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OUNDLE: THE GENTLE HOTBED
‘Cricket in an English market town’
By Andrew Radd
CHAPTER ONE
‘The pots, wherein these plants are set, may be plunged into a
gentle Hot-bed in order to promote their taking root…and this
will promote its flowering.’
(The Gardener’s Dictionary - 1732)
‘The town of Oundle – in the Anglo-Saxon, Undela – has behind it
a very long history circling around the Parish Church, but bringing
also before the imagination kings, queens, archbishops and high
officers of State, as well as the business man and worker, who
have all made their contribution.’
(‘Oundle’s story; a history of town and school’ by W. Smalley Law)
1826. Beethoven was still alive, just. Landmark legislation
authorising construction of a ‘railway’ between Liverpool and
Manchester passed through Parliament. John Wisden, the ‘Little
Wonder’ and founder of the Cricketers’ Almanack, was born in
Brighton while Hambledon’s John Small, first acknowledged
master of the straight bat, died in his native Hampshire, and a
new pavilion at Lord’s (not the current one) was opened following
a fire the previous year which destroyed all MCC’s original records
and trophies. Two of the principal architects of American
independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, departed this
life within five hours of each other, appropriately enough on July
4 - half-a-century to the day since they signed the latter’s
momentous map-changing declaration in Philadelphia. Here,
Prime Minister Lord Liverpool’s Tories trounced the Whigs in a
general election, and the first Cowes Regatta was held off the Isle
of Wight.
Inland, what passed for a crime wave in Oundle that summer saw
‘a fine sheep’ – belonging to Mr Deacon of Benefield – stolen and
slaughtered one Saturday night, while 20 brace of pike were
pinched from Mr William Walcot’s fish pond in the town. A
reminder, perhaps, that there were plenty of hungry people
around the countryside in the England of gluttonous King George
IV.
A few thirsty ones too. ‘Three notorious characters…all old
offenders’ were hauled up before the Reverend Charles Euseby
Isham, vicar of Oundle for 38 years, on charges of drunkenness
and disturbing the peace of the town. They were let off with a
‘suitable admonition’ – two of them having spent much of the day
in the stocks – but warned that next time they would not escape
so lightly. Talking of which, servant Elizabeth Southwell was
committed to Oundle’s house of correction for seven days as
punishment for ‘unlawfully absenting herself from her master’s
service.’ Clearly a case of pour encourager les autres.
Health and safety was also an issue. A man found himself 20
shillings (plus costs) worse off as a result of his conviction under
the Oundle Improvement Act for ‘riding upon the foot pavement.’
The Act, passed the previous year, concerned itself with ‘lighting,
watching, paving, cleansing and otherwise improving’ the town; a
body of commissioners was appointed and charged with the task
of finding ‘a sufficient number of fit and able-bodied men to
patrol, watch and guard the streets, and provide watch-boxes for
them’ – while the decision was taken to illuminate said streets
with ‘oil and cotton.’ Functional if not fragrant. With civic pride
so much in evidence – and notwithstanding an excellent wheat
and barley harvest – the townsfolk were clearly in no mood to be
taken for a ride by the undeserving poor; a woman with two
children attempted to gull the people of Oundle and Titchmarsh
by throwing herself on the ground and pretending to be about to
give birth, ‘imposing upon the credulity of several well-disposed
persons’ to earn a few bob before making herself scarce –
‘doubtless to practise her deceptions in some new place.’
But it wasn’t all crime, punishment, benefit claimants (albeit in
this case with a large dose of private enterprise) and street
lighting – all staples of the local media in the 21st century. The
town’s new market house was starting to take shape, built from
stone (‘of very excellent quality’) recycled when the church of All
Saints in Barnwell was pulled down. A short walk away stood the
Dolphin Inn on North Street – run at the time by one William Ellis,
bought by the School in 1867 and now known as the ‘Old Dryden’
building which, amongst other things, used to house the studios
of OSCAR radio. And it’s there the blue plaque should probably
go; ‘Oundle Town Cricket Club was born (or at least baptised)
here.’
The Huntingdon, Northampton, Bedford and Cambridge Weekly
Journal was sufficiently enthused by this piece of sporting
intelligence to include a lengthy paragraph (above an account of
an escaped prisoner returning to the treadmill at Northampton
Gaol) in July 1826:
‘The gentlemen and tradesmen of this town and neighbourhood
have lately established a Cricket Club, and if we may judge from
the public spirit of the projectors, little doubt can be entertained
of it soon attaining great celebrity. The members exercise
regularly, and a stimulus is given to their exertions by playing for
suitable refreshment. The anxiety of each gentleman to become
an adept in this noble game and to escape “scot free” is kept alive
by this plan, and the social hour enlivened by the well-earned
bowl. Yesterday a well-contested match was played for “a rump
and a dozen” in which the rising merits of every player was
observed with much pleasure by the spectators. After the sports
of the day, the party partook of an elegant entertainment at the
Dolphin Inn; the “rosy wine” was briskly circulated, “auld
acquaintances were brought to mind”, new friendships formed,
and each aspirant departed in the evening well pleased with the
harmony and goodwill which characterised their convivial
meeting.’
The idea of ‘gentlemen and tradesmen’ playing for comestibles –
‘a rump and a dozen’ – made good sense, presumably. A decent
knock and trundle, plenty of ‘rosy wine’ and then a slap-up
breakfast of steak and eggs next morning; who could ask for
anything more? They might even have considered boiling up
some of the ‘very fine mangel wurzel roots, weighing from 18lbs
to 21lbs each’ grown by Mr Webster from Polebrook and
exhibited at that year’s Oundle Fair.
Cricket itself, though, was becoming more ‘scientific’ by 1826,
with the acrimonious debate continuing among England’s leading
administrators, patrons and practitioners about what should
constitute a legal bowling action. Reformers wanted the hand to
be allowed level with or even above the elbow, while the old
guard clung jealously to the old ‘pure’ underarm method. At
length, it was agreed in 1835 that a ball ‘not thrown or jerked in
which the hand or arm did not go above the shoulder’ – round-
arm, in other words – would be acceptable. The march of science,
another indication of the reforming spirit that did away with the
rotten boroughs, or a compromise to accommodate girls in
hooped skirts? Take your pick. Whether this revolution reached
the new Oundle club sooner or later isn’t clear, but if that first
newspaper report is any guide its members were perhaps more
immediately concerned with the social rather than the technical
aspects of the game.
Elsewhere in the county, matches were played between ‘Married’
and ‘Single’ on Northampton’s Racecourse that summer; Lord
Sondes fielded a side at Rockingham against Uppingham Union;
and an almighty row erupted between the players of Naseby and
Clipston which prompted a feisty correspondence in the local
press. Naseby were 32-8 in reply to Clipston’s 42 all out when
the former ‘considered themselves to be unhandsomely treated’
and left the field, accusing the opposition of ungentlemanly
behaviour and challenging them to another match, not for steak
and eggs but for the sum of a hundred sovereigns. Clipston’s
finest reportedly tore the challenge into pieces and ‘threw it into
the air as a token of contempt.’ Importantly for this story, the
game was also flourishing in and around Peterborough; the
cricket historian Jim Coldham described it as ‘perhaps the most
important cricketing centre in the County’ around that time. As
far back as 1801 there is a record of the Peterborough club being
dismissed for 7 at Wisbech, while in 1818 they played home-and-
away against Stamford. Arthur Annesley of Ufford was a keen
patron of the game and ran his own side - in 1809 he and the
Earl of Winchelsea led a team of ‘gentleman from Oakham and the
neighbourhood’ in a match against ‘a party of friends’ at
Stamford, ‘won by the Rutland men by one inning (sic).’
But who were Oundle’s worthy founders, doing (so far as we can
tell) rather friendlier battle on those rough, sheep-cropped
pitches? Their names are not recorded in the Journal’s account,
but Pigot’s Directory of Northamptonshire – published just a few
years later – gives a flavour of how Oundle’s ‘tradesmen’ earned a
living; bakers and flour dealers, blacksmiths, (inevitably) boot and
shoe makers, braziers and tin-men, chymists (sic) and druggists,
grocers and tea dealers, maltsters, perfumers and hair dressers
(four listed in the town), surgeons (five of them), straw hat
makers, tallow chandlers, wheelwrights and a solitary chair turner
in Mill Lane. No ‘sports outfitters’ there, but just a short ride
away in Stamford’s High Street a Mr Boyall was advertising in
1826 ‘cricket bats and balls of most approved makes’ – along
with brushes, combs (‘tortoise-shell and bone’) and fishing
tackle. For adventurous types, the ‘Old Oundle’ coach departed
from the Swan Inn to London three times a week, via Thrapston,
Kimbolton, St Neots and Stevenage, and the parish of Oundle
(according to ‘the last returns to parliament’ and despite the
ravages of typhus fever that summer which left ‘three or four
persons lying ill of the disorder in one house at the same time’)
could boast precisely 2,279 inhabitants. A few of them, at least,
keen cricketers.
In 1826 Stephen Coales would have been pushing 40. According
to Arthur Howitt, a local saddle maker, in his quirky little book
‘Oundle Reminiscences’ published in the 1950s, this Oundle
worthy died in October 1889 aged ‘over 102 years’ although the
man himself had claimed to be 105. Howitt reports Mr Coales
‘would climb a ladder and trim the grape vine’ at Laxton’s
Hospital even after reaching three-figures and ‘was very fond of a
pint…occasionally he would have a glass of gin’ but didn’t smoke.
By the end of his life he possessed ‘but one tooth, of which he
was rather proud.’ He had been a gardener and helped his father
plant many trees on the Ashton estate, of which more anon. A
fanciful thought, maybe – but might he have been one of those
present at that first recorded gathering of OTCC?
And what of the venue for it? Arthur Marshall – both a pupil and a
Master at Oundle School as well as a writer, broadcaster and,
eventually and deservedly, National Treasure – knew Dryden
House as a new boy in the 1920s and recalled it in his hugely-
entertaining autobiography ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’:
‘(It) had started life as a coaching inn on a modest scale. Its
double doors opened on to a cobbled, sunless roadway between
two lofty wedges of rooms, and led to stables and a small,
gravelly yard. Little, if anything, had changed from the days when
the coaches came rumbling in…the tiny, airless and almost
lightless changing room in which we prepared ourselves for
games, and de-briefed ourselves after games, made the black
hole of Calcutta seem by comparison like the Dorchester. One
wag, providing for the yearly House Magazine an article on the
house’s origins, wrote ‘the old inn accommodation has now been
tastefully converted into spacious suites of rooms for boys.’ This
was considered satirical and was ill received by authority.’
No mention, satirical or otherwise, of its central role in the town’s
cricketing history.
On August 27 1827 Oundle (in the role of halfway house) hosted
a big match between Peterborough and Thrapston. ‘Big’ in terms
of betting interest, at any rate. It’s worth noting that even half-a-
century later in the 1870s, James Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual
included detailed instructions for gamblers in the Laws of Cricket:
‘No bet upon any match is payable unless played out or given
up…if the bet be made on both innings (and) any one party beat
the other in one innings, the runs of the first innings shall
determine it,’ and so on. In this case, ‘a bystander’ bet 40-to-1
against Peterborough’s gentlemen, who emerged victorious by
nine wickets, and the punter’s actions ‘excited great interest’ in
the result. No Anti-Corruption Commissioner there, of course,
but the whole business of match-fixing is nothing new. A few
years before OTCC came along, the great batsman William
Lambert was ‘warned off the Turf’ at Lord’s (according to ‘Plum’
Warner in his history of Headquarters) for allegedly ‘selling’ a
match by not trying his best. Nor was that an isolated incident,
prompting James Pycroft in ‘The Cricket Field’ (1851) to devote
several pages to ‘A Dark Chapter’ in the history of the game.
The Oundle club, meanwhile, was soon strong enough to
challenge decent local opposition – losing only narrowly to ‘the
Gents of the neighbourhood’ by ten runs (28 and 64 versus 65
and 37) in August 1836 in a ‘smartly contested’ fixture. They
may even have secured the services of an occasional ‘ringer.’ The
first OTCC match for which a full scorecard survives was against
the village of Bourn, although the venue was ‘the Race-course
near Stamford,’ on Monday July 24 1837, just a month into the
long reign of Queen Victoria:
OUNDLE BOURN
Cobb – c by Phipps 4 Phipps – b by Wells 2
Hunt – run out 29 William – b by ditto 37
Wells – c by Eley 0 Collingwood – b by
Fentiman 55
Lomas – b by ditto 0 Barratt – c by Hunt 13
Wood – b by ditto 1 Stringfeller – b by
Fentiman 9
Smith – b by Phipps 6 Johnston – st by Lomas 19
Webster – c by ditto 4 Roberts – st by ditto 6
Croston – b by ditto 5 Daniel – c by Smith 16
Fentiman – b by ditto 0 Eley – st by Lomas 10
Newton – not out 25 Bellingham – b by Lomas
4
Knight – c by Roberts 1 Pearson – not out 0
Byes 8 Byes 13
Wide balls 3 Wide balls 2
No balls 5 No balls 3
Total: 91 Total: 190
Not exactly a print-out from Total Cricket Scorer, but it gives us
the gist. ‘Some good batting was exhibited on the part of
Oundle,’ noted the local correspondent, ‘particularly by Messrs
Hunt (who we understand to be a Sussex player) and Newton
junior. At the end of the first innings the Oundle gentlemen
scored 91 – not a bad innings.’ But as the scorecard shows it was
nothing like enough against the might of Bourn’s William and
Collingwood, and it was agreed that for the return fixture Oundle
should receive ‘two given men as bowlers.’ Regardless of the
result, the social niceties were not ignored. Around 50 gents sat
down to an ‘excellent cold collation’ in the grandstand, ‘and the
health of the noble (2nd) Marquis of Exeter and other toasts were
drunk.’ All very appropriate given that the local aristo – a future
Lord Lieutenant of Northamptonshire – had been a keen cricketer
in his youth and even played a first-class match at the ‘new’
(current) Lord’s ground in 1817.
And what of Mr Hunt, the possible Sussex player? At this distance
in time his full identity is not known. Perhaps it was a cricketing
nom-de-guerre. But against Bourn he should have run a bit
faster.
Even before the opening of Oundle’s railway station in June 1845,
linking the town with Northampton and Wellingborough in one
direction and Peterborough in the other, local cricketers seem to
have adopted ‘have bat, will travel’ as an early motto. Useful
trade, perhaps, for Jinks and Son, who operated the wagons of
their carriers business from West Street. After hosting Rothwell in
1838 – winning by 26 runs on first innings, 74 to 48, and the
opposition subsequently ‘giving up the game’ – the club tackled
home-and-away fixtures against Harborough the following
summer. The Northampton Mercury (chronicle of county news
since 1720) reckoned the match in Leicestershire was ‘well-
contested’ with both sides ‘(keeping) up the game with great
spirit throughout the day, excepting only a few intervals for
refreshments.’ The home side triumphed then by seven wickets –
Oundle 90 and 47, Harborough 83 and 56 for three – although
‘the utmost good humour and hilarity prevailed.’
That cheery bonhomie didn’t last, though. The return match a
couple of weeks later was, according to the Lincolnshire
Chronicle, ‘by no means a pleasant game, certain members of the
Harborough club not exhibiting that urbanity which should be
shown by a cricketer on the field.’ The row seems to have
revolved around a player named Woodward (possibly Alfred from
Stamford, who in later years popped up in the colours of
Peterborough and Melton Mowbray as well as his home town) and
specifically which team he should turn out for. Harborough
refused to take the field unless Woodward was ‘given’ by Oundle.
This duly happened, but much good did it do them as
Harborough went down by nine runs – 81 to 72.
An interesting footnote. The Oundle club was able to host the
fixture ‘through the kindness of Mr Newton of Elmington (a
hamlet a couple of miles outside the town on the Peterborough
road), in a close of his which he had prepared in consequence of
the usual place of play being rendered unfit by the late floods.’
So where was ‘the usual place’? Hard evidence is scarce, although
the mention of flooding maybe lends credence to local lore that it
was what became known as the ‘Lower Cricket Ground’ in South
Road, near the river. The School certainly granted use of that
field to local teams in the 1870s and 1880s, when it was also
used for miscellaneous events like flower and vegetable shows
and, as in July 1883, the ‘Anniversary of the Loyal Providence
Lodge of Oddfellows’ who fielded 22 against the OTCC XI in a
special cricket match - and then had the temerity to claim victory
when time was called ‘although the club only required two runs to
win.’ The assembled company also played quoits and enjoyed the
music of the National School’s drum and fife band before
adjourning to The Talbot for the evening bash.
By the late-1840s Oundle’s cricketers were matching themselves
against the very best in the county. The Northampton Town club
– founded in 1820 and with its home on the Racecourse, where
the great Alfred Mynn had ‘guested’ for the North of England
against the South in 1844 – was already strong and becoming
stronger by the time Oundle met it in a double-header in the
late-summer of 1849. The matches between Northampton’s
‘Town’ and ‘County’ members helped lay the foundations for a
properly-organised Northamptonshire County Cricket Club which
duly arrived (with Oundle involvement, of course) three decades
later. For now, Northampton won the away fixture comfortably –
OTCC’s cause not helped by an unhealthy tally of byes and wides,
numbering 27 in a total of 119 all out – but had the tables turned
on them back at their own headquarters, with ‘Garrett’
(conceivably William Garrat, a Shropshire-born former
Nottinghamshire player who turned out around this time for
Peterborough and Wisbech in ‘big’ matches against the All
England Eleven and was once dismissed when his top hat fell on
the stumps) hitting an unbeaten 59, which was eight more runs
than the home side - including their distinguished captain and
secretary, William Griffiths Hollis - managed between them in
their first innings. Woodward, the cause of the great Harborough
rumpus, claimed six wickets. Northampton fared better at the
second attempt but the match wasn’t ‘played out’ to a finish.
That same season saw Weekley (not bracketed with neighbouring
Warkton in those days) skittled for 27 and 24 in ‘very fine’
weather at Boughton Park – still one of the loveliest venues in
Northamptonshire cricket – with Oundle’s Mr Fentiman bagging
14 wickets in the match. The visitors’ 85 all out was enough to
secure victory by an innings and 34 runs. The 1849 fixture list
also featured a couple of games against Walcot Park, based in the
grounds of the hall near Barnack owned by the Nevile family.
Barnack CC remain regular opponents in the Rutland League, and
the two clubs contested the John Wilcox Cup final in September
2014. The first of those 1849 meetings at Oundle even merited a
few lines in a London newspaper, ‘The Era,’ on the same page as
reports of Kent and Surrey versus England – Mynn, Fuller Pilch
(one of whose descendants will feature in this story many years
hence), John Wisden et al. ‘There was a large company from the
neighbouring villages and from Stamford who had come to
witness the game, which was carried on with great spirit until
half-past-eight o’clock, when the Walcot Park side had to get 31
notches to win with seven wickets to go down.’ The opposition
also held the upper hand on their own field, although once again
bad light intervened in the fourth innings. Oundle entered the
lists too – albeit unsuccessfully - against the ‘Peterborough
Crown’ club in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. Once
again, the gamblers were much to the fore; it had been agreed
that play ‘should be confined to one day, and if unable to finish
the game the first innings was to be decisive, not only of victory
but of all bets pending the result,’ as the Cambridge Chronicle
and Journal explained helpfully. Oundle’s 90 all out owed much
to ‘Collingwood Esquire’ who made 47 before departing hit-
wicket.
This was also the era of Nicholas Wanostrocht, aka Felix, one of
the first to recommend the use by batsmen of padding (including
‘longitudinal socks’ featuring the new vulcanised rubber and worn
under the trousers) to combat ‘the modern system of throwing.’
There were also ‘sprung’ bats now, to reduce – although never
entirely eliminate – the jarring effects of toe-ending a yorker.
Whether the gallant yeomen of the Oundle club went in for these
new-fangled inventions is not clear. No milksops, they – nor
what Derek Birley in his masterly ‘A Social History of English
Cricket’ describes memorably as ‘gaily coloured, beribboned
good-time Charlies’ who set up clubs, many short-lived, as an
amateur response to the travelling bands of professionals
roaming the kingdom to take on all-comers.
Admittedly, cricket didn’t have the sporting stage all to itself in
this corner of Northamptonshire. Oundle races were also a major
attraction, as a report from the summer of 1842 confirms: ‘The
town began to fill with visitors at an early hour, and our merry
church bells gave full assurance of the spirit of the town to
support them. Twelve o’clock being the time appointed for
starting, the stewards left the Dolphin Inn for the race ground,
preceded by the Oundle band, when a very animated scene
presented itself…’ Nevertheless, the world – or at least the local
cricket scene – appeared to be Oundle Town CC’s oyster in the
middle of the 19th century. Especially with such a notable nursery
just up the lane.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Long ere the cruel marauders of many a Danish band
Rowed up the broad Nene valley, and plundered the fertile land,
Here in our town of Oundle, high over the river-side,
Wilfrid of York once rested, and founded a school, and died.’
