that when the players emerged from the bus after the long journey to Bodiam they appeared to be heavily sedated and shuffled towards the dressing room. The opposition took one look at the name on the side of the bus and presumed the wrong team had arrived!
I witnessed Big Rick (Willings) hit 48 off three overs of spin against Barbarians. Inevitably, he was finally caught on the boundary.
I was also present on the day that Rick held on to his one and only catch. Despite his enormous hands, he would put down ‘sitters’ and the ball followed him wherever he hid in the field. Our response on this memorable day was so OTT that we felt obliged to explain to the batsman that our exultations were not aimed at him. When he learned that in all probability the catch should have been dropped, he appeared even more dejected.
Neil tells this story better than I, because he played for the Barbarians against us in the days when Gordon also played for them. Despite being a prodigious talent with both bat and ball, Gordon had the uncanny knack of getting under the skin of everyone he played against … and all of his team mates. On 99 and off the final ball of the innings Gordon faces ‘young KC’. I position myself against the boundary at ‘cow’ expecting the inevitable. Gordon had previously hit the ball all over the ground, and even though he only needs to nudge a single for his ton, I KNOW instinctively where the next ball is heading for. Sure enough, without the need to take a step left or right the ball hurtles towards me. The catch is made and 21 players cheer ecstatically.
Dave Mac is captain on the day we play away against Findon. Inexplicably,12 players turn up, including Steve Payne who doesn’t want to play anyway, because he has just completed a round of golf. Someone else is carrying an injury, so Steve reluctantly agrees to play …. and wins the game for us by scoring a hundred.
John Yates, who used to play for Worthing 1st team, was once stuck on 99 at the non-strikers end against the Barbarians whilst Tim Everett, who appeared oblivious, blocked out the final over of the day for a draw. Stoically, John uttered not a word about it and appeared unconcerned. Perhaps he had notched up countless hundreds for Worthing 1st team in his youth. Ironically, it seemed to be more of an issue for the rest of the team who had not yet witnessed a Gents ‘ton’. Indeed it was rare in those days for the team to score a collective hundred! If John couldn’t achieve this feat, what chance was there for the rest of us?
In a game against Washington (away) Malcolm Cracknell is captain and comes in at number three for the second ball of the innings against a new Aussie very fast bowler - with a suspect action. Malcolm’s eyesight was beginning to fail him and in poor light, none of us would like to have exchanged places. The first delivery to Malcolm soars over the bowlers head for six into the children’s playground. Mercifully it is now past the bedtime of all toddlers. The bowler increases the length of his run up so that he is now close to the playground railing. He paws at the ground, before steaming in and releasing the ball with an even more suspect action, but the result is the same. A fielder retrieves the ball, whilst the skipper puts a consoling arm around the shoulder of the bowler. His response is to walk all the way back to the playground and push himself off from the fence. Same suspect action, same result. The next two deliveries are also boundaries and the skipper once again consoles the bowler who is now ‘rested’, nursing a sore shoulder. After the match Malcolm plays down what he has achieved, claiming he couldn’t see the ball and simply “had a swing at it” - five times!
Many years later, on the same ground, I witnessed the debut of a very tall, young player. He bowled an impressive spell which bamboozled Washington. His batting was brutal. His fielding was an example to the more senior Gents regularly hitting the stumps - whether or not the batsman was ‘home’. On one occasion his throw was intercepted by the batsman’s head, as he scrambled to his crease. Wearing not even a cap, the poor man was pole-axed. Lundy, for he it was, apologised to the batsman, but turning to one of our players was heard to mutter, “It would have hit the stumps, if he hadn’t been in the way!” And he was right, I was directly behind the line of his throw.
There are too many catches taken by Lloyd Crathern to list here. Catches win matches and Lloydy has ‘turned’ several games in our favour by making near-impossible catches look effortless. Yes, he is young but even when I was his age I couldn’t have hoped to take a catch as good as this one: playing against Barns Green in 2008 their top batsman is in full flow hitting Glenn Harris to the boundary with monotonous regularity. Fielding down the hill from the square, ‘Lloydy’ can only watch until the batsman strikes a ferocious ball in his direction. In the blink of an eye the rest of us way up the odds, and it is 80-20 in the batsman’s favour. Maybe these odds are unfair to the batsman. The trajectory of the ball is low to begin with and it is only because of the sloping pitch that Lloyd has any chance of taking the catch at all. I can only see him from the knees upwards, so when Lloyd dives forward towards the ball, for a moment I lose sight of him altogether. A split-second later he stands with the ball held aloft. Glenn takes another wicket and carries on to bag his first five-wicket haul. More importantly we win the game.