(Oundle School song by B.J. Benson, 1864)
In 2005 Oundle School celebrated the 150th anniversary of cricket
there – specifically of the first match of which an account
survives, according to W.G. Walker in his weighty but invaluable
‘A History of the Oundle Schools’ published in 1956. The report
appeared in the Oundle Gazette and Northamptonshire Advertiser
of August 30, 1855:
‘A match was played last Tuesday, between the Uppingham and
Oundle Schools. We must say on behalf of the latter that of the
eleven players they had last year, only three played on this
occasion, viz: Bowker, Welch and Richardson. Notwithstanding
this serious disadvantage, they accepted the challenge of the
Uppingham boys and far exceeded the expectation of their
friends. Bowker played remarkably well: Welch, Richardson,
Stansbury, Guille and Davidson distinguished themselves.
Uppingham however gained the day, with eight wickets to go
down. We trust next year the Oundle boys will not be so terribly
overmatched, when doubtless we shall have the pleasure of
reporting a very different result.’
Only the worst kind of cynic would point out that the School
advertised in this short-lived publication – ‘Terms £2 per annum
including French, Entrance Fee £1, no extras, but books and
stationery’ - so the kindly spin on a heavy defeat (Oundle 33 and
77, Uppingham 108 and 3 for two) may not be too much of a
surprise. Equally unsurprising is the fact that cricket had actually
been played at the School long before this particular drubbing.
As far back as May 1830 a couple of local newspapers related
details of ‘a match at the manly game…between eleven of the
young gentlemen of the Kings Cliffe academy, and a like number
of the Reverend Mr Shillibeer’s academy at Oundle (John
Shillibeer, also a talented artist, was Headmaster between 1829
and 1841), on Morehay Lawn.’ It sounds like quite an occasion –
‘the declivity…was more than usually gay’ with praise for the
‘gentlemanlike feeling’ shown by both sides – but this beautiful
rural spot failed to inspire the Oundle boys who lost to Kings
Cliffe, triggering wild celebrations: ‘The village bells welcomed
them home and flags were raised in honour of the feat.’ For their
sterling efforts the village boys received a cricket ball, while the
Oundelians had to console themselves with the fact that they
were ‘on a strange ground, and had other barriers to their
success.’ A tantalisingly ambiguous comment sadly not enlarged
upon.
The game was already considered a selling point, though; an
advert from the following year, October 1831, assured the public
that Oundle’s ‘Cricket and Play Grounds’ were ‘large and airy’
while the pupils were treated with ‘kindness and liberality.’ And
after prize-giving at the School in May 1846 (during which the
senior pupil, W.T. Wilkinson, made a speech in honour of
Shillibeer’s successor as Headmaster, the Reverend David Pooley,
that would have won any award for sheer barefaced crawling
hands-down – ‘my fellow pupils concur most heartily in
expressing the same gratitude and affection towards you’) it was
reported that ‘the party adjourned to the cricket ground, and the
gentlemen and pupils had an excellent game which lasted until 4
o’clock.’ Five years later, Oundle enjoyed a comfortable win in a
two-innings match against the Albion schools.
By that time, the School had already produced its first cricketer to
shine on the national stage. John Morley Lee became a pupil at
Oundle in 1840, won three Blues at Cambridge and appeared in
first-class matches for a variety of sides including MCC,
Gentlemen of England, Cambridge Town and County Club, and
Surrey. Scores and Biographies claimed his entry into the Church
of England (he became an honorary Canon at Winchester
Cathedral) deprived the Gentlemen of ‘one of the most valuable
men they have ever had in their annual contest against the
Players.’ That said, he missed out in his final ‘G v. P’ fixture at
Lord’s in 1850, dismissed by John Wisden in the first innings and
by William Clarke, canny founder of the touring All-England
Eleven and Nottingham’s Trent Bridge ground, in the second. In
this case you may know a man by the company he keeps.
The oldest scorebook in the School archives was donated by
George Shirley Terry, an assistant master, in 1857, and it
chronicles some of the outstanding performances of Nottingham-
born William Williams, who followed in Lee’s footsteps from
Oundle into ‘big’ cricket and scored the first recorded century for
the School, against a Masters’ team in 1859. He spent four years
in the Eleven and in 1863 was presented with a silver cup by ‘the
past and present members of the Oundle Grammar School Cricket
Club’ in recognition of his achievements. By then he’d already
represented (aged just 17) the Gentlemen of the North against
those of the South at Trent Bridge; a few years later he married
the youngest daughter of Oundle’s then-Headmaster, Dr John
Fortunatus Stansbury, and returned to the School to represent the
Past (who usually won) against the Present – although Sporting
Life noted in 1866 that ‘the younger Present boys played
Williams’s fast bowling very pluckily.’ Hopefully the Head’s son-
in-law did the decent thing and kept it pitched up. In fact, the
importance of making this important annual fixture and social
event a reasonably competitive contest was a recurring theme;
back in 1861 it was reported that ‘to prevent (the Present side)
being overwhelmed…being rather under the mark this season, a
professional bowler has been giving the boys daily instructions,
which have already wonderfully improved them.’ Something to
hearten supporters of the Present, who wore pink ribbon favours
to distinguish them from the partisans of the Past XI who pinned
on blue ones.
In 1875 Williams played under W.G. Grace’s captaincy in the Gents
versus Players match at the Prince’s ground in Chelsea, the
unpaid – admittedly a somewhat hollow term in Grace’s case -
undone on that occasion by Alfred Shaw and James Southerton, a
pair of great professional bowlers who would both appear in what
became accepted as the first-ever Test match in Melbourne in
March 1877. His final appearance in first-class cricket was for an
England XI – captained by Fred Grace, W.G.’s younger brother –
against the Players of the North at Dewsbury in 1878, and he died
seven years later, aged only 40.
They were clearly keen on their cricket at the School in Williams’
time. Walker recounts the tale of another Past versus Present
fixture in the 1860s when one of the examiners left a guinea on
offer for the best individual performer. A.E. Francis, then a
Cambridge undergraduate, top-scored for the old boys – having
walked through the night from his college! In 1862 the School
tackled North Northamptonshire home and away (the latter game
at Drayton Park, Lowick), and in the home fixture handed out a
thoroughgoing thrashing to opponents who relied heavily on the
Reverend Hugh Hodgson Gillett, an Oxford Blue and vicar of
Finedon and, later, Wadenhoe. ‘The Reverend Gillett, who would
guard his wicket with his leg, paid the penalty,’ it was reported.
‘Had he been content with the usual defence of his bat, the result
might have proved different…’ The scorecard shows Gillett
dismissed lbw in each innings, for nought and two. In an
apparently unconnected cricketing development from the same
season, a chap named Reade won his second Blue for Oxford
University – captaining the side and capturing four wickets as the
Dark Blues dismissed Cambridge for 171 on the opening day of
the Varsity match at Lord’s. He would play a major role in the
Oundle story…but not just yet.
When the School placed those advertisements in the local rag in
1855 it boasted again of possessing ‘an excellent cricket ground’
- although the ‘large and airy’ bit from 1831 had been dropped
by then. In fact the School had acquired the use of a new facility
during 1853 in circumstances which rankled with their
neighbours – Oundle Town Cricket Club – for many, many years
to come.
Around the start of that decade OTCC paid £5 a year to Mrs Mary
Curtis, who kept the Cross Keys Inn (described as ‘a noted
cricketing headquarters…much frequented by the clergy and the
gentry around’), to use the club’s present-day headquarters in
Milton Road – known until 1899 as North Backway. The Cross
Keys was in West Street (the building still stands as a private
house) and so the field would have been at the back of the pub,
presumably ensuring a brisk trade on match days. As late as
1881 an athletics report in Sporting Life described the venue as
‘the Old Cross Keys Grounds’ which admittedly has a certain ring
to it. In September 1852 it hosted a ‘long-awaited’ tussle
between Oundle and Wellingborough, the visitors winning by an
innings and 14 runs – a result attributed by the Northampton
Mercury to the fact that the hosts fielded a weakened team: ‘On
looking at the Oundle shed something told us that all was not
right: true, there was the steady and telling Gravely, Norburn, G
and W Curtis, Hunt, Daniell, Guille and Newton, all good men and
true…but we could name some who ought to have been there
instead of deserting the club in its utmost need.’ To make
matters worse, the estimable Mr Fentiman was listed as ‘absent’
in the second innings.
And talking of desertion…
The authorities at the School felt they needed something better
than they had to encourage parents to part with their hard-
earned money – and the shrewd Mrs Curtis may have sensed a
golden opportunity to cash in. According to Walker, ‘she had
given notice that if the schoolboys made use of (the field) the rent
would be raised to £9 (and) the cost of upkeep would similarly be
raised by £3 to £4 a year.’ The School’s governing body agreed
to pay £10 a year towards the rent and maintenance, ‘provided
that the cricket ground should be available for all the boys,
Laxton Scholars as well as boarders.’ In other words, the
cricketers of the Town club could look elsewhere. Reporting this
coup on July 9 1853 the Cambridge Independent Press declared it
‘a great advantage to the boys residing in the town, who will now
have a playground all the year round, under the control of their
masters, where they may enjoy the manly game of cricket in the
summer and football in the winter.’ Other local residents would
have felt rather differently about it.
Forgive and forget? Not likely. The best part of 30 years later –
at the Town club’s annual dinner at The Talbot in 1881 – the
chairman, solicitor George Maxwell Edmonds, picked deliberately
at a few old scabs whilst proposing the main toast of the evening,
‘Success to the Oundle Cricket Club,’ to an audience of 35
members and guests. Edmonds referred to the time ‘when the
Town club held the field, now known as the Grammar School
Ground. They had spent over £120 to level it, but by some
means (the author’s italics) it got into the hands of the school.
He trusted that when the school took possession of their new
grounds they would once more play on the old field.’ This was a
reference to ‘the Thirty Acre’ (30 acres, 3 roods and 30 poles to
be precise) or ‘Grocers’ Field’ bought by the School from T.S.
Sharman for £5,000 at the end of 1879 and first used for cricket
a few years later. The Ordnance Survey map for 1885 has the
current Milton Road HQ marked as ‘Cricket Ground’ with St
Ann’s-in-the-Grove Infant School beyond the boundary in the
south-west corner and otherwise precious little sign of habitation
around the field – although by 1901 a pavilion is marked on the
site of the current one. Around the same time the School’s
temporary chapel came into use on the site of what is now the
Sports Hall car park. But it’s not entirely clear when the Town
club returned on a permanent basis to its former home, its
stalwarts still grumbling presumably (in approved
Northamptonshire fashion) about their ‘gazumping’ back in the
1850s.
We do know that they attempted to return the compliment by
offering John Vincent Eayrs – a local vet who had also taken over
the Cross Keys following the death of Mrs Curtis in 1856 – the
princely sum of 15 guineas a year to grab the ground back from
the School ahead of the 1872 cricket season. Stansbury managed
to thwart the Town’s counter-move by paying £14 for that
summer and pointing out to Eayrs that they had been reliable
tenants in the past, whilst suggesting simultaneously to the Court
that a long-term lease would be preferable. That didn’t happen
but Eayrs eventually agreed an annual rent of £16 for the School’s
exclusive use of the field for ‘cricket, athletic sports and football’
– although Walker claims he broke his word by allowing the town
sports to be staged there during the school holidays in 1873.
That event became a regular Easter Monday fixture at the ground,
attracting hundreds of spectators, competitors from as far afield
as London and (according to Arthur Howitt) the Town Crier in
frock coat, brass buttons and a tricorn hat bearing the Queen’s
initials to announce the races. One on occasion he declared the
first event to be ‘the pole jump’ and Howitt claimed the Oyez-
shouter in question, one Ben Marshall, wasn’t allowed to forget
his error for some time. But within a few years the lack of
security of tenure (Eayrs had apparently threatened again to
replace the cricketers with cattle) must have concentrated minds
and convinced the School that permanent facilities of their own
were needed, hence that important purchase in 1879.
The immediate consequence of all this jiggery-pokery was that
OTCC needed somewhere to play – and a report in the
Peterborough Advertiser in May 1858 underlines the scale of the
problem; indeed, it suggests the ground issue had threatened the
club’s very existence. ‘We have much pleasure in stating there is
every prospect of the original Oundle Cricket Club being re-
formed,’ it ran. ‘At a meeting held at the Cross Keys Inn (a touch
ironic given the source of their main problem) it was resolved to
canvass the cricketers of the neighbourhood, which has been
attended with every success, 40 names having been enrolled.’
The whole business of how much it had cost the club to level their
former ground was aired again, together with dark hints about
‘the opposition which the projectors of (this) revival’ had
encountered, and the revelation that the ground’s ‘occasional use
(had) been refused by the committee of the Oundle Grammar
School club.’ Might this have been discussed before, during or
after a drawn match in 1857 between the ‘Old Oundle Club’ and
the School? What we do know is that Mr Eayrs served up a good
dinner. The vet/publican was not a man to cross, though. Some
years later he appeared at the Petty Sessions accused of taking
his whip to an 11-year-old boy for playing cricket in his paddock
after being told not to. The boy’s mother appeared as a witness
for the prosecution but the case was dismissed.
Curiously, the School’s scorebook for the 1857 season shows
matches against both Oundle Town and ‘Oundle Amateurs’ – the
two sides containing a number of the same players, although the
latter combination proved decidedly amateurish in the worst
sense and were bowled out for a paltry 11 runs, including four
byes! Details of this rout even appeared in ‘Bell’s Life in London’
- a weekly newspaper that blended sporting intelligence (horse
racing especially) and general gossip, ‘published in time for all
the Saturday morning mails and early railways.’ Its contributors
included Charles Dickens, although it’s unlikely he concerned
himself with that particular fixture. Hard Times? Coincidentally,
153 years later, two Oundle Town bowlers – Mohammed Qadeer
(6-7) and Cameron Wake (4-4) dismissed Brigstock for that same
total in a Northamptonshire league match, setting a new
competition record.
Christopher Swann – landlord of The Swan and later The Dolphin
in Oundle – offered the use of a field ‘near Elmington toll bar’ (the
same one pressed into service following the floods of 1849?) as
OTCC’s new home in 1858 ‘until such time as a ground can be
prepared nearer to the town.’ A subscription list was opened and
Fitzpatrick Henry Vernon, twice an unsuccessful Liberal
parliamentary candidate for North Northamptonshire and later the
2nd Baron Lyveden, headed it. Mr E.J. Bannister was elected
‘secretary pro-tem’ and immediately called a meeting at The
Swan to enrol extra members and elect a full committee.
It’s possible that all this activity – and the local publicity it
attracted, not to mention support from the gentry – prompted a
few second thoughts up at the School, because another report
concerning this ‘revival’ claims the use of ‘the old ground’ had
been granted to members on Wednesdays and Fridays. On the
face of it a relatively small concession but at least diplomatic
relations hadn’t been severed entirely. Besides, squabbles over a
cricket ground paled into insignificance compared to the tragedy
that befell the School one Saturday in August 1865. Phineas
Charles Ellis, aged 16, went bathing in the River Nene near the
town, became entangled in the weeds and drowned. He had been
due to captain the School’s Present XI against the Past just a
couple of days later. Invitations had gone out to the traditional
ball and ‘many ladies and gentlemen had reached the town, but in
consequence of this lamentable accident anticipated heart
rejoicings were turned into mourning.’ The inquest, held at the
Dolphin Inn, heard he was ‘esteemed by all’ and the jury
suggested a more suitable bathing place should be provided, ‘the
Nene in many parts being exceedingly dangerous.’ And yet a few
years later at least one national periodical reported on the
activities of the ‘Nene Water Polo Club’ on the river at Oundle and
published drawings of the game which, bizarrely, required the
players to ‘ride’ barrels in the water. ‘It is a most charming game
when once played and affords infinite amusement to the
onlookers,’ enthused the correspondent. He added: ‘The club is
prepared to meet any other in the United Kingdom on their own
ground at Oundle, provided the other club brings its own barrels.’
Obviously.
Attempting to follow the Town cricket club’s fortunes over the
next few years can be a slightly confusing business based on the
information available. A few semi-social matches were played,
including one at Lilford Hall in 1860 when Oundle (Creeser,
Bullivant, Pooley, Stansbury, Richardson, Norburn, Elderfield,
Newton, Guille, Price and Ridway) lost by ten runs, and another at
Wadenhoe House, residence of George Ward Hunt – the MP for
North Northamptonshire who served briefly as Chancellor of the
Exchequer under Benjamin Disraeli. Legend has it that Hunt
turned up at the Commons for his first (and last) Budget speech
in 1868 and realised he had left the ‘red box’ containing it at
home, giving rise to the tradition of Chancellors holding up the
box to the public gaze before setting off for the chamber. His
cricket team (in which he himself played and scored a few runs)
had the worst of it against Oundle, but both sides were
entertained to a ‘sumptuous repast’ at the house. In the same
year, a fixture between Oundle’s ‘Benedicts’ (married men) and
bachelors resulted in a comfortable victory for the latter. The
following spring, 1861, brought fresh ‘revivalist’ fervour with
another meeting, this time at The Ship Inn – featuring discussion
about another potential new ground, believed to be a meadow
owned by that pub’s landlord, Mr Afford, although in subsequent
years it could only be used after the hay had been cut. A few
weeks after that gathering, Oundle lost comfortably to
Wellingborough by 70 runs on first innings – and this being a
home match, they must have found somewhere to play.
Frustratingly, the newspaper report is not more specific about the
location. But when King’s Cliffe beat Oundle (shades of the 1830
schoolboys?) in 1863, the sting of defeat was happily eased by
the aforementioned Mr Afford’s hospitality: ‘(he) provided an
excellent collation to which 36 cricketers and their friends sat
down and did ample justice thereto.’
Throughout the 1870s most accounts refer to the ‘Oundle and
Church Choir Cricket Club’ indicating a local link-up in the
interests of muscular Christianity. In 1867, teams labelled
‘Oundle’ and ‘Oundle Church Choir’ had played against each
other, with the latter winning both times. Daniel Dakin (keen on
both cricket and singing, according to his obituary notice printed
in 1890) acted as ‘ground-keeper’ and umpire for the ‘merged’
team, and in 1870 the Reverend Robert Charles Linton – curate of
the parish and just back from his honeymoon – was presented
with a suitably inscribed electro-plated cup to recognise his
‘great exertions in furthering the interests of the club, through
which it now stands very strong, not only numerically but
financially.’ It could still be a dangerous game, though; early-
season practice on a cold Friday in May 1874 was ‘poorly
attended…and marred by one of the players getting a severe hit
with the ball near the left eye.’ To muddy the waters a little, the
‘Oundle Town Cricket and Athletic Club’ (possibly a different
organisation involved predominantly with running the
aforementioned town sports) met during the summer of 1875 in
the Ship Inn, boasting ‘a very good balance in hand.’ In that same
season a side representing the town met a team raised by
Anthony Mildmay Julian Fane, Lord Burghersh (later the 13th Earl
of Westmorland), who appeared occasionally for
Northamptonshire and whose family seat was nearby Apethorpe
Hall – now known as Apethorpe Palace – until he sold it to Henry
Brassey in 1904. He turned out for OTCC in the 1880s, later
served in both the Boer and First World Wars, was appointed an
aide-de-camp to King George V and died in 1922.
Oundle’s cricketers must have sorted themselves out eventually,
however, because at that dinner at The Talbot in 1881 it was
reported the Town club ‘was in a much better position than four
years ago’ – notwithstanding the brouhaha over the ground.
OTCC’s secretary and treasurer Arthur Bent Beardsley, owner of
the Anchor Brewery, delivered a stirring patriotic speech
proclaiming ‘so long as they practise (cricket) there is no fear of
the sons of old England degenerating in muscular strength…and
not until they are driven away by a foreign foe will they lay aside
bat and ball.’ A wide-ranging toast list also featured ‘The Bishop
and Clergy of the Diocese and Ministers of Other Denominations’,
‘The Army, Navy and Reserve Forces’, ‘The Umpire’ (always a
sound diplomatic move in any club) and ‘The Hostess’ (ditto). Mr
E.G. King provided ‘pleasing accompaniment at the piano’ to the
evening’s sing-song and everyone joined together in fellow-
feeling for cricket, ‘a grand old sport and pastime.’ Sounds like a
long night. Thus fortified, OTCC was back in full fighting trim by
the start of the following season, tackling some of
Northamptonshire’s best. It may have pained Messrs Edmonds,
Beardsley and some of their colleagues to admit it – but a couple
of chaps from the School deserved at least some of the credit.
CHAPTER THREE
‘No playing-field, no boarding school.’
(H. St J. Reade)
‘The game of cricket, philosophically considered, is a standing
panegyric on the English character; none but an orderly and
sensible race of people would so amuse themselves. It calls into
requisition all the cardinal virtues…’
(James Pycroft ‘The Cricket Field’ – 1851)
When Oxford University’s former cricket captain succeeded
Stansbury as Headmaster of Oundle in 1876 it was a very
different place to the School of today – and possibly not quite
what 36-year-old Henry St John Reade had been expecting. As
Raymond Flower explains in his 1989 book ‘Oundle and the
English Public School’:
‘There were no compulsory games, no house matches, no Sixth
Form, no prefects, no tradition of Speech Days, no societies, no
school magazine, no uniform apart from the college cap. At a
time when bat and ball fever had already become a sort of
religion, and the fortunes of the country seemed to rely on an
unfailing supply of schoolboy games heroes, there were not even
any colours at Oundle. Reade changed all this overnight…’
Cricket colours were awarded with the Eleven wearing four-
buttoned blue flannel coats (blazers, in other words) adorned with
the Grocers’ shield on the breast pocket, plus blue caps with
crest. A dozen matches were played in that first summer, Reade
himself turning out except in fixtures against other schools. It
must be admitted, though, that not everyone in what is now
termed the education industry was all that fussed about blazers,
bats and balls; when the philosopher Thomas Hill Green wrote a
detailed report on Oundle for the Endowed Schools Commission
in 1866 he noted somewhat sniffily that ‘at the time of my visit
the most advanced boys in the school had unfortunately gone off
to play a cricket match…’ Had he pitched up a dozen or so years
later he might have found a few more pupils out in the fresh air.
Reade liked other sports too – even the relatively Johnny-come-
lately ones: ‘With scrimmages well packed, as they always are at
schools, it (Rugby Union Football) is the safest as well as the by
far most amusing form of the game for boys,’ he informed
readers of the London Standard in 1878; it was Reade’s choice to
switch from the Association to the Rugby code. He also had an
eye to posterity and, earning in the process the undying gratitude
of countless future researchers and historians, founded The
Laxtonian magazine.
But Oundle School wasn’t the only local institution where cricket
was at a lowish ebb in the early-1870s. As we’ve seen, the Town
club was looking to re-establish its identity following the ground-
related ructions of the previous two decades; and
Northamptonshire faced an unequal struggle to make its presence
felt among England’s major cricketing counties. In 1875, for
example, just two fixtures were listed – against MCC and (believe
it or not) a 12-a-side game with Uppingham Rovers – and a
disgruntled letter-writer to the local press questioned the club’s
right to call itself ‘Northamptonshire’: ‘A more selfish and un-
English spirit could not pervade any body of men…are we to
acknowledge a club without discipline, management or funds?’
The much-needed major re-organisation of Northamptonshire
County Cricket Club centred around two matches in July 1878
between teams representing the gentlemen of the north and
south of the county, culminating in an historic meeting at The
George Hotel in Northampton on the evening of Wednesday, July
31. Reade didn’t play in either of the fixtures (in Kettering and on
Northampton’s Racecourse) but he did write a supportive letter to
those behind the move to put the county club on a proper
footing, promising an annual subscription of five guineas. He
was duly elected to serve on the ‘new’ NCCC’s very first
committee under the presidency of the 5th Earl Spencer – the ‘Red
Earl’ of Gladstone governments – and thereafter captained the
county side occasionally, including a decidedly unsuccessful
outing against Leicestershire in 1879 when the start of play was
delayed while Northamptonshire scrambled around to finalise
their team! The result, defeat by an innings, was hardly
surprising in the circumstances. But anyone who enjoys top-class
cricket at Wantage Road with many leading lights of the
international game on show owes a debt of gratitude to Reade
and his fellow pioneers; and it’s worth noting that in 1886, the
current County Ground’s inaugural season following the move
from the Racecourse, Oundle Town was one of a handful of local
clubs (along with Kettering, Wellingborough, Long Buckby and
Althorp Park) to host Northamptonshire Club and Ground.
Reade himself was a serious cricketer. After Tonbridge School
and Oxford he played for a host of clubs including Gentlemen of
Berkshire, Pembrokeshire, Hertfordshire, South Wales CC and
Moor Park – and Scores and Biographies commended him for a
particularly plucky innings of 126 in a match between Town
Malling and Eastbourne, “being at the time dead lame.’ But
perhaps his most memorable match came in 1882, during his
Oundle days, when he turned out for Northamptonshire against
the Australian side whose shock seven-run victory over England
at The Oval later that summer gave rise to the whole saga of The
Ashes. Reade was past his cricketing prime by this stage –
indeed, it was to prove the penultimate summer of his life - but
he could at least boast (although as a Reverend he was unlikely to
do so) that he had shared a field with the likes of Billy Murdoch,
George Giffen, mighty hitter George Bonnor and ‘The Demon’
himself – Fred Spofforth – who castled Reade for 5 in the County’s
first innings. It was reckoned around 10,000 spectators turned
up to watch over the two days, and even after paying five guineas
to the Freedom of the Borough for the privilege of enclosing the
Racecourse for the occasion (at other times it was a public right
of way, prompting at least one brawl involving groundsman Alf
Stockwin and the driver of a brewer’s dray who trundled his
vehicle across the carefully-tended cricket square)
Northamptonshire made a handy profit of £97.
Reade ‘retired’ from his post at Oundle in 1883 following a row
which resulted in the Court passing a vote of no-confidence in
him and requesting his resignation. As Raymond Flower puts it:
‘Reade was not a lawyer, nor a financier, nor a politician, nor a
civil servant. What seemed simple to him appeared different to
people who thrived on complexities. There were difficulties
behind the scenes that he never suspected. Reade…had
obviously no idea how much he had fallen from grace. Of the
four reasons for dismissing a headmaster – immorality,
dishonesty, incompetence or disagreeableness – he concluded
that in his case it must be the last.’
Whether he was a good Headmaster of Oundle this writer is not
remotely qualified to say. He certainly rubbed some influential
people up the wrong way, and the ‘Division of the School’ in 1876
between ‘Classical’ (Oundle) and ‘Modern’ (Laxton) didn’t please
everyone. The latter, needless to say, also boasted some fine
cricketers before it was formally reunited with Oundle in 2000.
His loyal second master, Robert Brereton, reckoned his boss had
been in too much of a hurry to effect change. But Reade was
unquestionably good news for cricket in the town and county.
‘An able scholar, a good athlete and a thorough gentleman’ said
The Laxtonian, and most of us would settle for that as an epitaph.
On a lighter note, his brother Charles, a naval officer, visited
Reade as part of a 1,400-mile journey across England on a
tricycle nicknamed ‘Chummy’ and wrote a book about it –
‘Nauticus on his Hobby Horse’ - viewed these days as something
of a neglected classic. It received some belated publicity when
the inaugural Women’s Tour cycle event started in Oundle in
2014. Charles clearly enjoyed the ‘charming little town of nice
old-fashioned houses and well-kept streets’ not forgetting a
certain school that was ‘just getting its name up.’ Fraternal
solidarity, and all that. Henry St John was also a nephew of the
novelist Charles Reade, whose works included ‘Hard Cash’ and
‘Terrible Temptation.’ Despite their prescient titles, both were
published many years before Kerry Packer or the IPL came to
prominence.
Reade lived only a few months after leaving Oundle, dying from
cancer in February 1884 aged 44. Among the mourners at his
funeral was one of his early staff appointments at the School,
Richard Foord Winch, born in Kent and another outstanding
cricketer – ‘a hard-hitting bat, good change bowler and fair field’
according to James Lillywhite - who appeared alongside Reade in
the County’s team against the Aussies in 1882. The pair were
also instrumental in founding the old boys’ side, Oundle Rovers,
in 1881 – beginning with a ‘very merry’ tour incorporating
matches against Burghley Park, Jesus College Cambridge (against
whom Winch hit a hundred) and Bedford School. Like all such
teams, the Rovers have struggled from time to time with
availability – prompting this admonitory paragraph in The
Laxtonian in 1898:
‘We can forgive a man for being in love, even in the cricket
season, and with the gentleman who feared he might not get his
dinner at the ordinary hour age and dyspepsia may help some of
us to sympathise. But these things should be discussed
beforehand, not telegraphed an hour or so before the match is
due to begin. Cricket is played for pleasure. If a man does not
wish to play, let him say so candidly and stay away. If he wishes
to play but truly is unable, let him give due notice and express a
decent sorrow.’
Sentiments familiar to club captains and secretaries in the 21st
century. Winch doesn’t seem to have missed many cricket
matches, through love or dyspepsia or any other reason, and his
prowess as a bowler brought him two ‘all-tens’ for the School
side (masters routinely followed Reade’s example and played in
matches except those against other schools), the first of them at
the expense of an all-amateur Northamptonshire team on the
Racecourse in July 1879. Winch top-scored with 58 in the
School’s 198 all out before going to work with the ball:
T.H.G. Welch b Winch 1
F. Tebbutt b Winch 12
J.M. Markham b Winch 1
H.J. Kingston b Winch 13
Capt. Lynch b Winch 1
G.B. Hooper b Winch 2
C.M. Robinson b Winch 0
J.J. Stockburn not out 32
W. Pitts b Winch 7
W.J. Wickens b Winch 5
W. Darnell b Winch 8
Extras 8
Total: 90
Bowling: Winch 25.2-9-38-10; Reade 22-6-42-0; Hinchcliff 3-1-
2-0.
Winch took the first nine wickets on a showery opening day – it
was a horribly wet summer – before adding the tenth (Darnell)
first thing next morning. Following-on, the Gents were sent back
for 93 in their second innings to lose by an innings, but this time
it was Reade (4-21 from 18.4 overs) who returned the best
figures. Winch then bagged another ‘ten-for’ – remarkably, also
all-bowled - against Kettering a couple of years later, on June 2
1881, and not long before his death in 1927 he wrote a rather
touching letter to the Northampton Mercury asking if anyone had
a copy of a report on that match they could let him have. ‘If so,
Mr Winch would be grateful for a duplicate of it.’ Yes, old men do
forget, and the details in The Laxtonian are surprisingly sketchy
given the magnitude of the achievement. Kettering were
dismissed for 94 (Mr Markham standing firm to make 41); the
School then totalled 144 thanks to an unbeaten 90 from Reade,
before Winch repeated his feat of 1879 ‘against the county of
Northampton.’ A kindred spirit, evidently, of the great Brian
Statham - if they missed he hit.
In fact, Winch’s cricket career might easily have ended on a June
afternoon in 1877 when, during a match against the Old Boys, he
jumped the wall surrounding Milton Road – opposite what’s now
St Anne’s Court – and landed heavily in the lane below, breaking
his ankle. ‘He was at once conveyed to his residence, at the
School House, where, under the care of Dr Calcutt, he is
progressing favourably,’ noted the concerned local newspaper.
Generations of OTCC cricketers and opponents hurtling towards
that wall to save a boundary might well mutter: “There but for the
grace of God, go I.”
Several outstanding schoolboy talents emerged in the Reade era.
Buckinghamshire=born Arthur Melbourne Sutthery switched to
Oundle from Uppingham as a 15-year-old in September 1879,
and according to the magazine ‘Cricket’ (which published his
portrait and a detailed account of his career in July 1887) this
meant Oundle deserved ‘the chief credit’ for his development. He
scored just over 1,500 runs and claimed 205 wickets (70 of them
in 1881) across his four years in the Eleven, and in 1883
clobbered Mr Worthington’s XI, an Oxford combination, for 215
which stood as a School record for four decades. Sutthery won a
Blue at Cambridge in ‘87 – ‘(doing) full justice to his Oundle
training’ according to the article – and was picked for Gentlemen
against Players at The Oval that same season. Sutthery also
turned out for Northamptonshire, Devon, Shropshire and MCC,
and played in three separate fixtures against the 1888
Australians, representing ‘An England XI’ at both Hastings and
Crystal Palace. In the latter match he made 54 out of 98 all out
(no-one else reaching double figures) against the formidable
Charlie ‘Terror’ Turner and Jack Ferris, who decimated countless
batting sides around the country that summer. ‘Mr Sutthery not
only watches the ball carefully but can hit well, and his is never an
easy wicket to get. He bowls fast round-arm with a rather high
delivery and on certain wickets is sure to be dangerous. He is,
too, safe field,’ enthused ‘Cricket.’ Like so many others, Sutthery
endured the pain of losing a son (Dorian) in the First World War,
following an accident with a hand grenade. Arthur made his
home in Perthshire, was a director of George Outram and
Company who owned several prominent Scottish newspapers and
died in London in 1937.
Outliving Sutthery by four years, the splendidly-named Richard
Augustus Agincourt Beresford (‘cuts well, bowls with a high
delivery’ according to a contemporary publication) made a
comparable contribution to the School’s cricket – 1,718 runs and
144 wickets. Although he missed out on a cricket Blue at
Cambridge (despite what the Morning Post described as ‘a
brilliantly hit and faultless’ century in the 1889 Freshman’s
match) he did ‘putt the weight’ for his university, far enough to
help them beat Oxford in the varsity athletics contests of both
1891 and 1892 at Queen’s Club, and appeared for
Northamptonshire. Indeed, this vicar’s son from Castor opened
the batting for the County against Warwickshire at Edgbaston just
short of his 18th birthday in August 1887, soon after reaching
three-figures for the School against OTCC in the annual fixture.
He was unstoppable the following summer – a horribly wet one,
note – plundering 102 not out and 307 not out in a two-day
match for School House against Laxton House at the end of May,
helping his side scrape a victory by 417 runs! A fortnight later,
on June 15, he stroked 225 out of 373 in the Past versus Present
fixture. Beresford was headmaster of a prep school in
Hunstanton (allowing him to play Minor Counties cricket for
Norfolk) for over 30 years, and wrote Latin and Greek text books
some of which are still listed on Amazon’s website. As we shall
see, the Beresford family’s connection with Oundle School has
been long and distinguished – oh, and Richard’s niece Elisabeth
(the daughter of his younger brother John Davys Beresford,
himself a well-known writer whose ground-breaking novel ‘The
Hampdenshire Wonder’ featured a ‘wunderkind’ whose father was
famous cricketer) created The Wombles of Wimbledon Common…
Other luminaries at the School during that particular ‘golden age’
included Norfolk-born Charles Badeley, who outstripped even
Sutthery with 233 wickets in four seasons between 1885 and
1888, and the Dickson brothers with the confusing initials –
H.H.W. (Hilario Howard Watken, known as ‘Dido’ and later Vice-
Principal of King William’s College on the Isle of Man) and H.W.
(Harry Wilfrid) – who both captained the Eleven. Less
accomplished but more intrepid, perhaps, was a lad named Bayley
– a pupil in Dryden house – who climbed the spire of St Peter’s
Church in the 1880s and placed his cap on the weather vane
where it remained until the wind blew it down into North Street.
In 1890 it was returned to its ‘rightful’ place on high by one Mr
Upchurch, a professional steeple jack. It can now be seen in the
School archives. Legend has it that young Bayley was rewarded
for his daring feat with a flogging and a guinea.
And what impact did all this cricketing activity at the School have
on the Town club? While the Reverend Reade was leading his
flock in the ways of cricketing righteousness, another man of the
cloth - the Reverend Robert Russell Cobbold - became in 1878
the first and probably last (to date, at least) captain of OTCC to be
born in China, where his parents were missionaries. Cobbold
subsequently spent 20 years as vicar of Earls Barton, one of the
oldest churches in England. In 1882 the club won seven of its 12
matches, and the batting averages posted in the local newspaper
show R.F. Winch figuring prominently alongside Arthur Cribden –
described as ‘the Oundle School professional’ – and 18-year-old
Henry Richards, who would remain a stalwart of the club, both on
and off the field, for many years. Team-mate Charles Evors
captained the School and played county cricket for both
Northamptonshire and Herefordshire in the late-1870s and 80s.
Those batting stats weren’t boosted very much by the home-and-
away fixtures against Northampton Britons – at the time close to a
full-strength Northamptonshire side, including several members
of the famous Kingston brotherhood with County professionals to
do most of the bowling. Eight of the nine sons of William
Kingston played for NCCC, including the eldest – parson and poet
Fred Kingston – who was born in Oundle in 1855 when his father
was a Commercial Master at the School. Fred, described as ‘one
of the best cutters in the country’, graced the great Cambridge
University team of 1878, played alongside Reade and Winch
against the 1882 Australians, churned out reams of worthy and
uplifting verse including ‘Cedric, or a Soul’s Travail’ and ‘Julian’s
Vision’, was vicar of Willington in Bedfordshire for 20 years and
supposedly learned much about wicketkeeping from watching
Northampton’s own Tom Plumb, one of the outstanding English
stumpers of his day.
Father William’s departure soon afterwards to open his own
private school, Abington House, in Northampton – taking some
Oundle boys with him - didn’t go down at all well with
headmaster Stansbury (‘ungentlemanly conduct’ he called it), and
you can only speculate on what might have been had Mr Kingston
senior – who died in 1900 – stayed put and brought up his large
family in Oundle rather than decamping to the county town.
OTCC might have taken some beating for many years to come.
As it is, William occupies a nice little niche in the annals of
Northamptonshire CCC on his own account; he proposed the
toast to ‘The New County Ground’ at lunchtime on the opening
day’s cricket there, against Surrey Club and Ground in May 1886.
Stansbury may have fallen out with him, but not long before his
death a group of his former Abington House pupils presented Mr
Kingston senior with a purse containing £164 ‘as a practical
evidence of their affection for their old schoolmaster.’
Britons were unsurprisingly much too strong for OTCC in 1882
despite the best efforts of Cribden and W.T. King with the ball.
King, incidentally, played for the School earlier that summer in a
crushing 208-run victory over Kettering (still smarting from
Winch’s heroics the previous year) in which six of the latter’s
batsmen were out for a duck, and he later became OTCC’s
secretary. For his part, Cribden’s employment in the town
doesn’t seem to have lasted beyond the end of the 1882 season;
in August 1883 he featured in a well-publicised court case in
Daventry after being accused of stealing money from a publican,
Mr John Wiggins, whilst in straitened financial circumstances
(despite having just sold a bat and pads for ten shillings) and
being under the influence of alcohol. He was discharged – a
decision received ‘with great cheering’ in the court - but
immediately detained again by PC Foster to face a fresh charge in
Rugby. There is no record of him returning to Oundle and he is
believed to have died in London a few years later. But he must
have been a steady cricketer; in one of the defeats against Britons
he picked up four wickets and then scored 38 out of 50 all out,
opening the batting and the last man to be dismissed.
The summer of 1882 also saw the first staging of the Rural
Challenge Cup competition, initiated by Northamptonshire CCC to
promote the game in clubs outside Northampton itself. Ten
teams entered that year but Oundle didn’t, and possibly didn’t
feel they’d missed much as the competition became mired in
controversy culminating in a farcical County Court case in March
1886 which saw Sir Herewald Wake seek to retrieve from Rushden
CC the £25 silver cup he had originally donated. Rushden had
won it in 1884, been disqualified the following summer and
subsequently launched a counter-claim for compensation – you
get the trophy back if you pay us ten guineas! His Honour Judge
Cooke QC found for the plaintiff and a couple of seasons later
Wollaston made the cup their own property by winning it three
years in a row. Similarly, when local clubs came together in1895
to lay the foundations for a Kettering and District League, OTCC
was not among them.
In Oundle the pattern was firmly established of pupils, masters
and even employees from the School appearing for the Town
club. By 1884 it was reported that the latter had 60 members,
paying a subscription of five shillings each, with 25-year-old John
Hume ‘Jack’ Smith (of the Smith’s Brewery family) as captain. Five
years later – during a successful season which brought victories
over Alwalton, Lilford Park, Stamford Commercials, Rockingham
Park, Thrapston and Oundle School (twice) – Old Harrovian Henry
Edwin Caldecott, then teaching at the School and later
headmaster of Eastman’s Royal Naval Academy in Southsea,
scored a century against the boys on Saturday, July 20 1889.
Might it have been OTCC’s first three-figure innings?
J.H. Smith b Hammond 5
H.E. Caldecott not out 113
H. Richards b Hammond 12
Hon. J. Powys c Farmer b Calcott 7
L.R. Jones b Calcott 0
E. Richards c Farmer b Reade 5
J. Seneschall b Reade 6
T. Smith b Lewis 1
J.E. Wyatt b Lewis 3
G. Edmonds b Reade 9
J.E. Ferrall run out 2
Extras 14 Total: 177 all out
The School had been dismissed for 89 batting first – and ‘on the
Town going in we looked like winning’ commented The
Laxtonian, not unreasonably. ‘But Mr Caldecott punished the
bowling very severely and carried his bat through the innings;
with the exception of (Henry) Richards the rest failed to reach
double figures.’ A truly remarkable individual performance. The
wicket-taking Reade in question here was W.H.V., the late
headmaster’s son. Also a noted tennis player – West of Scotland
champion in 1894, by which time he was teaching at Blair Lodge
School – Caldecott died in 1910, aged 47. Although
overshadowed on this occasion, club secretary Richards was as
consistent as ever at the top of the order (377 runs in 1889 and
376 the following summer) while Tom Smith took the bowling
honours.
In 1890, Oundle Town was one of the clubs featured in the one-
and-only edition of the Northamptonshire Cricket Annual, edited
by A.E. Daniell – a fascinating little book with a portrait of County
captain Jim Kingston (wearing a natty bowler hat) at the front and
enough statistical information to satisfy the most punctilious
Victorian number-cruncher. The likes of Richards, Winch and J.H.