Young players from Worthing’s 3rd and 4th teams now regularly make up half of the team we put out on a Sunday. Without them we would have long since gone the way of some of the teams we once played against. We are all very grateful for the way they respectfully put up with some of the woeful mis-fielding from the senior Gents.
In this vein it has been a pleasure to watch Jamie Oxley and KC junior start out as youngsters, and then in later years develop into top order batsmen, before moving on to play for Worthing 1st team. And what of Nick Oxley? What does the future hold for him. Alas, my own two boys were into basketball and swimming and neither played a single game for the Gents.
Now for some trivia: Back in 1995 we played against the likes of Worthing Ladies (and no we didn’t lose to them), Coastways (who from memory were born out of Worthing Railway), Falling Leaves and New Life Wanderers (who I think became Arun Wanderers). We paid a £10 annual subscription and a match fee of £4. Obviously Worthing Gents C.C. is immune to inflation. Finally, we held social events at each other’s houses (B.B.Q.s/parties), Quiz Nights, Golf Competitions and Stan even organised a Night At The Dogs on one or two occasions.
Finally, a big thank you to LC (& HELEN!) for setting up the Worthing Gents website. It takes little time to read any of it's well crafted content, but it is thankless task writing it up. Long may it continue.
Gerald Heath, August 2009
As the longest serving member of the Gents - and probably the oldest - it falls upon me to write a piece for the Worthing Gents website about some of my recollections of Gents’ matches, tours, events and incidents.
It seems an unusual way to begin, but no one - including me - can remember when I joined the club! Tim (Stato) Everrett has promised to check through the, now many, scorebooks to establish in exactly which year I first turned out for the W.G.s. It was however in the mid-80s and to begin with I was the first-change bowler relieving either Brian Roberts or Pete Jagger. I could still extract a little ‘swing’ in those days and the wickets started to accumulate. I would take three wickets in a game, occasionally four, but never five. After waiting for over 20 years I was able to achieve this feat three times in 13 months! Perhaps after all of these years the opposition have finally taken pity on me.
I have resolutely declined captaining the Gents (apart from on two occasions which I will come to later) but I did organise three tours - one to the Isle of Wight, one to Leicestershire and the last to Wantage, in Dorset. On the first tour I was lucky enough to score my first 50, but it was on an artificial surface and K.C. would have achieved the same result if he had been playing in those days. The tour was marred when Brian Roberts ruptured his cruciate knee ligaments in that same game and if my memory serves me correctly he never played again. We also lost the score book. It is strange how everyone remembers making more runs and taking more wickets for less runs after such a calamity. As you all know I never do the scoring, so I take no responsibility for the loss.
K.C. did feature in the second tour in 1995. Despite my role as tour organiser, I found myself sharing a room with him, and worse was to follow. The room contained a single bed…. and a fold up ‘Z bed’. Foolishly I agreed to toss a coin for the bed - and lost. I demanded a ‘best of three’ … and still lost! K.C. hastily pocketed a dubious-looking far-Eastern coin and I was left to ‘prepare’ the Z bed. After the odd drink or two it is surprisingly difficult to open up a Z bed – and those of you who have erected a tent for the first time after a few bevies will sympathise. The bed collapsed and the two ends slammed together ‘sandwiching’ me and pinning my arms and legs inside. Like the bed, K.C. also collapsed and instead of assisting me, he howled with laughter slapping his hands on the floor for what seemed an age. I was by now also in hysterics, until a knock came at the door. John Yates’ two children - not yet teenagers - stood in the corridor, rubbed their sleepy eyes and pleaded with us to desist from keeping them awake.
As the door closed, like giggling school children we did our best to “keep the noise down”, but failed miserably and it was only after Michael Yates took to banging on the adjoining wall that K.C. finally fell asleep. His snoring kept me awake all night and, after a less than comfortable night fearing that my bed would swallow me again with each turn, I blamed this for my duck the following day against Gilmorton C.C. A year later, Steve Payne organised the tour to Leicestershire and once again I was out for a duck in the corresponding game, but this time with no excuse!
I believe it was this tour that Steve travelled back home from in Damian Myles’ car. At 70 MPH on the middle lane of the M1 the engine dropped out of the vehicle which sent it into a spin. Both survived to tell the tale, though in an accident which could have resulted in multiple fatalities it is incredible that nobody was injured. Steve who, together with John Yates and Malcolm Cracknell, was our best batsman continued to score numerous 50s and some 100s.