Smith featured for Oundle as usual, along with the aristocratic
figure of the Honourable John Powys, glimpsed already in the
supporting cast for Caldecott’s century. In 1889 he batted nine
times, highest score 31, and as a bowler accounted for 20
batsmen. A few years later, in June 1896, he became the 5th
Baron Lilford, and over the next quarter-of-a-century did more
than anyone – with the possible exception of the great all-
rounder George Thompson – to raise Northamptonshire to first-
class level and then keep it there. His involvement with OTCC
lasted a while longer, too – while the cricketers of the town would
soon be welcoming the greatest of them all into their midst.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us’
(Ecclesiasticus 44:1)
‘God Grant Grace’
(Oundle School motto)
R.F. Winch continued to make his presence felt in Oundle Town
colours for a while longer; in June 1893, he and Richards were
joint top-scorers (with 33 runs apiece) as Rushden, containing
several county players, were beaten by 58 runs in the first-ever
meeting of the two clubs. Oundle’s 129 all out was a more-than-
adequate total when farm labourer Tom Craythorne, a member of
a notable (and large!) local family living in Drumming Well Yard,
captured four wickets for three runs to skittle out the ‘cracks’ for
71. Sadly, Rushden won the return on their own turf by a big
margin. The following summer – 1894 – found the club in
excellent fettle with a full fixture list stretching from early-May to
the end of August, including home-and-away dates with Lilford,
Burghley Park, Peterborough, Thrapston, Weldon and the School,
as well as their new best chums, Rushden. A couple of years
further on they were running two sides, ‘the second team having
the distinctive title of Saturday team conferred upon them.’
Winch eventually left Oundle at Christmas 1896 to become
headmaster of New College, Eastbourne (his former employer
refusing his request for a pension to recognise 20 years’ service)
and his place on the staff was taken by William Gilbert Grace,
junior. The last word is obviously significant. He was the eldest
son of ‘W.G.’ – arguably the best and unarguably the most
instantly-recognisable cricketer in the world, even today, a
century after his death. ‘Bertie’ (as he was known in the family)
had studied at Clifton College and Pembroke College, Cambridge,
and proved himself a capable cricketer, winning a Blue in 1895,
as well as representing Northampton (‘The Saints’) and East
Midlands on the rugby field. But it seems his father had hoped
for more. The great golf writer Bernard Darwin, who knew the
Old Man well in his later years, wrote easily the most insightful
and readable biography of him:
‘The younger W.G. had done well for the Clifton eleven, and if a
somewhat angular, ungainly and artificial batsman, yet he could
get runs, and all that affectionate encouragement could do for
him had doubtless been done. For once the writer here can speak
from direct personal experience, as he bowled at him, and, what
is more, got him out in a Long Vacation match between Trinity
and Pembroke…(which) was not an experience to heighten one’s
admiration for his batting, which seemed a little lacking in natural
dash, due no doubt to the fact that he had broken an arm as a
boy and it had remained stiff ever afterwards.’
When the young man appeared in the Varsity Match, W.G. senior
turned up at Lord’s in the unaccustomed garb of frock-coat and
tall hat which, according to Darwin, ‘seemed to shine with the
reflected joy and glory of its owner.’ He may have ‘dressed down’
a little for his first visit to Oundle, which came on July 3, 1897
when he ’guested’ for the Masters – alongside Bertie – against the
School. How much persuasion did he need, we may wonder? And
did anyone dare call him a ‘ringer’ to his face? At least he had
some decent facilities to change in; the new pavilion had been
opened on the School ground in 1895 with a clock turret donated
by Lord Lilford and the timepiece itself made by William Potts and
Sons of Leeds. The cost of the building – just under £500 – was
higher than expected and a tuck-shop was installed there to help
pay the bills. Lady Thatcher’s father, Alfred Roberts (born in the
village of Ringstead near Thrapston), worked there before the
First World War.
Anyhow, fresh from a successful outing for MCC against Oxford
University at Lord’s the previous day, W.G. scored 54 and 4 in a
comfortable victory over the boys, and shared all 20 wickets with
Bertie; only Graces were guaranteed a bowl on this occasion. By
the time he returned in 1901, ‘W.G.’ had finished with Test cricket
and left his native Gloucestershire in a bit of a huff to run the
London County side at Crystal Palace. On this occasion he
travelled down from Chesterfield, where his new team had drawn
a rain-affected match with Derbyshire, and gave the spectators –
if not necessarily the School’s attack – what they had been hoping
to see. ‘We were delighted to see Doctor Grace at Oundle again,
accompanied by Mrs Grace and a younger scion,’ enthused The
Laxtonian. ‘The School was dismissed early to watch the cricket
and lunch on the field. The weather was beautiful and (W.G.) was
in great form.’ To the extent that he biffed the youngsters
around for 141 – ‘a practical demonstration of how cricket should
be played’ - until he was eventually caught after being ‘missed
several times, mostly after passing the century.’ Was he trying to
get out? Somehow such a profligate act doesn’t seem remotely in
character. It wasn’t reported at the time, but thanks to the
meticulous researches of J.R. Webber (whose ‘The Chronicle of
W.G.’ is the definitive work on the subject) we now know it was
his 200th three-figure score in all cricket:
W.G. Grace, junior c Williams b Becher 28
J.W.D. Smith b Chase 42
D.A. Macnaughton st Winser b Becher 4
M.W. Brown c Tindall b Becher 17
Dr W.G. Grace c Jameson b Adendorff 141
C.B Grace c Armitage b Jameson 0
H.H. Wilford c Becher b Jameson 0
R.M. Garnier c Winser b Jameson 4
J.W. Mercer b Jameson 0
W.G. Lewin not out 31
C.W.E. Tiddy not out 16
Extras 5 Total: 288-9 declared
But it wasn’t, in fact, the Doctor’s first hundred against Oundle
bowling. The previous August he made exactly 100 not out for
London County against the touring Rovers side - including his
son, Winch and Richard Beresford – at Crystal Palace. Billy
Murdoch also scored runs, and might he have remembered Winch
from the game on Northampton’s Racecourse 18 years earlier?
Perhaps the Old Man felt he needed to make a point; in the 1899
fixture between the two sides, it was Bertie who excelled with 214
– including 26 fours – as Rovers won by ten wickets. One of their
more notable victories. But guess who eventually got Bertie out?
Mustn’t let the boy take too many liberties, y’know…
Grace senior was just a fortnight shy of his 53rd birthday when he
made that second trip to Oundle in July 1901, but his appetite for
the game was clearly as voracious as ever. In the following week
he turned out three times for London County against London club
sides, before heading to The Oval for the Gentlemen versus
Players match. He was on the cricket field for 22 of the 27
available playing days (excluding Sundays) that month. W.G.
visited again in July 1902 and made 69 runs to plant more vivid
memories in the minds of those present who were proud to tell
children and grandchildren they saw him bat – not on a Test or
county ground but at Oundle School. But fame, as we know, is a
strange beast. W.G. (no escaping those initials!) Walker relates
the comment of a spectator who saw father and son, the latter
clad in Cambridge blazer, arriving at the ground: “That’s him,
next to the chap in the pea-green jacket!”
There was a curious sequel to W.G.’s triumph in 1901. Nine days
later, Oundle Town entertained Lilford Park in what was described
as ‘one of the best matches of the season’ with ‘both sides
(putting) an excellent team into the field.’ Town were eager for
revenge after losing the away fixture by 37 runs, and this time
Bertie came into his own in the colours of OTCC – plundering
141, precisely the same score his father made at the School.
Henry Richards – by now secretary to Oundle Brewery and a busy
figure in the life of the town – notched 25, ‘one for every year he
has played for the club.’ Bertie was eventually run out and then
possibly caused a few embarrassed coughs and averted glances
by bowling Lord Lilford for two! It must be admitted, though, that
evidence of the stiff, less-accomplished Bertie glimpsed by
Darwin still surfaced from time to time; in 1900 he was castled
third ball in a crushing 175-run defeat for OTCC against
Wellingborough. His cricket career is best summed up, perhaps,
by the scorecard of London County’s contest against MCC at
Crystal Palace in August 1901, not long after his father’s visit to
Oundle. Bertie made 32 in a half-century opening stand with
W.G. but then got out, while cricket’s Grand Old Man powered on
to a century and beyond. He was good, but he just wasn’t as
good as Dad.
As well as Grace junior, Richards, J.H. Smith and Charles F. McKee
of the Anchor Brewery (whose wedding in 1899 prompted his
team-mates to splash out on nice a carriage clock for him and his
bride), the Oundle side against Lilford Park also contained farmer
Charles Thorp - born in Fotheringhay (like King Richard III), a
former pupil at the School and a future Northamptonshire
batsman who appeared in nine first-class matches for the County
in 1908 and 1909. His selection may have owed something to a
memorable innings of 140 for Oundle Town against
Northamptonshire Club and Ground in 1907, the opposing attack
including the great slow left-armer Sydney Gordon Smith – then
qualifying for Northamptonshire by residence after coming to
England from Trinidad – and another County bowler, Roderick
Falconer, who was employed at Oundle School at the time:
A. Stretton c&b Falconer 5
A. Townsend b Falconer 8
G. Baldwin b Smith 9
J.J. Kearney c Beasley b Smith 82
C. Thorp lbw b Falconer 140
Marriott b Hyde 6
C.F. McKee b Hyde 0
T. Hubbert st Thompson b Smith 1
W. Trevener st Thompson b Smith 6
H. Ramshay b Smith 1
S.W. Fenn not out 0
Extras 15 Total: 273 all out
Kearney, an old boy of Dulwich College who died at Gallipoli in
1915, supported Thorp superbly – and the County side could only
manage 155 in reply, George Baldwin (who had turned out for the
County against Leicestershire the previous season) claiming 4-49
and Kearney 3-22, despite Smith’s 62 at the top of the order.
This emphatic 118-run victory over the men from Wantage Road
was a serious red-letter day for sport in the town; ‘the spectators
were loud in their appreciation’ declared the Northampton
Mercury. Against lesser opposition Thorp stood head-and-
shoulders above team-mates and opponents alike; in 1901 he
scored 82 out of 107-8 against Warmington, who mustered just
38 runs between the eleven of them.
Cricket was evidently booming in Edwardian Oundle, on the field
at least. The Town club still doesn’t seem to have been
particularly flush, to the extent that £30 raised by a jumble sale
at the Victoria Hall in May 1906 would reportedly be ‘a great help’
to the coffers. On the same day as Bertie Grace’s big ton against
Lilford Park, it was reported that ‘the other Oundle team was in
the field, viz. the Avondale’ – and the Town duly beat them
(margin unrecorded) at August Bank Holiday 1906. Mind you,
enthusiasm could be taken too far. Around this time it was noted
that ‘in consequence of the rough play and noise caused by
children on the Town Cricket Ground during matches, the
management have decided to charge an admission for all
spectators.’
Sadly, Bertie’s days – and not just his cricketing ones – were
numbered. He left Oundle in July 1903 to take up a post at the
Royal Naval College, Osborne, on the Isle of Wight. There he died
in March 1905, aged only 30, following an operation for
appendicitis. Oundle School sent a ‘magnificent’ wreath to his
funeral while MCC passed a vote of condolence with his father.
For poor W.G. it was a second awful bereavement in the space of
six years; his daughter Bessie, only 20 years old, had died of
typhoid fever in 1899.
By a tragic coincidence, Lord Lilford – another of the ‘famous
men’ in this story – also knew what it was like to lose a child. His
only son, 13-year-old Thomas, failed to recover from what
should have been a routine adenoids operation in 1909. His wife
then died shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, and
during the conflict his Northamptonshire home – Lilford Hall, just
six miles from Oundle – was requisitioned by the military and
most of the contents sold off, leaving just a suite of rooms for his
own use. He passed away in Kettering General Hospital shortly
before Christmas 1945 and ‘Wisden’ overlooked the fact in its
obituary section until Northampton-born Matthew Engel rectified
the oversight when he became editor of the cricketer’s bible in
the 1990s. He deserves to be there because, in addition to
keeping Northamptonshire afloat during his long stint as
President between 1903 and 1921, he also played a single first-
class match – aged 48 – against All India at the County Ground in
1911.
His Lordship was generous to NCCC, to OTCC (listed as a Patron
on the 1897 fixture card, along with the Marquis of Exeter and
the Worshipful Company of Grocers, and appearing for the club
against the County’s Club and Ground side at Wantage Road as
late as June 1906 when fast bowler ‘Bumper’ Wells shattered his
stumps for five) and, as we’ve seen with that clock turret, to
Oundle School. But he was even more inclined to offer the best of
everything to those who played in country house matches at
Lilford Hall. Many years later, Peterborough’s Alex Snowden – a
talented left-hander and the first batsman to score a century for
Northamptonshire against the Australians, in 1934 – recaptured
the flavour of those games in a lovely article for the Journal of the
Cricket Society. For starters, of course, you had to be picked.
Thorp, the tamer of S.G. Smith and Warmington back in ’07,
usually captained Lilford’s XI, with a couple of professionals from
the County staff ‘mainly to do the bowling’ – but according to
Snowden it was unusual for the side to take the field with fewer
than six players of first-class experience, and often it was more.
And woe betide any cricketer who pitched up late. ‘Play’ was
always called at 11.30am and anyone not on parade then without
a very good excuse was unlikely to find another invitation coming
his way. That, of course, would mean missing out on a Lilford
luncheon (definitely NOT lunch) taken at 2pm sharp. No wonder
his Lordship appeared, as a contemporary rhyme claimed, ‘as
round as a pea’:
‘A full 45 minutes (plus) was allowed to enjoy it, for it was a
wonderful repast. His Lordship’s servants, in their colourful black
and yellow regalia, would wait at table and also see that the
glasses were kept full. Charles Thorp, the ‘major Domo’ took
charge of the carving of the cold roast beef, whole hams, steak
and kidney pies and galantines. This was followed by fruit pies in
season or fruit salad laced with clotted cream, specially prepared
in the Lilford dairy. Finally, there was always a whole stilton
cheese on table, with cheddar for those who might prefer it. The
cheese was traditionally eaten with rich fruit cake, liberally spread
with even richer farm butter. For refreshment, there was a
selection of whisky, beer, various wines and port. However, the
piece-de-resistance was the home-brewed teetotal ginger beer.
This was served from magnum champagne bottles and could be
described as vintage ginger beer. It was wonderful stuff,
extremely popular with all, even down to the hardened topers.’
When Snowden hit a century for Lilford’s team he was summoned
afterwards to his host’s marquee where he was congratulated and
presented with one of his special home-grown rosy apples:
‘He always watched the cricket from the marquee, sitting in his
mobile wheelchair. To receive one of these apples was quite an
honour at Lilford, for his Lordship presented them only for
meritorious performances. He had to use a wheelchair to travel
around the grounds and the estate yard, as he was crippled in his
later years with arthritis.’
It’s a touching but rather sad vignette concerning a man whose
life – whilst unquestionably privileged in a material sense – was
far from a bed of roses. He loved his cricket, to the extent that in
his younger days he reportedly carried a ball around with him in
case the opportunity for a spot of fielding practice arose. In
addition to the money he put into Northamptonshire cricket from
his own pocket, he was ready to use his social clout – as
alderman, landowner, cattle breeder and prominent Freemason –
to cajole others into doing the same. It was a bit rotten of Bertie
to skittle him out like that in 1901, as one OTCC man to another,
but as a cricketer in the fullest sense you suspect this munificent
peer of the realm would have taken it in his stride.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘The old world in its sunset was fair to see.’
(Winston Churchill)
‘We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because
they are what help us grow.’
(H.G. Wells, ‘The Time Machine.’)
‘For learning is not our object here, but doing. (The boys) may
learn things in a deadly static way, they may learn much in a
static way and gain nothing of life. Not here, I hope. No, the
germs of life come from the spirit…’
(F.W. Sanderson)
The extraordinary men just keep coming in this story.
Headmaster of Oundle School from 1892 until his death in
harness in June 1922, Durham-born Frederick William Sanderson
still enjoys an exalted reputation as one of the most forward-
thinking educationalists of his time. His friend and biographer
H.G. Wells – who was chairing the meeting of the National Union
of Scientific Workers in the Botanical Theatre at University College
London when Sanderson suffered his fatal collapse after
delivering a speech – believed him ‘beyond question the greatest
man I have ever known with any degree of intimacy’ while
distinguished Oundelian Richard Dawkins has claimed that were
F.W.S. alive today he would be “contemptuous of the
pussyfooting, lawyer-driven fastidiousness of Health and Safety,
and the accountant-driven league tables that dominate modern
education…’ Arthur Marshall paid tribute to ‘Sanderson’s great
principle…the school must be made to suit the boy and not vice-
versa.’ Among the early suspicions about ‘Beans’ (under whose
stewardship the number of pupils grew five-fold from a paltry 92
when he arrived) were firstly, that he wasn’t a clergyman;
secondly, he hadn’t attended a public school himself; thirdly, he
had a distinct northern accent; and, fourthly, he didn’t attach
sufficient importance to sport. It was even claimed, horror of
horrors, that his bow ties were of the ‘made-up’ variety.
According to his biography:
‘His lack of inside knowledge of games was to Sanderson a matter
of deep regret. He was keenly interested and took a real delight
in all matters athletic. He held that every boy should take an
active part in the games (but) to an 'Aristocracy of Athletes’ he
was strongly opposed.’
And yet, of course, he employed Bertie Grace and a host of
professionals with first-class experience, presided over the
building of the pavilion and – as a consequence of the growing
roll – saw cricket flourish handsomely at the School. Just one
other irresistible (if somewhat tenuous) link between the game
and this great teacher; one of his colleagues at the School,
Samuel Gimson Squire, wrote an article entitled ‘Sanderson of
Oundle’ which appeared in the magazine Northamptonshire Past
and Present in 1960. Squire made a single first-class appearance
for Cambridge University and in 1922, the year of Sanderson’s
death, caused comment whilst playing for Leicestershire
Gentlemen against their Northamptonshire counterparts at
Aylestone Road by bowling left-arm to a right-handed batsman
(‘Tubby’ Vials) and right-arm to the left-handed Roy Wright. An
unorthodox approach of which his old boss would surely have
approved!
Probably the pick of the cricketers in the Sanderson era was
Christopher Gimson, who played for his native Leicestershire after
the First World War whilst on home leave from the Indian Civil
Service. His five years in the Eleven – between 1902 and 1906 –
brought him 1,950 runs and 96 wickets, and he was captain for
an unprecedented three years. Gimson turned out in club cricket
for Leicester Ivanhoe and must have endured some good-natured
ribbing when he then played against them for Oundle Rovers in
1911. Northampton-born Charles Wood, a prolific run-scorer for
the Foxes in the County Championship, hit an unbeaten double-
century, Gimson and his fellow trundlers logged bowling figures
to forget…and Christopher’s two brothers were both playing for
the opposition! Gimson made old bones and maintained his keen
interest in the game; at a special star-studded Savoy Hotel dinner
in July 1951 to honour Freddie Brown’s achievements as captain
of MCC in Australia, he found himself seated at a table with,
amongst others, Jack Hobbs, Percy Fender, Peter May and the
famous cartoonist Tom Webster, and a few years later he
attended the opening of the School’s new pavilion. He also saw
his county win the Championship for the first time under Ray
Illingworth in 1975 (with the deft strokeplay of 18-year-old David
Gower catching the eye), passing away later that year at the ripe
old age of 88.
Any cricketing body – school, club or county – needs its reliable
types to keep things ticking over behind the scenes. At the
School, a long and distinguished series of pros have supplied
cricketing and worldly wisdom (and sometimes wit) to help the
boys hone their skills, make the right decisions in match
situations and choose the best kit – possibly with a vested
interest if they were selling it themselves - as well as offering a
sympathetic ear and occasionally issuing a rocket or two, all in
support of the Master-in-Charge.
Precisely what Cribden’s duties as ‘professional’ were back in
1882 we don’t know; the School’s own records suggest that
George Basford was the first, in the 1890s, while a welter of
former first-class players worked there over the following two
decades – including Surrey’s Richard Humphrey, a top-flight
batsman in his day whose body was found in the River Thames
near Waterloo Bridge in 1906. An inquest was told ‘he had no
trouble of any kind, and he had means’ so the coroner recorded
simply ‘found drowned.’ But he had been no stranger to ill-
health and poverty over the years, and his story features in David
Frith’s definitive chronicle of cricket suicides, ‘Silence of the
Heart.’ Another ‘Brown Hatter’ was Fred Holland, one of the
‘Noted Cricket Coaches’ featured in an issue of the Boy’s Own
Paper in 1916, seven years after leaving The Oval for Oundle.
Holland was even permitted (in April 1913) to advertise in Athletic
News for some help in the form of ‘a good bowler, able to coach
junior boys, light duties during morning…’ The longest-serving
of all the pros, though, was William Montgomery, who came to
the School in 1922 following an intermittent county career with
Surrey, Somerset, Cheshire and Hertfordshire. He stayed for over
a quarter-of-a-century (‘respected and loved by generations of
schoolboys’ according to his obituary) before retiring just after
the Second World War, and continued to live in Glapthorn Road in
the town until his death in 1952.
Arthur Fielder of Kent and England (who claimed an ‘all-ten’ for
Players against Gentlemen at Lord’s in 1906 and was a Wisden
Cricketer of the Year), William Brown, who appeared for
Leicestershire between 1910 and 1919, and Nottinghamshire’s
James Iremonger (whose brother Albert was doing the same job at
The Leys in Cambridge) also spent time at the School before the
Glamorgan connection – in the shape of Arnold Dyson and Allan
Watkins, the latter another international and the last man to field
a ball struck by Don Bradman in a Test match – took over between
1948 and 1986. Tony Howorth, a prolific run-scorer for
Peterborough Town, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and
Northamptonshire 2nd XI in his playing days and who retired as
pro in 2003, happily remains a regular at both the School ground
and Milton Road, ever a stickler for the game’s best traditions and
a rich store of knowledge and anecdote. And Merwe Genis from
Paarl in the Western Cape – a ‘pied piper’ when it comes to
coaching and enthusing the rising generation – has been
instrumental in enabling any number of young local cricketers to
gain some valuable winter experience in the sunshine of South
Africa.
Writing in ‘The Cricketer’ magazine in 1933, ‘M.A.’ reckoned
‘certainly (Oundle) School cannot complain that they have not had
first-rate professionals as mentors.’ Spot on, ‘M.A.’ He also
commented on ‘the heavy ground, of clay’ which meant little
encouragement for the bowlers in a dry summer, and insisted
‘Oundle is not as well-known in the cricket world as its
Northampton (sic) neighbour Wellingborough, who have a cricket
record which stands very high.’ This is not the place to air old
rivalries. Suffice it to say that Wellingborough may have W.G.
Grace’s doorstep, ‘rescued’ from the demolition of his former
home by the legendary E. Murray Witham, eccentric schoolmaster
par excellence who buried whisky bottles containing cricketers’
autographs under his school’s square; but Oundle had the great
man in person, three times. When, incidentally, the two schools
got around to playing each other in the early-1990s the two sons
of BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 1975, Northamptonshire
and England hero David Steele, appeared on opposing sides –
Arran for Oundle and Mark for Wellingborough.
Finding people to do the donkey work was and is even more
important at a ‘weekend’ club like OTCC, and it seems as though
the Town was well-served in that respect as what’s frequently
described as the game’s ‘Golden Age’ – beginning roughly in
1890 and ending definitely in the late-summer of1914 – neared
its close. There was the faithful Richards, whose commitment to
sport including lobbying persistently at meetings of the Urban
Council (to which he was elected in 1901) for a public recreation
ground in the town, although he struggled to obtain much
support for his proposal; and in January 1912 the death was
noted of former Empingham grocer and champion rose-grower
Mark Canner, at the age of 83. One morning in his North Street
lodgings he asked his landlady for a cup of tea, the universal
panacea, because he felt unwell; he drank it and promptly
expired. He was, according to the Northampton Mercury, a
‘veteran cricketer…(who) during his residence in Oundle scarcely
missed a match as score-keeper to the club.’ For much of his life
‘toothache and headache never made his acquaintance’ and it was
claimed that even in his eighties ‘he could pass as less than
sixty.’ Scorer Canner – also famed for growing king-sized
gooseberries ‘that rivalled plums for size’ – would have
acknowledged the signals of Robert Lilleker, who umpired with
OTCC for 13 years (‘missing one match only’) before taking over
as groundsman; a worthy successor to Daniel Dakin of the 1870s.
Oundle Town’s fixture list looks a fairly parochial affair around
1912 – the memorable if somewhat soggy season that saw the
innovative Triangular Tournament and little Northamptonshire
shock cricketing England by finishing as runners-up to Yorkshire
in the Championship; but for a day’s rain on August 7 the title
could have been theirs. Oundle focused on playing sides like
Ashton, Barnwell, Elton, Warmington, Kings Cliffe, Islip, Benefield
and – inevitably – Peterborough, and judging by one anecdote
were not always a strong combination on the field. In 1939, the
Thrapston Journal carried an article on Miss Sophie Short to mark
her 40-year stint as scorer at Thurning CC. She referred with
some relish to a match in this period when her village side racked
up 300 for seven and then dismissed Oundle ‘in half-an-hour’! It
all seems pretty unlikely, but clearly the man from the Journal
wasn’t about to let the facts get in the way of a good tale.
Altogether better chronicled is an equally one-sided game in the
opposite direction in May 1905, the month of Northamptonshire’s
debut as a first-class county. Milton Park ‘brought a weak team’
to Oundle and were demolished for 53, the hosts responding with
280-4 when time ran out. In that same summer the club was
able to field a Wednesday team against local rivals including
Thrapston; the ‘Wednesdays’ remained a feature of the OTCC
fixture list for many years. A wonderful photograph from this
period shows eleven men and eleven women outside the pavilion
at Milton Road, the familiar wall visible, all in cricket attire, with a
scorer (Mr Canner?) in the group too. Might OTCC have been
running a ladies’ team long before the current progressive set-up
came into being?
The 1914 season saw the School under I.G. Owen win three and
draw five of their eight matches. The Town (usually described in
this period as ‘Oundle Tennis and Cricket Club’ after a tennis
section was formed around 1909) had one of their final flings at
Kings Cliffe in July, and Oundle Rovers looked forward to their
two-day contest at Burghley Park starting on August 14. By then,
of course, Great Britain had been at war for ten days. The Bank
Holiday Monday preceding the outbreak of hostilities was a
deceptively peaceful affair in the town, according to the
Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph: ‘(There was) no public
attraction and those who did not take themselves away found the
river the principal attraction for fishing and boating…’ County
cricket drifted on for a while until the intervention of Oundle’s
distinguished former visitor W.G. Grace, who insisted in a letter to
The Sportsman on August 27: ‘It is not fitting at a time like this
that able-bodied men should be playing cricket by day and
pleasure seekers look on. I should like to see all first-class
cricketers of suitable age set a good example and come to the
help of their country without delay in its hour of need.’ Grace
himself died just over a year later, in the autumn of 1915. The
County Championship ended on September 2 and didn’t resume
until May 1919, by which time an awful lot in the world had
changed.
As soon as war was declared around 30 reservists left from
Oundle station, seen off by local worthies including Sanderson,
McKee and J.H. Smith, the last-named by then chairman of the
Urban Council, who ‘spoke with emotion.’ Just five weeks later
Smith’s own son was dead, a casualty of the Battle of the Marne,
and J.H. himself (‘upright in all his dealings’ according to his
obituary in the Mercury) passed away at his home, Cobthorne, in
February 1916, aged 57. Four masters at the School joined up
before the end of 1914 and all were all killed in action. But public
school cricket continued during the war, even as the casualty lists
swamped the newspaper pages and left countless families
bereaved; as Walker says, ‘boys could be in the School one term
and their names on the Roll of Honour the next.’ On July 8 1916,
a week into the bloody Somme offensive, Oundle lost to The Leys
by 14 runs in a low-scoring home match, and a year later the
youngsters were taught a batting lesson by Northamptonshire
professional Bob Haywood who walloped seven sixes and 20 fours
in 162 for Lord Lilford’s XI – the only match his team played that
summer. By then, old boy Alexander Basil Crawford – a Captain in
the West Yorkshire Regiment – had died in France a few days
short of his 25th birthday. He played for his native Warwickshire
during their Championship-winning campaign in 1911 but
switched to Nottinghamshire the following season and took 51 off
the touring Australians at Trent Bridge. Crawford was, in the
words of his battalion commander, ‘a most able officer (and) a
most gallant man, full of dash and pluck.’ He was also a very
keen golfer, who once set out to play seven rounds at the Bulwell
Forest course in a single day. He teed off at 4.30am and duly
completed his task, holing out for 126th time at 10pm. Within
weeks the School was also mourning the death of Edward Crozier
MacBryan, brother of the Somerset and future England batsman,
Jack. He captained the Eleven in his final year at Oundle, 1912,
and also turned out for Wiltshire. Just a couple of the 221
Oundelians who gave their lives in World War One and are
remembered with quiet dignity in the School’s beautiful Memorial
Chapel.
Even closer to home was the loss of Lieutenant Roy Broughton
Sanderson, the headmaster’s recently-married eldest son, who
died of wounds at Estaires in April 1918. According to F.W.s
biography: ‘The two had closely sympathetic minds, and to him
Sanderson had looked for the development of his own education
ideals.’ Roy’s name appears on the Oundle and Ashton war
memorial outside The Talbot, unveiled by his father in November
1920, along with that of Gunner Ralph Lilleker, son of OTCC’s
long-serving umpire/groundsman.
With the carnage over the appetite for cricket as a symbol of
normality was unsurprisingly strong. A magazine for boys – ‘The
Captain’ – featured many of the captains of the leading public
schools in August 1920, including Oundle’s G.C. Dewes. This
followed the lead of ‘Wisden’ whose Five Cricketers of the Year in
both the 1918 and 1919 editions were all schoolboys. One of
them, Harry Calder of Cranleigh, was traced to a nursing home in
Cape Town in 1994, the year before his death, and was unaware
of the honour, insisting he hadn’t played cricket since leaving
school!
Oundle School looked to make up for lost time and played 13
matches in 1919, the highest number since the 1890s.
Reassuringly, they met a Northamptonshire Club and Ground side
including 56-year-old Lord Lilford – who contributed a dozen
runs. And, as we’ll see, some of the best cricketers the School
ever produced came into the picture over the next few seasons.
They also enjoyed arguing about the game too, judging by a letter
sent to the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News in 1921 and
discussed at great length by F.J. Sellicks on his ‘Cricket Causerie’
page. It all stemmed from a match between Town and Field
Houses, which saw the latter – much the stronger side on paper
with eight members of that year’s XI – pile up 196 and leave the
opposition two-and-a-half hours to get the runs, spread over two
days. The Town Houses captain put in a ‘good, but not forcing,
bat – and a blocker’ at the top of the order, rather than risk his
best hitter who had just kept wicket for three hours in the blazing
sunshine and, the skipper reckoned, needed a rest. Together the
openers made 75 in an hour before the close, but some youthful
wranglers reckoned the tactics were misguidedly cautious. ‘School
opinion was divided’ reported the sagacious Sellick, but in the
end he came down on the side of the maligned batting captain.
So there.
The Oundle Town club was certainly up-and-running again in
1920, winning 11 and losing six of its 19 matches – helped by
Charles Wright, who won himself a bat as the best batsman of the
year, and A.W. Clark, named best bowler. Wright might have
needed a new willow wand by then; he was presented with one
back in 1913 (‘by Councillor Townsend’) for scoring a century
against Cotterstock – pleasing continuity. By the end of 1920
OTCC was fundraising again to level another part of the ground (a
‘work in progress’ for many years) and Milton Road also staged a
dance for the Discharged Soldiers’ Federation with music from the
Warmington Excelsior Band. The Rovers, too, returned to a pre-
war pattern; in August 1923 a strong-looking side (including
Thorp and Richard Beresford) thoroughly enjoyed a five-day tour
of Norfolk with fixtures against Sheringham Visitors, Great
Yarmouth, Aylsham and Overstrand. And before long another
notable figure in the story made the journey to Oundle from
Wantage Road.
CHAPTER SIX
‘The period between the wars, uneasy armistice as it may be
called now, had many long moments of ease and enjoyment when
the sporting pages of the newspapers were more frequently read
than the columns which reported the Wall Street crash or the
latest speech by Hitler…’
(Dudley Carew – ‘To the Wicket’)
‘But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks – ‘Play up! Play up!
And play the game!’
(‘Vitai Lampada’ – Sir Henry Newbolt)
Wilfrid Timms knew all about schoolboy cricketing heroics.
Northampton-born (his family’s terraced house in Clarke Road
backed on to the County Ground) and a pupil at the town’s
Grammar School nearby, the 18-year-old made a national name
for himself by scoring an unbeaten 154 to save the match for
Northamptonshire against Essex in 1921. It was only his second
Championship appearance and earned his school chums – who
had carried him shoulder-high from the field – an extra day’s
holiday courtesy of the delighted governors. He missed the
County’s next match, against Warwick Armstrong’s all-
conquering Australians, while he sat (successfully) his Cambridge
entrance exam; had he made runs against them, might the
panicky England selectors – who picked 30 players in the five
Tests that summer – have taken a punt on him? In the event, he
captained Northamptonshire a couple of times later in the season
(as the ‘senior’ amateur in terms of appearances, despite the
presence of old pros like George Thompson) and went on to
notch nearly 4,000 first-class runs in 99 matches spread over a
dozen years.
He figures here because after leaving Cambridge University in
1925 – without a Blue, sadly, although he appeared several times
for the Light Blues against county opposition – he took a teaching
job at Oundle and became the School’s Master-in-Charge of
cricket, still featuring in the County Championship during the
holidays as so many schoolmaster amateurs did. And here the
author must declare a personal interest. Wilfrid was a distant
relative on my maternal grandmother’s side of the family and I
met him in the 1980s, not long before he died, at his home near
Charterhouse School in Godalming. He moved there in 1932 and
ran the school’s cricket for many years (Peter May his most
notable ‘product’) along with professional George Geary, as well
as teaching modern languages. He was a courteous old
gentleman with some good Northamptonshire stories and still
had all the newspaper cuttings and congratulatory letters and
telegrams from his 1921 triumph tucked inside an old school
register. ‘Wilf’ had rarely a bad word for anyone, although he
struggled a little when it came to his fellow County amateur
Vallance Jupp who once accused him of being “a bloody coward”
for giving himself room against Nottinghamshire’s Harold
Larwood at his fastest – a tactic subsequently employed, of
course, by Don Bradman during the ‘Bodyline’ series in Australia.
The Oundle Eleven’s results were nothing special during his
tenure – in fact in his first season at the School, 1926, they failed
to win any of their eight matches. But he knew his stuff and
hopefully some of those who shone in subsequent summers
benefited from that knowledge. Wilfrid also turned out for
Oundle Town, and at the end of May 1926 – the month of the
General Strike – he opened the innings against Lord Lilford’s XI
and made 27 out of 104 as Oundle lost by 92 runs. His team-
mates that day were L.A. Baker, J.G.R. Potter, a Mr Tebbutt (who
top-scored with 33), A. Singlehurst, I.M. Carling, W. Brown
(possibly the pro at the School), J. Richardson, C. Marriott, A.
Baker and an anonymous or possibly absent eleventh man.
While Timms was impressing the Wantage Road cognoscenti as a
schoolboy, Reggie Ingle (a year-and-a-bit younger) was heading
the run-scoring lists at Oundle School. Born in Cornwall, Ingle
went on play 325 first-class games - substantially more than any
other Oundelian – and nearly all of them for Somerset, whom he
captained between 1932 and 1937. Ingle overlapped with Timms
at Cambridge and, like the future Master-in-Charge, missed out
on a Blue. He was fortunate to be working in the family law firm
(he became a solicitor in Bath, taking on some tough criminal
cases) because his father was willing to give him time off for
cricket; hence he was one of the ‘regular’ amateurs in the county
game, as opposed to the ‘occasionals’ who flitted in and out of
the side for the odd match, usually hacking off the professionals
(who could lose out on appearance and talent money) in the
process. But he was still regarded as a sufficiently glamorous
figure to warrant a full page portrait in one of the illustrated
newspapers in February 1931, marking his engagement to ‘the
leading lady of musical comedy’ Jean Colin, whose ‘mingled
charm and talent’ had secured her notable successes in
productions including ‘The Five o’clock Girl’ and ‘Here Comes the
Bride.’ The headline over the feature = ‘Women in Sport’ – was
very much of its time.
An indication of Ingle’s popularity with the Somerset teams he
skippered can be found in Bill Andrews’ wonderful memoir of his
chequered cricket career, ‘The Hand that Bowled Bradman’ –
published in 1973. Andrews doesn’t have a great deal of time for
the some of the amateurs he came across but describes Ingle as
‘very considerate’ and gives a flavour of his leadership style. On
one occasion, against Worcestershire at Weston-Super-Mare, the
captain promised his key all-rounder Arthur Wellard a bottle of
champagne if he dismissed the Nawab of Pataudi for a duck. The
prince promptly nicked one to wicketkeeper Wally Luckes who
dropped it; Pataudi made 222. Good idea by the captain, poor
execution from his stumper. But Ingle wasn’t a soft touch when it
came to dealing with the hired hands. The Yorkshire batsman
Maurice Leyland once gave the Somerset pros some likely winners
from the day’s racing programme and the scorer’s signals from
the pavilion indicated they were all coming in as planned.
Unfortunately, Herbert Sutcliffe was dropped several times while
the fielders’ thoughts were in the betting shop – and Ingle (not
averse to a flutter himself, as Andrews points out) had stern
words with the team, banning gambling during a match. Ingle
eventually fell foul of club politics and lost the captaincy in 1937,
rarely returning to the County Ground at Taunton before his
death in 1992.
Reggie Ingle’s Somerset side were not Championship contenders
as a rule – but another Oundle old boy, Frank Greenwood,
enjoyed the distinction of leading Yorkshire to the title in 1931,
his only full season in charge. His record at the School was pretty
modest but he managed a first-class hundred against Glamorgan
in 1929 and attracted a measure of notoriety when he and
Gloucestershire’s buccaneering skipper Bev Lyon agreed an
exchange of ‘freak’ declarations (before forfeitures were
permitted) in a rain-affected Championship match at Sheffield,
both men calling their batsmen in when four byes had been given
away in an effort to produce a positive result. The authorities
were not impressed, but ‘The Cricketer’ clearly liked the cut of his
jib:
‘After a very unpromising beginning (in 1931) Greenwood got his
side going so well that, though near the end of June they were
eighth in the table with a mere two wins to their credit, they
ended the year with sixteen victories. The old Oundle boy…set
an example (in the field) which has been copied in other quarters.
He was an advocate of the practice of having fielders standing in
very close to the opposing batsmen. Certainly many catches were
made in this manner which would not have been possible to old-
fashioned fielding.’
Greenwood died in the summer of 1963 after suffering a stroke
whilst – according to Wisden – watching the Fourth Test between
England and the West Indies on television in the Huddersfield
Conservative Club.
Meanwhile, a couple of other inter-war Oundelians made their
mark on the wider cricketing stage. Norman Gordon ‘Tiger’
Wykes was a Cambridge Blue who turned out for Essex, and his
finest hour came in 1927 when he notched 162 against a Kent
attack including three great spinners – A.P. ‘Tich’ Freeman, C.S.
‘Father’ Marriott and Frank Woolley – among the grey ammunition
boxes at Leyton. Then there was Henry Worgan Marshal, born in
Colombia but an Argentine international (against ‘Plum’ Warner’s
MCC touring side in 1927) who also came to England with the
South America team in 1932 and took 153 off Oxford University
in The Parks.
It was also an era of broken records at the School. In 1923 Philip
Mair thoroughly enjoyed himself against Lord Lilford’s XI, hitting
246 in an hour and 50 minutes – featuring 46 fours! Their
generous host’s side came a distant second after conceding 405-
7 (no rosy apples for them, presumably) with Greenwood
dismissing His Lordship for a single to end the match. The same
season also saw the School tackle a Northamptonshire Club and
Ground side including the qualifying Vallance Jupp. Then in May
1930 (the first year as Master-in-Charge for the popular Frank
Spragg, famously photographed with Clark Gable on the occasion
of the Hollywood star’s wartime visit to the School in 1943),
R.A.A. Beresford’s undefeated 307 in a house match back in 1888
was eclipsed by his own son Marcus – Spragg’s successor after
the Second World War – who clobbered 317 for School House
against Grafton, paving the way for a victory by 449 runs. The
vanquished boys must have emerged from ‘the game from hell’
(486-3 declared plays 37 all out) experiencing their own limited
version of the Great Depression then taking hold in the wider
world. Nor did Marcus ease up on his fellow pupils that season,
The Laxtonian recording his double-century against Dryden and a
hundred in each innings at the expense of Laundimer. Spragg
was perhaps better known as a rugby man; fellow Master Arthur
Marshall described him as ‘a genius (who) rapidly became the
scourge of the Midlands. Bedford fell before our boots.
Uppingham crumbled. Rugby, who may have invented the thing
but couldn’t always win, succumbed. Haileybury hung their
heads…’ Sport at the School, Marshall recalled, was ‘hurry and
bustle and drive.’ Writing in 1937, E.W. ‘Jim’ Swanton ventured
the opinion that ‘to be frank, one has come to regard Oundle as a
first-rate rugger school and to remain, perhaps, just a little
sceptical about their cricket’ – but Spragg worked hard to achieve
excellence in both.