The tour to Wantage, I am told, had much to commend it. I travelled down to Wantage to approve the hotel – recommended by Big Rick Willings. He knew a man, who knew a man who would ‘coordinate’ the tour for us, including two opposition teams. A week before the tour, it transpired that the coordination was not all that we had expected and we had no opposition to play against! Malcolm Cracknell (the captain) and I spent the best part of a Saturday afternoon telephoning every club in the West Country in the hope of finding a team or two with a free fixture. With one eye on the rugby test match versus South Africa, we became more and more despondent and finally we had to admit defeat. We were left with no option but to call off the tour. When I put the situation to the team, one of the founding members piped up, “Our first tour was in Wales. It rained for 48 hours, we didn’t bowl a ball, we all got very drunk and it was the best tour ever.”
So the tour to Wantage went ahead after all, the players packing golf bags instead of cricket bags! Several families accompanied the team, the sun shone throughout and apparently everyone had a fantastic weekend. It even rivalled the Wales tour by all accounts. I cannot vouch for any of this. I do not subscribe to the idea of a cricket tour without any cricket, so instead I drove up to the Cropredy Music Festival where I accompanied Brian Sutton (our umpire) for the weekend. Fairport Convention – now those guys can play.
When Carol Heath passed away in Saint Barnabas Hospice in September 1998, Steve Payne was the team captain and he and ‘Stan’ Oxley organised a charity match to raise money for the hospice. In the summer of 1999 the England Ladies’ captain, Claire Connor, Micky Adams, the manager of Brighton FC for his first spell and a host of other luminaries (known to Stan) graced Worthing Cricket ground for a match against Worthing Gents. I captained the Gents and scored my second 50. Again, perhaps the opposition were being unduly kind.
After the match Stan was able to boast that he had taken the wicket of the England Cricket Captain. I prefer to keep the boast of bowling out Micky Adams to myself, however I can confirm that he was a more than able medium-pace bowler. A little-known fact is that Stan also took the scalp of West Indian cricket captain Ritchie Richardson – but this was in a ‘beach match’ during an England Caribbean tour. Stan was bowling with a tennis ball - probably underarm - but hey, if you capture the wicket of an ex-test player using any type of ball, this has to be some kind of an achievement.
Returning to the charity game, a raffle was held that night and a cheque for more than £700 was presented to the hospice. A similar game was organised the following year. I captained the Gents again, but no 50 this time. On a serious note I would like to record my heartfelt thanks once again to Steve and Stan, and indeed all of the Gents players who took part in those matches for their support.
Here are some other memories in brief: Arthur Giles’ wife worked for a Mentally Handicapped charity in Worthing and when transport was short one weekend the Gents borrowed the minibus with the name of the charity emblazoned on the sides of the vehicle. Unbeknown to the team, the exhaust pipe was faulty and leaking fumes found their way into bus, so that when the players emerged from the bus after the long journey to Bodiam they appeared to be heavily sedated and shuffled towards the dressing room. The opposition took one look at the name on the side of the bus and presumed the wrong team had arrived!
I witnessed Big Rick (Willings) hit 48 off three overs of spin against Barbarians. Inevitably, he was finally caught on the boundary.
I was also present on the day that Rick held on to his one and only catch. Despite his enormous hands, he would put down ‘sitters’ and the ball followed him wherever he hid in the field. Our response on this memorable day was so OTT that we felt obliged to explain to the batsman that our exultations were not aimed at him. When he learned that in all probability the catch should have been dropped, he appeared even more dejected.
Neil tells this story better than I, because he played for the Barbarians against us in the days when Gordon also played for them. Despite being a prodigious talent with both bat and ball, Gordon had the uncanny knack of getting under the skin of everyone he played against … and all of his team mates. On 99 and off the final ball of the innings Gordon faces ‘young KC’. I position myself against the boundary at ‘cow’ expecting the inevitable. Gordon had previously hit the ball all over the ground, and even though he only needs to nudge a single for his ton, I KNOW instinctively where the next ball is heading for. Sure enough, without the need to take a step left or right the ball hurtles towards me. The catch is made and 21 players cheer ecstatically.
Dave Mac is captain on the day we play away against Findon. Inexplicably,12 players turn up, including Steve Payne who doesn’t want to play anyway, because he has just completed a round of golf. Someone else is carrying an injury, so Steve reluctantly agrees to play …. and wins the game for us by scoring a hundred.