A two-day cricket fixture against Stowe School at The Oval in July
1934 (the first of five such meetings between the two schools on
Surrey’s home ground, with Oundle boys filling a special train to
London) offered Spragg’s batsmen the chance to fill their boots
on a pitch prepared lovingly by groundsman ‘Bosser’ Martin and
traditionally offering precious little help to the trundlers. Stowe
piled up 323 all out but the School responded with 432-9
declared – the total bolstered by centuries from K.A. Payne and
A.D. Newsholme. It’s worth remembering that four years later
England, with lots more time available to bat, reached 903-7
declared against Australia on one of Martin’s shirtfronts with Len
Hutton contributing 364. Perhaps the most bizarre inter-war
individual performance, though, came from Maurice McConnell,
who in 1939 claimed three separate hat-tricks in the same
innings, bowling for Laxton in a house fixture. Legend has it that
McConnell – not the most enthusiastic cricketer in the School –
went straight from the field to the river to get in a spot of rowing,
which was much more in his line. A unique achievement in
cricket history? It would seem not. Those who keep records of
such things list three other instances, the first of them by a man
named Oldham for Penge (a place forever associated with Horace
Rumpole’s greatest courtroom triumph) against Croydon Revellers
in 1887. As Michael Caine didn’t say – not a lot of people know
that.
As the game prospered at Oundle School, so times remained a
mite tougher for OTCC – notwithstanding the odd successful
social event like the New Year’s Eve bash which saw 200 people
dance their way into 1927 to the music of Wally Stafford’s band in
Victoria Hall. On the field, an obvious bright spot was the
emergence of Jack Buswell, born in Barnwell and the son of
Oundle’s postmaster – also a Town stalwart who captained the
team – Percy Buswell. Jack not only demolished opposing sides
with his pacy bowling, snapping up 7-43 against Burghley Park in
May 1934, but also became the club’s Honorary Secretary and
Treasurer. He attracted interest from Northamptonshire – then in
the midst of their four-year ‘lean spell’ without a single first-
class win – and played the first of his 61 games for the County
against Leicestershire at Aylestone Road in 1936. Granted,
Oundle Town had known some grim days, but things were even
more shambolic than usual at Wantage Road that year with five
different captains taking charge of the side at various times, after
the initial appointee Geoffrey Cuthbertson had departed for the
United States! Buswell finished with 172 first-class wickets to his
name, including 7-61 at the expense of a strong Lancashire outfit
at Northampton in 1938:
C. Washbrook b Buswell 11
J.L. Hopwood b Buswell 48
J. Iddon b Partridge 2
N. Oldfield b Buswell 2
A.E. Nutter c Davis b Partridge 0
W.H.L. Lister c Dunkley b Buswell 1
E.W. Greenhalgh run out 5
W. Farrimond c James b Buswell 0
J.B. Bowes c James b Buswell 39
R. Pollard b Buswell 0
L.L. Wilkinson not out 0
Extras 8 Total: 116 all out
Buswell 18.2-2-61-7, Partridge 16-2-41-2, J.E. Timms 3-1-6-0.
Seven past, present or future Test cricketers in that Red Rose
side, and his success all the sweeter for coming in tandem with
his good friend Reg Partridge from Wollaston. Buswell was also
present the following year when history was made – yes,
Northamptonshire actually won a game. Buswell claimed three
scalps in each innings – bowling opener Les Berry twice – as
Robert Nelson’s side trounced the ‘Woollybacks’ by an innings
and 193 runs in front of a bank holiday crowd of 5,000, many of
whom gathered in front of the pavilion and demanded a speech
from the captain. As a bowler the former OTCC man wasn’t in the
class of Edward Winchester ‘Nobby’ Clark, the fiery left-armer
from the village of Elton – barely six miles up the road from
Oundle and just over the county border in Huntingdonshire – who
played eight Tests for England and captured 1,102 first-class
wickets for Northamptonshire between 1922 and 1947 (his
Wantage Road career punctuated by frequent rows and fall-outs
with the committee), still a record to this day. But Buswell ‘did a
job’ at a difficult time and helped to keep the County afloat.
Sadly, he was obliged to get through an awful lot of overs in a
side with limited bowling resources, and maybe his longish run
didn’t help; ‘a victim of unavoidable overwork’ according to
Northamptonshire historian Jim Coldham. He dropped out of the
side before the end of 1939, played no first-class cricket after the
war and died in Yorkshire in 1992. Elton was also the birthplace
of Frank Chamberlain – an occasional Northamptonshire amateur
in the late-1940s and subsequently chairman and president of
NCCC who also chaired the national governing body, the Test and
County Cricket Board (TCCB), from 1990 to 1994.
With Buswell taken by the County his old club battled on, and
made a concerted effort to put itself on a more secure financial
footing in 1937. Fund-raising events included the jolly old
favourites – a jumble sale, a dance in the town’s Victoria Hall
(admission two bob) and a grand draw to win a bottle of port and
a box of chocolates. The generosity of Mr North secured a new
sightscreen and the club also invested in some new bats and
gloves; a reminder of the happy days of the ‘club bag’ when the
trick was to avoid the pad with a strap missing, the imperfectly-
sprung bat or the gloves that old so-and-so had just taken off,
especially on a hot and sweaty day. But occasionally the accounts
still looked a bit sick, and in 1938 it took a personal donation of
£8 5s 9d from the president, Brigadier-General Algernon Francis
Holford Ferguson - late of the 2nd Life Guards and then living at
Polebrook Hall – to clear the debts. Then as now, a club could not
thrive by jumble alone.
By the summer of 1939, Oundle had decided to enter the Jaidka
Cup - a midweek Twenty20 (before it was called that) competition
for teams from the Peterborough area, named after a surgeon at
the city’s hospital, Karam Chand Jaidka FRCS. It is still contested
to this day, and OTCC re-entered it in 2016. This decision in ’39
meant some extra travelling for the players and arrangements for
a bus were made with Mr Howard. Transport could be a tricky
business for clubs in the days before most players had their own
cars, and how members got to and from matches would occupy
many committee hours at Oundle in the years to come. In June
1939, Town (D. Coleman, W.J. Hurry (captain), F.M. Wood, A.
Meunier, J. Baxter, B. Kisbee, A.W. Tansy, D. Laxton, E. Streather,
G. Mould and A. Collard) drew with Wellingborough, reaching
134-7 in reply to the opposition’s 153-7 declared. One member
of that side, Bernard Kisbee, put in many hours’ work on the
club’s behalf, he and his wife spearheading the ‘Entertainment
Committee’ in later years to raise much-needed funds so the likes
of General Ferguson wouldn’t have to keep dipping into their
pockets. But cricket was about to take a back seat again as
Neville Chamberlain announced one Sunday morning that this
country was at war with Hitler. Unlike the game’s delayed
response in 1914, the County Championship ended immediately;
Northamptonshire lost to Somerset in two days at Taunton and so
headed home the day before the Nazis invaded Poland. As Sir
Home Gordon wrote in The Cricketer: ‘England has now begun
the grim Test match against Germany.’
Oundle Town remained active at least in the early stages of the
conflict, playing Bourne in the Yarnold Cup in June 1940 as the
nation breathed a collective sigh of relief after Dunkirk but braced
itself for the seemingly inevitable invasion from across the
Channel as German troops occupied Paris. A. Meunier top-scored
in a disappointing Oundle total of 71 all out, one C. Pond proving
their nemesis with figures of 8-34. Bourne got home by five
wickets, boosted by a tally of 23 extras; all this reported in the
Grantham Journal under a large advertisement telling everyone
how to use their new ration books correctly. They also lost to the
School by three wickets in July. After that it looks as though the
club – ignoring the prevalent advice to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’
- went into cold storage for the duration.
Up the road, though, it was a very different story. Indeed, within
a few days of Japan’s surrender in August 1945 one of the
School’s pupils, Michael Hardy (who later appeared for
Buckinghamshire, Middlesex Second XI and Rovers), was picked
for Young Amateurs of Northamptonshire against Captain ‘Bertie’
Bolton’s XI as the County club began to prepare itself for
peacetime cricket; a welcome harbinger of returning normality, as
in 1919. A busy programme of fixtures was maintained at the
School throughout the war and results were impressive, due
initially to one of the most respected and durable figures ever to
wear Oundle’s colours.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things…’
(Matthew 25:21)
Some cricket historians maintain that Don Bradman’s 1948
Australians were the best team of all time; at any rate, the best-
equipped to beat what was put in front of them. Not overly
strong in the spin department, perhaps, but with a hugely
powerful batting line-up and three pace bowlers – Ray Lindwall,
Keith Miller and Bill Johnston – who made mincemeat of England’s
finest on a daily basis. They won 23 of their 31 first-class
matches, drawing the rest, and the last surviving captain to lead
an opposing side against The Don’s ‘Invincibles’ was John Michael
‘Mike’ Mills of Cambridge University and Warwickshire…not
forgetting Oundle School, Oundle Rovers and Oundle Town.
There is, as they say, a theme there.
Mills – born in Birmingham – came to the School as a pupil in
1935. His final season in the Eleven, 1940, saw him wreak havoc
with his leg-breaks and googlies (46 wickets at less than 13 runs
apiece) as well as notch 461 runs with the bat: ‘He kept an
extraordinarily good length for a bowler of this type,’ noted The
Laxtonian. In one of his final matches in School colours, against
OTCC, he dominated proceedings with six wickets for 43 and 64
runs. School days over, he volunteered for the Indian Army and in
an interview with the author on the occasion of his 85th birthday
in 2006 claimed he had experienced ‘a very cushy war’ – although
that involved an unpleasant bout of the tropical disease Sprue.
Early in his service career he had been advised to expect ‘a very
dull war’ if he didn’t smoke, and a pipe became his regular
companion thereafter.
Taking up his place at Cambridge aged 24 he wasted no time
making his presence felt on the cricket field. Lancashire and
Yorkshire both visited Fenner’s in May 1946 and against the latter
he took 7-69 from 25.5 overs, the best figures by an Oundelian
in first-class cricket until Ian Hodgson surpassed them, also for
the Light Blues, 36 years later. Len Hutton’s wicket may have
eluded Mills on that occasion but those of four England players –
Paul Gibb, Wilf Barber, Maurice Leyland (he of the racing tips) and
Frank Smailes – didn’t:
‘I can remember thinking that Maurice (Leyland) had aged a lot
during the war, and also nearly losing a finger trying to catch
Smailes when he belted one back at me! I think I was too excited
at that time to be worried about life. These days, of course,
everything worries me, but then I was very carefree and just
thinking how lucky I was.’
Yorkshire
L. Hutton b Hobson 10
P.A. Gibb c Mischler b Mills 50
W. Barber c Bodkin b Mills 31
M. Leyland c Bodkin b Mills 5
N.W.D. Yardley c Conradi b Hobson 24
A.B. Sellers c Haynes b Mills 44
T.F. Smailes c Conradi b Mills 56
K. Fiddling b Hobson 25
E.P. Robinson b Mills 15
W.E. Bowes not out 14
A. Booth c Mischler b Mills 2
Extras 15 Total: 291 all out
Haynes 10-3-34-0, Hobson 29-8-80-3, Bodkin 28-8-64-0, Mills
25.5-7-69-7, Trapnell 7-0-29-0.
Note a couple of catches in the innings for another Oundle old
boy, Eric Conradi, who scored heavily for Cambridge in wartime
games, while Barry Trapnell also featured in the students’ attack.
An old boy of University College School, Trapnell represented the
Gents against the Players at Lord’s that summer, shared the new
ball with ‘Gubby’ Allen for Middlesex against Yorkshire at Bramall
Lane, Sheffield – and served as Headmaster of Oundle School
between 1968 and 1984. For his part, Mills turned out four times
for Warwickshire in ’46 and by May 1948 was leading Cambridge
against the Aussies – although his opposite number over the
three days was the tourists’ vice-captain Lindsay Hassett rather
than Bradman himself:
‘Obviously it was a thrill to play against them. At lunchtime on
the second day I was trying to persuade Lindsay to go on batting
because otherwise the game would have been over very early!
Fortunately they were keen to get their opener Bill Brown back
into form, and he took ages and ages to score 200. So at least we
didn’t get carted around the field.’
Mills claimed the much-prized wicket of Arthur Morris (who
scored nearly 2,000 runs on the tour), and although beaten by an
innings the students – with Trevor ‘Barnacle’ Bailey holding out
for two-and-a-half hours to make 66 not out – managed to take
the match into a third day, and nearly 25,000 people turned up to
watch. A far cry from the average Fenner’s crowd of today. Bailey
was one of four future England players in Mills’ side that year –
along with John Dewes, Hubert Doggart and Doug Insole – and
they somehow ended up losing to Oxford at Lord’s by an innings
and eight runs! That was his final first-class match, but far from
the end of his active cricket. The likes of Free Foresters, Cryptics
and, of course, both Rovers and Town benefited from his
presence after he returned to Oundle to teach, eventually taking
over from Marcus Beresford as Master-in-Charge in 1961. He
worked closely with Arnold Dyson and Allan Watkins and could
take the credit for bringing both those professionals to the
School, courtesy of a chance encounter on the field in 1946:
‘One of the Championship matches I played for Warwickshire was
against Glamorgan who had Austin Matthews, the ex-Northants
bowler, in their team. I’d met him before the war when he
coached and umpired at Stowe School. Austin said he knew that
Oundle didn’t have a cricket pro and he knew someone who
might be interested. That was Arnold, who duly came. And
because he was there, Wilf Wooller (Glamorgan’s long-serving
and often controversial captain/secretary) sent his two boys to
the school. When Arnold retired I remember having an argument
with the bursar about who might follow him. He didn’t think we’d
find anyone but I asked him to let me try. Anyhow, Wooller said
that if we wrote to Framlingham we might persuade Allan to
come, which he did. And that all stemmed from that one match
in ’46.’
Shortly after coming back to the School from Cambridge, Mills
became secretary and treasurer of the Rovers – and remained in
post for the best part of six decades. In the course of our
interview he paid a touching little tribute to Reade and Winch who
began the whole thing way back in 1881: ‘God bless them for
starting it,’ he said. Similar sentiments would be expressed by
many to J.M.M. for keeping it going through thick and thin; the
torch has now passed to Tony Howorth, helped by Jimmy Nicholls,
and the Rovers continue to log some excellent results in the
annual Cricketer Cup tournament – even if the traditional ‘Week’
has added a few extra grey hairs to Howorth’s head each year.
And what should always be the core cricketing values remained
important to Mills:
‘There’s immense enthusiasm and a procession of really talented
players (at Oundle) and the percentage of matches won over the
last few years really speaks for itself. I do enjoy watching the
modern generation although as a very ancient fuddy-duddy I do
wish there was less noise going on most of the time!’
Mike Mills passed away in November 2014, aged 93. His long life
bridged David Lloyd George and David Cameron, Lionel Tennyson
and Alastair Cook, the cat’s whisker and the iPad. Like E.W.
Swanton he was ‘sort of a cricket person’ – even fitting his
honeymoon arrangements around the Cryptics two-day fixture
against Cambridge University at Fenner’s in 1957 - but so much
more besides. His son Peter provided the perfect epitaph at the
end of a heartfelt but entertaining address during Mike’s
memorial service in the School chapel:
‘Over the last few weeks of his life, my parents would take the car
up on to the School playing fields and have a very gentle walk.
My father therefore saw the demolition of the old cricket pavilion
and the foundations of the new one…which the School have very
kindly named after him. For his many friends and particularly for
his family it will be a permanent and reassuring reminder of his
immense contribution. He was a wonderful husband, father and
grandfather – a great man that typified the spirit of all that is
good of Oundle.’
No account of Oundle Rovers cricket can overlook the immense
contribution of Lovel Garrett, another remarkable personality who
played a key role in reviving the team after the war. It was fitting
that when the Rovers held a special centenary dinner in 1981
Lovel and Mike Mills should be joint-presidents, with the former
chairing the event. Arriving at the School in 1925, he went on to
captain one of its best-ever rugby sides – the unbeaten XV of
1929 – and was also secretary of cricket. After Cambridge he
taught at Cranleigh School, although his tenure there was
interrupted by army service which saw him spend nearly five years
as a Prisoner of War, captured at St Valery in the summer of1940
(following a gallant rearguard action against impossible odds) by
a certain General Erwin Rommel; as Lovel recalled, he could only
counter the future Desert Fox’s state-of-the-art tanks with ‘an
empty revolver and one Mills bomb’ leaving him ‘at a distinct
disadvantage.’ His fascinating letters home from Oflag VII – an
antidote to the rather ‘gung-ho’ view of POW life often portrayed
on the screen – are preserved in the Oundle School archives and
contain reassuring references to reading Wisden and The
Laxtonian (“I hear young Bennett played for The Rest versus
Lord’s Schools”), whilst trying to make the best of a long and
tedious incarceration. Notwithstanding this unhappy experience,
he wore his Royal Northumberland Fusiliers tie frequently and
proudly. Later, he was a familiar figure at Rovers Week and
actually returned to Oundle as a master for seven years before his
retirement in 1971. As well as his sporting activities he is
remembered fondly for forays into amateur dramatics: ‘As an
actor in low comedy…characterised by a resolute refusal to learn
his lines, which necessitated the carrying of a series of
improbable ‘props’ behind which to conceal pieces of paper.’
After living for many years in the village of Sudborough, and
serving as a local councillor, he died in 1995 aged 83. The
Laxtonian noted: ‘His love of Oundle and his readiness to “repay
his nurture” have been conspicuous throughout his life.’
Mike Mills features in several of the OTCC match reports from
1950 - the summer of those little pals of mine, Ramadhin and
Valentine - which looks to have been something of a vintage year
for the club. It fielded two teams most weekends and a full
fixture list featured Ramsey, St Neots, Quorn, Uppingham,
Rushden, Higham Ferrers, Huntingdon and Kimbolton as well as
the regulars like Wellingborough, Burghley Park, Barnwell, Bourne
and Oundle Rovers. They also tackled Brush Sports from
Loughborough for the first time, and a team photograph from
that match has the Oundle players posing in front of the Milton
Road scoreboard which shows a total of 238-3, with 107 to
batsman number three and the last man out for 52.
The century-maker was J.S. ‘Jimmy’ Lowe – local schoolteacher,
Oundle Town’s secretary-cum-general factotum for 38 years and,
according to former team-mates, a skilled enough batsman to
have scored runs at a much higher level. Hailing originally from
the Liverpool area, Lowe moved down to Oundle after war service
– drawn by its relatively favourable summer weather statistics,
which he felt would ensure him plenty of cricket in his holidays
from the town’s Secondary Modern School! Stephen Radcliffe,
who taught with him, recalls Jimmy spending time in the staff
room sorting out his weekend teams (no selection committee
then) using criteria rather different to those employed in the first-
class game: “His wife is doing teas, so he’s got to play…he’s only
available one day this weekend, and he’s paid his sub…he’s been
away on holiday and needs a game.” Once the permutations had
been sifted and sorted he would write out the team-sheet and
stick it in the window of a baker’s shop in the town’s Market
Place. A great servant to the club, and anyone scoring a match at
Milton Road today will, in all probability, sit on a wooden bench
that bears Jimmy Lowe’s name. Bob Barton, who had made the
club’s previous three-figure score in 1948, notched the fifty that
afternoon. When term was over at the School and Mike Mills was
available, he immediately made his presence felt with 68 at home
to St Neots and then 6-46 against Brotherhoods from
Peterborough on successive weekends.
Others to figure prominently included Mike Amps, whose family
business has been keeping Oundle folk well-stocked with fine
wines and other comestibles – possibly even ‘a rump and a
dozen’ - for over a century. He was still a regular and very
welcome spectator at Oundle to the end of the 2014 season after
a prolific career with OTCC, Northampton Saints, Northants
Amateurs and the County’s Second XI. In 1954 Amps batted
number four in a Championship game for the ‘stiffs’ against
Lancashire at Wantage Road – following Vince Broderick, Brian
Reynolds and Peter Arnold in the batting order! Sadly, Mike died
in February 2015, coincidentally just a few days after Reynolds.
And then there was the remarkable Doctor E. Donovan ‘Don’ Tagg
– a long-time Master at the School and a good enough leg-
spinner (“turned it square” according to a former OTCC team-
mate) to play for Chorley in the Lancashire League and also for
Cambridgeshire – who in 1950 demolished Kimbolton with a haul
of 7-46. Tagg, who had taken notes at a lecture given by Albert
Einstein at Princeton University before the war, was a pioneer in
the teaching of computing and an early proponent of metrication
after calculating in the 1950s the amount of time wasted in
educating pupils in the complexities of pounds, ounces, chains,
yards and Fahrenheit. A committed pacifist, he cared deeply
about social issues and once remarked: “I was born just before
World War One and got married just before World War Two, so I
dread to think what’ll happen when I die!” For the record, he
passed away in 1988 with his old club (which he served as
President in the 1960s) in a decidedly dodgy state. After reading
about Tagg’s life and work in a fascinating tribute put together by
his son Phillip, John Wake declared: “I would have loved to share a
common room with him” – not least to exchange favourite lines
from the classic films of the Marx Brothers, a mutual pleasure.