John Yates, who used to play for Worthing 1st team, was once stuck on 99 at the non-strikers end against the Barbarians whilst Tim Everett, who appeared oblivious, blocked out the final over of the day for a draw. Stoically, John uttered not a word about it and appeared unconcerned. Perhaps he had notched up countless hundreds for Worthing 1st team in his youth. Ironically, it seemed to be more of an issue for the rest of the team who had not yet witnessed a Gents ‘ton’. Indeed it was rare in those days for the team to score a collective hundred! If John couldn’t achieve this feat, what chance was there for the rest of us?
In a game against Washington (away) Malcolm Cracknell is captain and comes in at number three for the second ball of the innings against a new Aussie very fast bowler - with a suspect action. Malcolm’s eyesight was beginning to fail him and in poor light, none of us would like to have exchanged places. The first delivery to Malcolm soars over the bowlers head for six into the children’s playground. Mercifully it is now past the bedtime of all toddlers. The bowler increases the length of his run up so that he is now close to the playground railing. He paws at the ground, before steaming in and releasing the ball with an even more suspect action, but the result is the same. A fielder retrieves the ball, whilst the skipper puts a consoling arm around the shoulder of the bowler. His response is to walk all the way back to the playground and push himself off from the fence. Same suspect action, same result. The next two deliveries are also boundaries and the skipper once again consoles the bowler who is now ‘rested’, nursing a sore shoulder. After the match Malcolm plays down what he has achieved, claiming he couldn’t see the ball and simply “had a swing at it” - five times!
Many years later, on the same ground, I witnessed the debut of a very tall, young player. He bowled an impressive spell which bamboozled Washington. His batting was brutal. His fielding was an example to the more senior Gents regularly hitting the stumps - whether or not the batsman was ‘home’. On one occasion his throw was intercepted by the batsman’s head, as he scrambled to his crease. Wearing not even a cap, the poor man was pole-axed. Lundy, for he it was, apologised to the batsman, but turning to one of our players was heard to mutter, “It would have hit the stumps, if he hadn’t been in the way!” And he was right, I was directly behind the line of his throw.
There are too many catches taken by Lloyd Crathern to list here. Catches win matches and Lloydy has ‘turned’ several games in our favour by making near-impossible catches look effortless. Yes, he is young but even when I was his age I couldn’t have hoped to take a catch as good as this one: playing against Barns Green in 2008 their top batsman is in full flow hitting Glenn Harris to the boundary with monotonous regularity. Fielding down the hill from the square, ‘Lloydy’ can only watch until the batsman strikes a ferocious ball in his direction. In the blink of an eye the rest of us way up the odds, and it is 80-20 in the batsman’s favour. Maybe these odds are unfair to the batsman. The trajectory of the ball is low to begin with and it is only because of the sloping pitch that Lloyd has any chance of taking the catch at all. I can only see him from the knees upwards, so when Lloyd dives forward towards the ball, for a moment I lose sight of him altogether. A split-second later he stands with the ball held aloft. Glenn takes another wicket and carries on to bag his first five-wicket haul. More importantly we win the game.
Young players from Worthing’s 3rd and 4th teams now regularly make up half of the team we put out on a Sunday. Without them we would have long since gone the way of some of the teams we once played against. We are all very grateful for the way they respectfully put up with some of the woeful mis-fielding from the senior Gents.
In this vein it has been a pleasure to watch Jamie Oxley and KC junior start out as youngsters, and then in later years develop into top order batsmen, before moving on to play for Worthing 1st team. And what of Nick Oxley? What does the future hold for him. Alas, my own two boys were into basketball and swimming and neither played a single game for the Gents.
Now for some trivia: Back in 1995 we played against the likes of Worthing Ladies (and no we didn’t lose to them), Coastways (who from memory were born out of Worthing Railway), Falling Leaves and New Life Wanderers (who I think became Arun Wanderers). We paid a £10 annual subscription and a match fee of £4. Obviously Worthing Gents C.C. is immune to inflation. Finally, we held social events at each other’s houses (B.B.Q.s/parties), Quiz Nights, Golf Competitions and Stan even organised a Night At The Dogs on one or two occasions.
Finally, a big thank you to LC (& HELEN!) for setting up the Worthing Gents website. It takes little time to read any of it's well crafted content, but it is thankless task writing it up. Long may it continue.
Gerald Heath, August 2009