The 1950s also brought Godfrey Pumfrey – another cricketer of
outstanding pedigree – to the Town club. Back in 1938 he scored
111 for Northamptonshire’s Second XI against Worcestershire
Colts in the shadow of the cathedral at New Road, and not
surprisingly the County’s committee was keen to see more of
him. He duly received a letter from NCCC secretary Eric Coley,
but Godfrey’s ‘day job’ with the National Provincial bank probably
paid better and was certainly more secure employment than the
County could offer in those days. He turned out for
Northamptonshire in wartime matches, though, and lined up
alongside three past or future Test cricketers – Dennis Brookes,
‘Nobby’ Clark and New Zealander Bill Meritt – against the British
Empire XI in 1942. Nine years later, for Old Northamptonians
against Vallence at the now-built-upon Spinney Hill ground, he
conjured up one of the bowling performances of the season:
seven wickets for just three runs to secure a big victory. His
banking experience subsequently made him an obvious choice as
OTCC treasurer and he continued to represent the club until, as
his son Robin (an Old Laxtonian who also appeared for the Town
in the 1950s) relates, he called it a day – “That’s enough, boy” -
after hitting a century against Thrapston in a match that also saw
Dr Tagg claim a hat-trick. Unfortunately, he didn’t enjoy a long
retirement from the game and died in 1961, aged only 53.
It says a great deal for the resilience of OTCC – and the
enthusiasm for the game in Oundle generally – that the
organisation had rallied and rebuilt so swiftly after the Second
World War. One tangible sign of this is the number of OTCC
fixture cards printed; just 100 in 1938 but 250 by 1952, when
the Sunday side played four ‘all-day’ matches. In 1947 a stock of
caps were ordered in the traditional colours of red and black, but
they don’t appear to have proved bestsellers and those remaining
in stock in 1950 were sold off at five shillings a time! Around the
same time the committee debated the local rule that to score six
runs the ball must clear the old wall around the ground, and there
was also much discussion on the subject of a new pavilion. As
Robin Pumffrey remembered:
‘The old wooden one was a little bit of an embarrassment really.
We didn’t have a bar and used to pop over to the Wagon and
Horses (in West Street) for a drink. But visiting teams wanted to
have a wash and they’d just have a basin of water in the dressing
room! A quick splash and then off to the pub. You must
remember, though, that it was only a few years after the war and
people were perhaps a bit more prepared to tolerate that sort of
thing. The cricket at Oundle was always good and played in the
right spirit.’
An estimate for something a little grander was sought and
provided, but £300 was beyond the club’s means and the idea
had to be shelved for the time being. However, ‘new’ – after a
fashion – toilets were provided, one of them purchased at a sale
after the former Workhouse was shut down. Four garden seats
were also bought, not to mention (in 1951) crockery and a tea
urn, and to pay for all these ‘mod cons’ subscriptions were a
guinea (21 shillings or £1.05) a year, plus a match fee of 1/6d.
The club’s fundraising efforts didn’t always go according to plan;
in May 1957 the police were called to an OTCC-organised dance
at the Victoria Hall which had to be halted just after midnight
(rather than the scheduled finishing time of 1am) amid reports of
bottles being thrown. Around 100 people were left standing in
the street and ‘American servicemen’ were blamed for the fracas.
If they had been invited in the first place, one assumes they
weren’t again.
Oundle Town were not playing league cricket at this stage – but in
1950 moves were afoot to launch a Northamptonshire County
League, instigated by the County’s (and shortly England’s)
energetic John Bull of a captain, Freddie Brown. He arrived at
Wantage Road in 1949 and immediately revitalised the County,
whilst expressing concern at the lack of home-grown cricketers
making the grade. ‘The main reason for failure in the past has
been that a larger gap existed between county and club cricket
here than anywhere else,’ he wrote. ‘There is no doubt that
Yorkshire’s consistent success is due to the standard of the
league cricket there.’ And so, on March 13 1950, representatives
of a handful of clubs were invited to a meeting in the canteen at
British Timken – the roller-bearings manufacturer in Northampton
who employed a large number of Northamptonshire players,
including Brown – to consider the proposition. The County
skipper told the gathering he was ‘flat out for the project
and…convinced it would do a great deal towards putting us on a
firmer footing.’ But who should be invited to join?
Suggestions were asked for – and among the clubs mentioned
was Oundle Town. This was not, perhaps, a major surprise, given
that both Wellingborough and Rushden had representatives there
on the night and were due to play OTCC during the 1950 season.
Further debate weeded out one or two of the possibles, including
Stewarts and Lloyds and Market Harborough, but those present
agreed that a provisional committee should be set up – chaired by
Brown and with Timken’s Tony Stewart as secretary – with a press
announcement put out, a further meeting scheduled for May and
the following clubs to be approached: Kettering Town,
Northampton Brewery Company, Old Northamptonians, Vallence,
Bedford Queens, Bedford Town, Finedon Dolben, NCCC (who, it
was envisaged, would enter a Colts or Club and Ground
side)….and Oundle Town. This was duly minuted and signed by
F.R.B. himself. With the three clubs involved that evening –
Wellingborough, Rushden and Irthlingborough – it would have
made a league of 12 teams; the same number that contests the
Northamptonshire Cricket League (NCL) Premier Division today.
And yet, when the next meeting was convened at the same venue
(just imagine the smell of chips, cabbage and stewed tea!) on May
17, there was no-one there from OTCC and no mention of the
club in the minutes of a long conflab covering such burning
issues as gate money, umpires, professionals (‘no bar on them
playing in the league’ which one or two clubs have taken to
extremes in recent seasons) and match balls. When, many years
later, the author asked the late Harry Johnson - a great man of
local cricket and the last survivor of those present at the early
deliberations - about the situation regarding Oundle, he admitted
he couldn’t remember them ever being considered for a place. So
was the invitation extended? And if it was, why did the club
decline? The Northamptonshire County Cricket League duly came
into being with nine teams – Oundle not among them – and the
first round of matches was played on April 28 1951, when snow
fell in some parts of the country. It would take over half-a-
century for the Badgers to finally enter the Northamptonshire
‘pyramid’ – although when they did, as we shall see, they wasted
no time in showing the rest what they’d been missing all these
years.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I don’t want to change the world,
I’m not looking for a new England…’
(Former Oundle resident Billy Bragg)
In June 1962, Oundle Town put out a side, including the
ubiquitous Jimmy Lowe, against Stewarts and Lloyds, and lost by
six wickets. This entirely unremarkable fixture warrants a
mention only because it was played in the month of the author’s
birth. The 1950s had seen the accustomed mix of good and
less-good at Milton Road; a rare 200-plus total against
Wellingborough Priory in 1955; Bob Barton smashed 145 – and
the windscreen of a car parked in the road – against Leicester
Banks that same year; and an enjoyable Sunday fixture with
Quorn CC the following summer, including a 12-a-side beer
match (which Oundle won) after the main business of the
afternoon was concluded early. There was also tragedy when, in
November 1957, Frederick William Mycroft from Benefield – a
successful bowler for the Town who also represented Northants
Amateurs – was killed when a Bristol Britannia airliner crashed on
a test flight. Mycroft, an electrical engineer, was one of 15 men
on board to die. By a macabre coincidence, the plane came down
near the village of Downend – birthplace of WG Grace.
At the School, meanwhile, the Eleven had emerged from a lengthy
barren spell (only 14 wins from nearly 100 games during the first
eight post-war seasons) in the wet summer of 1956, when John
Doubleday led a side including John Minney to six victories in
their 12 matches. It coincided with the building of a new pavilion
to replace the 1895 Tuckshop-funded model, designed by Peter
Bicknell and opened by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to
mark the School’s 400th anniversary. Finedon-born, Minney was
to enjoy an unusual career with Northamptonshire; three matches
in 1961, his final year at Cambridge, including a debut against
Yorkshire at Wantage Road, and then nothing until 1967 when he
turned out twice more. One of the County’s last first-class
amateurs, he died in 2015. Minney’s business interests in the
shoe trade once prompted him to invite the pop group
Showaddywaddy to their factory in Finedon after someone noticed
the retro rockers wearing a pair of the company’s shoes on TV. A
near-riot ensued.
The immediate post-war period at the School gave rise to one of
Oundle cricket’s most enduring and endearing features. The
team of 1949 were a happy bunch who got on well together and,
it seems, were popular even with the opposition; a team from
Sheffield’s steelworks played at the School that season and
commented in their local newspaper that the experience had been
‘a rare tonic.’ Realising that nine of them would still be around
the following year, it was decided to start their own touring team
– ‘The Assassins.’ Why that name? ‘I’ve no idea,’ founder
member Richard Botwood admitted to the author years later. ‘I
suspect we canvassed a lot of names and that sounded the worst!’
The nature of their meetings has changed down the years, from
full-blown cricket tours to a blend of golf and socialising.
Remarkably, six members of the original side attended the
Assassins’ 65th anniversary dinner in the new J.M. Mills Pavilion at
the School on a beautiful June evening in 2015 – while a seventh,
Pakistan’s former Foreign Secretary Shaharyar Mohammad Khan,
was ‘excused’ as he represented his country at an important ICC
meeting in the Caribbean in his capacity as chairman of the
Pakistan Cricket Board. Highlight of the occasion was John
Haines, captain in 1949, unveiling a new honours board alongside
his 2015 counterpart (and the first name on it) Ben Graves. ‘I
thought this might be the last Assassins gathering,’ said
Botwood. ‘But there seems plenty of enthusiasm for carrying on –
even though the balance between survivors and fallers-off-the-
perch is narrowing!’ Long may The Assassins continue to enjoy
themselves and perpetuate their shared love of good company
and Oundle cricket.
The School also did its share of ‘missionary work’ in the 1950s,
as recalled by Tommy Lowe – a talented cricketer who went on to
play with much success in the Northamptonshire County League
for Wellingborough and Kettering. But he hailed originally from
Aldwincle (the village that gave English literature the poet John
Dryden) whose club had an annual fixture against Oundle School
– ‘usually their fourths but sometimes the thirds if we had beaten
them the previous year.’ As he told the author in a letter in 2007:
‘Although my memory 50 years on is not crystal clear I still have
vivid pictures of 12 schoolboys plus umpire/Master in Charge
cycling through the village after the four-mile journey from
Oundle to be greeted by our primitive surroundings which
boasted a superb playing surface, considered to be the best
around at the time, (although) the outfield proved to be a great
leveller... The cattle and sheep-grazed grass ensured that the
dolly tubs and carbolic soap were always in demand - also the
more sophisticated laundries at the School would not be
redundant on a Monday after a visit to Aldwincle. I often wonder
how many of the lads went on to greater things on the sporting
field and if any made the First Eleven or even first-class
cricketers. I suspect not many as a lot of them seemed reluctant
participants, not very keen on cricket…’
From another of the surrounding villages, Barnwell, came Laurie
Owen. He also moved on to Wellingborough, like Tommy Lowe,
and became a County League stalwart after appearing for both
Barnwell (his father and mother both worked at the Manor for the
Duke and Duchess of Gloucester) and OTCC. He subsequently
enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the police force and
became scorer for Northamptonshire’s Second XI.
As the 1960s – the ‘swinging’ decade - wore on, John Poore
posted 672 runs in 1968 (the highest tally for the School since
the 1930s) and was also the first Oundle batsman since Sutthery
to be the team’s top run-scorer in three successive years; a
remarkable achievement. Poore went on to represent Middlesex
2nd XI and was also a Rover of note. Meanwhile, an OTCC fixture
card from 1966 shows two sides being put in the field each
Sunday – the firsts under Jimmy Lowe taking on prestigious
‘county’ opponents like Old Northamptonians, Wellingborough
Old Grammarians, Rushden, Kettering and Northampton
Wanderers, plus Market Harborough and Leicester Banks, while
the seconds tackled local villages including Glapthorn, Yarwell,
Wansford, Yaxley and Lutton. It suggests a busy club in good
heart.
Born in Glapthorn, Gordon Edwards brought a whiff of cricketing
glamour to Milton Road – but he had to switch from
Northamptonshire to do so. As a batsman/off-spinner he made a
couple of Second XI Championship appearances for the County in
1968, although it is possible no-one thought to tell skipper
Dennis Brookes that he could bowl! He was given just three overs
in the two matches – and eventually popped up in
Nottinghamshire’s ‘stiffs’ a few years later. They clearly thought
rather more of him and he played his first Championship game
against Derbyshire at Ilkeston in 1973. Walking out to bat, he
found himself joining his captain at the crease – said captain
being Garfield St Aubrun Sobers, later knighted and the pick of
many cricket fans as the game’s greatest-ever all-rounder,
although the big bearded chap who cracked a century at Oundle
School in 1901 may have had something to say about that.
Sobers made a hundred that day – showing ‘admirable discipline
and restraint, though clearly still troubled by his knee’ according
to Wisden - and the pair put on 90, of which Edwards contributed
21. A supporting role any cricketer would be deeply chuffed to
play.
In the return fixture at Trent Bridge a month later he claimed 5-
44, including the wickets of Brian Bolus and Bob Taylor – not a
bad return in what turned out to be his final first-class
appearance. But he did make it on to the telly – more than W.G.
ever did – and scuppered Barry Richards’ hopes of a John Player
League fifty at Southampton, trapping the brilliant South African
leg-before for 48. Another brush with the truly great. Oundle
team-mates recall Edwards turning up to play for the club, having
driven down from Nottingham in his Austin motor car, with kit in
a rather unprepossessing suitcase. Sometimes he did well,
sometimes he didn’t; for OTCC against Cambridge YMCA at
Fenner’s he was dismissed for a duck while Peter ‘Whippet’
Burnham – of whom more later – hit a century.
There must have been something in the air in 1976 – but it
certainly wasn’t rain in that summer of drought and Denis Howell.
Northamptonshire lifted their first major trophy (the Gillette Cup)
98 years after Reade and his fellow worthies got the County Club
properly up-and-running, and they also finished second in the
Championship to Mike Brearley’s Middlesex. Meanwhile, Oundle
School – with Jeremy Firth now Master-in-Charge - could boast
‘probably their best side since the war’ according to Rex Alston in
Wisden, going through the season unbeaten against other school
teams and, in total, winning nine of their 18 matches. No fewer
than four members of it went on to win Blues at Lord’s – Peter
Mills, Ian Hodgson and David ‘Doc’ Holliday for Cambridge, and
John Knight for Oxford. Knight’s father, Dick, was Headmaster of
the School from 1956 to 1968 and a good enough cricketer
himself to turn out for Wiltshire – ‘never happier,’ according to his
obituary in the Daily Telegraph, ‘than when watching the cricket
XI or the XV.’ Tony Murley, who topped 1,500 runs for the School
in three summers and earned praise from Alston as ‘a skilful
leader’, unluckily missed out on a Blue.
Mills junior opened the innings occasionally for Northamptonshire
and would have done so more frequently had he not found
himself at Wantage Road at the same time as ‘The Famous Five’ at
the top of the order – Geoff Cook, Wayne Larkins, Richard
Williams, Allan Lamb and Peter Willey. He did, though, take a
century off the touring Sri Lankans for the combined Oxbridge
team in 1981, and the following year emulated his father by
captaining Cambridge against Oxford, albeit in circumstances
that caused the odd raised eyebrow at the time. Derek Pringle
was the appointed captain but, as Wisden put it, ‘preferred’ to
play for England against India in a Test match at Old Trafford;
Mills took over, won the match on a declaration – the first
instance in 138 years – and avenged the heavy defeat his father’s
team suffered back in ’48. According to Mike, “he rescued the
family’s name!”
Peter Mills has written with great affection of the role cricket pro
Allan Watkins – and wife Molly - played in the success of that
outstanding Oundle side:
‘Allan’s great strengths were his enthusiasm, which was
infectious, and his deep knowledge of the game which he would
pass on with great care and skill. He was never over-technical
and allowed each individual to develop themselves without ever
inhibiting natural talent. He taught us how to play the game in
the spirit and manner in which he had played. The thing we loved
about Allan above all else was his fountain of stories! We lapped
them up as we heard at first-hand about the great players and
characters he played with and the England tours to India and
South Africa. He also had a lovely weakness for remembering
names, and hosts of forgotten people were simply referred to as
‘old doings’! But it really was a team – Allan and Molly. Indeed,
Molly ran the sports shop – a little wooden hut next to the cricket
nets which for us was a treasure trove of goodies. I think it was
Molly who had the business acumen too – she said that if she had
ever left the shop with Allan in charge he would give everything
away!’
Peter Mills is also full of praise for the team spirit fostered by
Watkins and Firth, which made long-lasting friends of young
team-mates. So much so that many of them continued to play
together for Oundle Rovers in The Cricketer Cup, a competition
they won three times in five years – in 1985, 1988 and 1989,
beating Repton Pilgrims in the final once and Shrewsbury
Saracens twice – much to the delight of Mike Mills, the team’s
enthusiastic manager. In the second of those triumphs, Andrew
Townsend joined an elite bunch of batsmen who have scored a
century in the final – in his case against a Shrewsbury attack
featuring former County seamer (and future Middlesex and ECB
supremo) Tim Lamb. The victorious Rovers, together with wives
and officials, were flown by sponsors Moet & Chandon to their
chateau in Epernay to sample the best hospitality imaginable,
including plenty of their world-renowned product; definitely a
prize worth winning.
Aside from the Varsity Match result there was a further link with
Mills senior in 1982. Coming on as first change for Cambridge
University against Glamorgan, Ian Hodgson collected 8-68 on the
opening day of the new season at Fenner’s – eclipsing J.M.M’s 7-
69 against the Tykes back in 1946 as the best first-class figures
by an Oundelian:
Glamorgan
A. Jones c Goldie b Hodgson 103
A.L. Jones c Goldie b Hodgson 24
R.C. Ontong b Hodgson 6
C.J.C. Rowe b Hodgson 23
M.J. Llewellyn c Henderson b Hodgson 2
G.C. Holmes st Goldie b Doggart 68
E.W. Jones c Henderson b Hodgson 0
B.J. Lloyd c Goldie b Hodgson 9
M.A. Nash b Hodgson 0
S.A.B. Daniels not out 30
S.R. Barwick not out 5
Extras 11 Total: 281-9 declared
Palmer 22-3-73-0, Dutton 6-0-29-0, Hodgson 32-12-68-8,
Doggart 20-3-55-1, Ellison 8-1-28-0, Henderson 4-3-6-0,
Boyd-Moss 8-3-11-0.
Hodgson was on for an ‘all-ten’ after picking up the first eight
wickets to fall, until off-spinner Simon Doggart intervened by
dismissing Geoff Holmes. It was also the best innings bowling
return for the Light Blues since Richard Hutton claimed 8-50
against Derbyshire 19 years earlier. Born in South Africa,
Hodgson played subsequently for Buckinghamshire, Oundle
Rovers and Hong Kong!
Another record fell a couple of years later, courtesy of the
aforementioned Townsend who became the first batsman to
reach 1,000 runs in a season for the School. He played a
captain’s part in 1984 with 1,005 runs at 83.75 (beating the
previous highest aggregate of 820 by C.R.H.M. Stuart in 1935)
and led the side to eight wins – the most since the golden
summer of ’76. Into this record-breaking environment came Rory
Jenkins, perhaps better known as a rugby player with Harlequins
and Wasps, not to mention England A – but his 134 wickets in
three seasons, between 1986 and 1988, made him the School’s
most successful bowler of the 20th century. He was a triple Blue
at Cambridge (cricket, rugby and athletics) before pursuing a
legal career.
In 1989, left-hander Tom Harrison twice set a new mark for the
highest individual score made for the School in the ‘modern’ era –
162 against Bedford and then 174 off the Blundell’s attack. The
latter stood as a record until 1992 when Alleyn Plowright hit 191
in the annual contest with the Rovers – whose team that day
included Harrison! He subsequently represented
Northamptonshire 2nd XI, scoring back-to-back centuries in 1994,
and Derbyshire, before a high-powered career with the ECB’s
marketing department (where he played a major role in the
development of Twenty20), ESPN Star Sports in Singapore and IMG
led to his appointment as chief executive of the national board in
October 2014. Old Oundelian feet in the corridors of cricketing
power…
Another significant cricketing chapter opened at the School in
August 1988 when the ground staged the first of its 15 (to date)
Second Eleven Championship fixtures, between Northamptonshire
and Worcestershire. Among the host of well-known names to
have trodden the turf for the ‘stiffs’ of various counties are
Ashes-winning (and Ashes-losing) England coach Andy Flower,
other Test players including Winston Davis, Blair Hartland, Paul
Taylor, Ronnie Irani and Ashley Giles, also Anthony Pollock – son
of the immortal Graeme – and future international umpire Richard
Kettleborough. More recently, Oundle has been the venue for
matches in the Second Eleven Trophy (one-day) and Twenty20
competitions. Reade would surely have been pleased to see the
County Club he helped to found using ‘his’ facilities. As co-host
of the 1996 Lombard Under-15s World Challenge and various
age-group international games, the Main has also seen the likes
of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Adam Gilchrist, Damien Martyn,
Shoaib Malik, Jonathan Trott (representing South Africa!), Alastair
Cook, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann strut their teenage stuff.
Not forgetting off-the-field visits by a couple of all-time greats
from the West Indies – Sir Garfield Sobers, Gordon Edwards’ old
batting partner, and ‘Whispering Death’ Michael Holding, who
made the presentations when the School entertained young
cricketers from Holland, Denmark, Scotland and Ireland in a
European Cricket Council festival.
If everything was going swimmingly at the School in the decade of
yuppies and Loadsamoney, mullets and brick-like mobile phones,
it was proving altogether less cheerful – and less affluent – at the
Town club. More than three decades after the strange affair of
the County League, OTCC became one of the founder members of
the Rutland and District League along with Barnack,
Brotherhoods, Ketton, Market Deeping, Market Overton, Stamford
Town (then known as Priory Sports), Ufford Park and Uppingham.
It offered the club a useful focus and continues to provide
excellent competitive cricket on Sunday afternoons, generally
without the spikiness and ‘edge’ of the Saturday stuff. But
notwithstanding the efforts of fine cricketers including Rodney
Gilbert, Martyn Dobbs (later a respected Minor Counties umpire)
and Willy Ives, the 1980s were a period of decline at Milton Road
– that, at least, was the view of another club stalwart David
Marriott, known to all-and-sundry as ‘Fred’ and a former OTCC
chairman:
‘Our old but not unattractive pavilion gave up the ghost and was
replaced (in 1988) by a couple of second-hand portakabins with
no running water or WC! Things went downhill on the field too…I
vividly remember us being set 395 to win at Nassington and
being 0-2 in reply; a challenge with a full team of eleven players –
but we only had nine! Eventually the portakabins were becoming
semi-unusable and although we played our games at Milton Road
there was no formal agreement with the school for us to do so.
The lowest point I can remember was a meeting held in the back
bar of The Ship Inn. The club’s treasurer sent a letter of
resignation advising that we had insufficient funds to pay the
following season’s Rutland League fees – or indeed buy any balls.
So we had no real pavilion, just one team that was usually
supplemented by Joe Soap from the bar, and no money! It was a
simple decision – either fold or get some funds together to
continue. So at this meeting eight individuals each donated £25
to cover the shortfall and keep the club running.’
A nasty brush with cricketing oblivion – and yet there were still
some good players around, gracing the club’s fixtures against
Rutland League opponents, touring sides and even Cambridge
colleges. Ivan Wallis for one. A headline-writer’s dream – ‘Ivan
the Terrible’ didn’t need too much thinking about by the sub-
editors when he hammered an opposing attack into submission –
Wallis could smack the ball very hard and very far with his three-
pound willow cudgel. Even today, whenever a Town batsman
deposits one into a neighbouring garden or into the (former) Drill
Hall car park, it’s all Mayfair to a sherbet dab that one of the
long-time supporters on the red benches will begin a sentence:
“Ah, but I remember Ivan hitting it…” His six sixes in an over at
Milton Road (reportedly reducing the bowler to tears) is a
favourite post-match tale over a glass of NVB’s best bitter, while
Peter Mills recalls making his OTCC debut as a 14-year-old just
up the road at Ashton Wold, where the ground (no longer used for
cricket) formed part of the estate owned by the Rothschild family,
one of whose most famous members – Victor, 3rd Baron – played
for Northamptonshire between 1929 and 1931 after opening the
batting for Harrow with future playwright Terence Rattigan! On
this occasion Mills had a single to his name when Wallis joined
him at the crease – and was still on the same score when his
partner departed for 50-plus! But the brickie could be
temperamental, too. The story goes that a duck at Nassington
prompted Wallis to pile up his kit at the back of the pavilion and
set light to it, obliging him to buy a new set in time for the start
of the following season. A team-mate duly presented him with
what he claimed was an essential piece of additional equipment
for Ivan’s bag; a fire extinguisher.
Others made their mark at Milton Road around this time. Old
Bedfordian Mick Henderson – able to ‘bowl all day with a lovely
rhythmical action’ according to one his contemporaries –
captained the side and also tended the ground. His son Iain was
a day boy at Laxton, skippered Northamptonshire Under-19s,
gained his cricket Blue at Oxford in 1990, played Minor Counties
for Bedfordshire under John Wake’s captaincy, turned out for both
OTCC and Peterborough Town and became the only Oundelian to
win the President’s Putter – the annual competition for former and
current golf Blues contested at Rye in January. Then there was
Keith Thomson, assistant chaplain at the School and a hard-
hitting batsman. He too had a son – Chris – who appeared for
Oundle and Peterborough, after representing Northamptonshire
Schools.
Stephen Radcliffe, who shared a staff room with Jimmy Lowe, was
another to transfer his enthusiasm, wit and wisdom from the field
of play to the committee room (or whichever pub they happened
to be meeting in) as chairman, and today rarely misses a match at
Oundle with his wife Gwen – in charge of fixtures when business
was conducted by postcard rather than telephone or email, who
has also served as the town’s Mayor and remains the most
reliable scoreboard-updater in the club. At least until 2016 when
an electronic board was purchased! Gwen was one of the club’s
tea ladies in the days when the facilities comprised a kitchen in a
lean-to shed outside the old pavilion, and woe betide the person
who forgot to refill the urn after tea and condemned the washers-
up to do the job in cold water. Stephen, meanwhile, ran the
junior cricket pretty much single-handed through much of the
1980s and 90s. And then there was David Burnham – ‘Bunzy’ –
whose long involvement at OTCC has embraced playing, tending
the ground and discussing every detail of the match in progress
with relish and, preferably, a pint. His ‘double-act’ with the
erudite Alan Welsh - fellow groundsman and the current Fixtures
Secretary – never fails to amuse and delight. The summer of
1993 brought the inimitable Shaun Smalley to the club, a
wholehearted all-rounder whose match reports as captain of the
2nd XI in the era of social media justified single-handedly Mark
Zuckerberg’s Facebook experiment. The 2017 season will be his
25th in succession with the club.
Another long-serving OTCC man was Dennis Clark, who worked
in the School’s science laboratories. Joining the club as a
teenager in the 1920s and initially helping out the Wednesday XI,
he became scorer in 1949 – a worthy successor to Mr Canner –
and continued to keep the book until his death in 1991. Sadly,
neither he nor Jimmy Lowe lived to see the club made fit for the
21st century, thanks largely to Peter Burnham (brother of ‘Bunzy’)
after the portakabins went up in flames. As ‘Fred’ Marriott
recalls:
‘A decision was taken to commit to a development plan and build
a new pavilion. An agreement was negotiated with the school to
give us some security and lottery funding was secured. Around
this time I took a phone call from Peter, who was a self-employed
builder. He asked me if we had anyone to build the pavilion yet. I
told him we hadn’t. So he said if we could get the money he
would build it for us. I just had to ring him when we were ready.’
‘Whippet’ duly built the current pavilion (with the aforementioned
Stephen Radcliffe as one of his ‘labourers’ during school holidays)
in the winter of 1996-97. Although Marriott admits there were a
few heated meetings about urinals and removable partitions –
‘the voting process made FIFA delegates look like novices’ – the
job was done. Also important in the process was Clive Nield, an
international squash player known as ‘The Master’ – not least, in
this context, for his grasp of the paperwork associated with a
lottery funding application. A classy all-round cricketer – as
nippy in the field as around the court – he is the proud possessor
of one of the last ‘old’ Oundle Town caps (red and black hoops) in
captivity. One of those ‘remaindered’ by the club in 1950 at five
bob a time? Peter Burnham passed away not long after
completing the construction but his memory is perpetuated in the
annual match at Milton Road between a Club XI and a side raised
by the chairman which usually features a smattering of OTCC old
boys, happy to ‘bring auld acquaintance to mind’ – just like the
chaps in 1826 – and enjoy the best cricket lunch and tea in the
world. The culinary spirit of Lord Lilford lives on.
So, with much-improved facilities in place it was then a case of
‘Quo Vadis, Oundle Town?’ One of those to come up with an
answer had an accent – if not a surname – far removed from the
edge of the English Fenlands.
CHAPTER NINE
‘Now, plot or passion, love or strife,
For some of us make up the End of Life;
There be some who labour for wealth or fame,
But this man gave his heart to a game…’
(Alfred Cochrane – ‘The Enthusiast’)
Geographically, the town of Ashington in Northumberland is 218
miles away from Oundle. Culturally, the distance is perhaps
rather greater. Once described as ‘the largest mining village in
the world’ and boasting its own ‘Pitmatic’ dialect, the place has a
working-class sporting heritage second-to-none; footballers
Jackie Milburn and the Charlton brothers, Jack and Bobby, plus
Durham and England fast bowler Steve ‘Grievous Bodily’ Harmison
- who ended up managing the town’s soccer team - and the
much-imitated voice of darts, the irreplaceable Sid Waddell. But
pit closures in the 1980s hit the area hard. On the face of it,
Ashington doesn’t have a huge amount in common with Oundle’s
historic buildings (made of the beautiful and distinctive limestone
that bears the town’s name), public school playing fields and
‘county’ feel.
But from one to the other came John Wake, Master-in-Charge of
cricket at Oundle School between 1992 - when he succeeded
former Oxford University batsman Vince Cushing - and his
retirement in 2015, and undeniably a man with a mission; to
foster the game there and at the Town club (of which he was
vice-chairman for a number of years) through a strong, practical
and mutually-beneficial relationship. It’s said that Hereward – the
11th century leader of resistance to William the Conqueror in The
Fens – earned his tag ‘the Wake’ by virtue of being ‘watchful.’ His
present-day namesake has probably watched (and talked about)
as much cricket as anyone on the planet over the past couple of
decades, and his burning enthusiasm for it - and for his adopted
home town - remains undimmed. At the Great Hall dinner to
mark 150 years (in theory at least) since the School’s first
recorded match in 1855, Wake enlisted the services of a superb
classical pianist from the ranks of the School’s students to offer
Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ sonata between courses – “because,”
he insisted, “that’s what I want our cricket to be like!”
Some of his other sayings have become the stuff of legend.
Cricketers now in late-middle age, who turned out for him in
Northamptonshire Schools Cricket Association sides in the 1970s
and 80s, will still adopt the accent for “That was the most po-
ooor, and I mean po-ooor….” or “Pressure’s the name of the
game – you tie ‘em down, they take a chance, they’re on their wa-
aay…” at the slightest provocation, much as Monty Python fans
parrot the Parrot Sketch whenever two or more are gathered
together. Coincidentally, Sir Herewald Wake – donor of the Rural
Challenge Cup and supposedly a descendant of the English
freedom-fighter – was one of Reade’s colleagues on the first
NCCC committee in 1878.
A talented and combative player himself – one-time captain of
Bedfordshire, where team-mates including his great friend and
fellow north-easterner Ray Swann, father of Graeme and a former
batting coach at the School – John Wake taught in the state sector
before coming to Oundle and played club cricket for Northampton
Saints. And that breadth of experience fuelled his conviction that
outstanding cricketers can come to the fore by a myriad of
different routes, and at different speeds. Take his fellow
Ashingtonian:
‘We may have been 30 years apart but Steve Harmison played
cricket and football in the same streets and against the same
lamp-posts as I did when I was a kid, but (he) came to our game
relatively late. At Ashington he eventually got into the club’s first
team before he was spotted by Durham playing for
Northumberland’s Under-17s. At 17 years old he was six-foot-
four, could bowl a ball at 90 miles per hour and made his first-
class debut. Hardly surprising that Durham were asking where
he’d been hiding! When you consider Shane Warne – he was
playing ‘C’ grade cricket in Australia at 17 and 18, and didn’t get
into the ‘A’ grade until he was 20. But all the time he was getting
a long bowl and learning his art. His coach Terry Jenner said
there was a problem in this country because unless you’ve made
your mark by Under-19s level many counties will just abandon all
hope of you, and possibly the late developers are lost.’
And as an off-spinner – famously rated in print by Graeme Swann
as one of his ten favourite bowlers – Wake knows all about the
necessity of giving tweakers time to learn their craft.
Time is limited, of course, when it comes to working with young
cricketers at a school. At the age of 18 they move on elsewhere.
But the Wake/Howorth era saw Oundle’s cricketing profile raised
around the public schools circuit, and beyond – with overseas
tours (to locations including South Africa, Sri Lanka and the
Caribbean) exposing the youngsters to sport and life in different
cultures and climates. With an expanded fixture list, it was no
surprise to see the old record of 11 victories in a season –
achieved back in Reade’s day – broken, and that duly happened in
1995 when 13 games were won off the back of Jeremy Pilch’s tally
of 1,091 runs. He is a descendant of the immortal Fuller Pilch,
who had set new batting records of his own 150 years earlier.
The following summer, 1996, leg-spinner Jake Milton toppled
Sutthery and Badeley from their perch by claiming 75 wickets,
while the all-round return of David Walder (another prominent
rugby player with Newcastle, Wasps and England), who logged
682 runs and 49 wickets, was among the best-ever for the
School. Pretty well all of these outstanding performances were
dotted down in the scorebook by Edgar Edis, long-time scorer for
the Eleven until his death in 1997. The scorebox on the ground
has a plaque in his memory, while the trophy competed for
annually between the School and Oundle Rovers bears his name.
Edgar’s grandson Jack Roberts is an OTCC regular.
At time of writing – 2017 – Oundle School still awaits its first Test
cricketer, for all its past and present connections with the game’s
great and good. For a time it looked as though Will Jefferson – 6
feet 10 inches tall and both the son and grandson of first-class
cricketers – might break that duck. He topped 2,000 runs at the
School between 1995 and 1998 before joining Essex, and in 2004
became the first Oundelian to hit a double-century in first-class
cricket. The fact that Shane Warne featured in the Hampshire
attack off whom he made it – at Southampton – made the
achievement even more special:
W.I. Jefferson c Pothas b Taylor 222
A.P. Grayson lbw b Bruce 7
A. Flower c Warne b Mullally 32
A. Habib c Kenway b Warne 19
R.C. Irani c Pothas b Taylor 17
J.S. Foster c Brown b Warne 40
J.D. Middlebrook c Pothas b Bruce 0
G.R. Napier c sub b Bruce 8
A.R. Adams st Pothas b Warne 22
A.P. Cowan not out 21
D. Gough lbw b Warne 0
Extras: 28 Total: 416 all out
Mullally 20-6-72-1, Bruce 19-3-74-3, Mascarenhas 3-1-5-0,
Taylor 23-3-111-2, Warne 32-1-118-4, Clarke 6-1-24-0
Jefferson subsequently visited Bangladesh with England ‘A’,
moved on to Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire but was forced
to retire from the game with a hip condition during the 2012
season, aged only 32. He scored just over 7,000 first-class runs
at nearly 36 and his career is one of those that leaves you to
ponder on what might have been.
Even with Jefferson gone, the Eleven continued to meet and beat
some of the best around. In 1999, Stephen Lowe’s side reached
another high- water mark with 14 victories – the captain joining
the exclusive ‘Four-Figures Club’ – and in 2003 Mark Phythian’s
team matched that tally, including a memorable and hard-
working win over Sri Lanka’s Richmond College on the Test match
ground at Galle, overlooked by the old fort. The author had the
pleasure of accompanying that tour as scorer, press officer and
general confidant to the Master-in-Charge, and has enjoyed few
if any cricketing experiences more; not least the sight of Mr Wake
opting for sartorial ‘fusion’ by donning sarong and yellow nylon
shirt at the same time, after being refused entry to a top-end
Colombo hotel bar in sweaty cricket kit! Tony Howorth, long-
serving umpire Jack Bloodworth and Ken Lake MBE from the
English Schools Cricket Association (of which Wake is a past
Chairman) also made the trip and contributed much to its
success.
Phythian, Cameron Wake (son of John) and Patrick Foster all
graduated from Oundle School to Northamptonshire’s Academy at
Wantage Road, and all played first-class cricket for Durham UCCE
in the 2000s. Wake junior succeeded Phythian as captain and in
2004 the bar was raised again as 15 matches were won, none lost
and the Silk Trophy was secured by Oundle for the first time.
Wake and Rob Fahrenheim contributed most of the runs, and
Foster’s haul of 54 wickets was the best by a seam bowler at the
School since H.R. Palmer (a future Governor of Cyprus) bagged 58
way back in 1895.
That season was South African Merwe Genis’s first as cricket
professional at the School, succeeding Howorth who retired the
previous year – although he has retained an involvement with
some of the younger teams to the present day. Genis first
appeared in the county in 1998 as a development coach with the
new Northamptonshire Cricket Board and made his mark
immediately: ‘Merwe’s performance this year was outstanding,’
commented Aussie David Eland, then co-ordinating the County’s
youth coaching programme. ‘He impressed everyone with his
enthusiasm, outstanding communication skills and his obvious
knowledge and love of the game. Nothing was too much trouble
for Merwe.’ Before long, John Wake had secured his services for
Oundle – both the School and OTCC, where he now rejoices in the
title of Club Captain – and the qualities highlighted by Eland 16
years ago are still much in evidence on a daily basis during his
summer sojourns in England; likewise in his native country as he
works flat-out to bring cricket into township communities.
The cyclical nature of schools cricket suggested Oundle were due
for a ‘dip’ – but although results levelled out a bit there was still
talent aplenty on show. Greg Smith hammered four consecutive
centuries in 2007, joined Leicestershire and in 2014 took a
hundred off the Indian tourists at Grace Road. Rory Osmond
(Leicestershire again) and Harry Ramsden (Essex) also attracted
the attention of first-class counties, and in 2010 Jack Oughtred’s
name reached the pages of the national newspapers after
claiming 10-48 from 22 overs against the Perse School, the
match ball being preserved in the school archives. It was believed
to be the first ‘all-ten’ in Oundle colours since Winch (a master,
of course, as opposed to a pupil) did it twice in the 19th century.
‘It was a great way for Jack to make his cricketing mark with us a
few days before he leaves the school,’ Wake told the Daily
Telegraph.
At Milton Road, meanwhile, Sunday cricket in the Rutland League
had been Oundle Town’s main priority for a number of years. But
the efforts of Genis, the much-missed Colin ‘Riddler’ Davies, Ken
Collier, John Foster, future chairman Justin Jeffrey, Graham Dalley
and others to build up the youth section had prompted a re-think
within the club. They had plenty of good young cricketers
wanting competitive action – and for the vast majority of teams in
Northamptonshire, Saturday league cricket was the principal
focus. It could be a case of ‘use them or lose them’ – and the
latter was unthinkable. So in the summer of 2005, OTCC officials
took the momentous step of applying for membership of the
Northamptonshire Cricket League (NCL) which had been created
in 2003 by the merger of four existing leagues – Championship,
County (which Oundle hadn’t joined after all in 1951), Alliance
and Combination. The NCL was launching an expanded Division
12 comprising 18 sides, playing each other once, and Oundle
thirds – the two Sunday sides were still regarded then as the
club’s first and second teams – duly appeared in the handbook
with an opening-day fixture against Earls Barton 3rds on May 6
2006. The next awfully big adventure was at hand.
CHAPTER TEN
‘Hail Oundle, Hail! Place of my birth!
To me the dearest spot on earth.
The music of thy tuneful bells
With ecstasy my bosom swells,
Thy grand old church and lofty spire
Encourage lingering desire…’
(John Ireland – ‘Parson John – the Oundle Poet’)
‘You cannot write a cricketing script in advance that will have any
real comparison with what actually happens. I always felt,
therefore, that as cricketers we were artists and not scientists…’
(Sir Leonard Hutton)
The Northamptonshire village of Great Brington is probably best-
known in the wider world for its strong links with the Spencer
family. The 8th Earl Spencer – father of Diana, Princess of Wales –
is among those buried in the churchyard there. But on July 8
2006 an event of significance in this story occurred at the
village’s cricket ground, being used then as the host venue for
East Haddon CC’s 3rd XI:
J. Chambers c Watson b Small 266
T. Costello c Daniels b Streatfield 44
R. Hanson not out 60
B. Weatherington not out 8
Extras: 54 Total: 432-2 (45 overs)
S. Brooks, S. Matcham, T. Davies, N. Fox, M. Matcham, J. Costello
and D. Foster did not bat.
The bowling figures have been omitted on the grounds that
young or sensitive eyes may be reading this. They are not pretty.
Jimmy Chambers hit 17 sixes and 25 fours – a total of 202 runs in
boundaries – and it remains, at the start of the 2017 season, the
highest individual score ever made in the NCL. But it wasn’t even
his first double-hundred of the season. A month earlier, at
Milton Road, Chambers clubbed 201 off 124 balls at the expense
of West Haddon 2nds, sharing an opening stand of 310 with Tom
Costello as Oundle scraped home by 345 runs. The man you feel
sorriest for there is Ben Weatherington, whose family has done
and still does so much for the club in various capacities. Down at
number three, and suffering from a nasty dose of pad rash in the
pavilion, he fell for a third-ball duck! But Ben was still ‘hitting a
long ball’ in 2014 when, for OTCC 2nd XI against Podington, he
managed to clear Justin Jeffrey’s house in Spurlings, on the site of
the old orchard on the eastern side of the Milton Road ground. A
prodigious blow.
In 2006 the Town found themselves competing way below the
standard of cricket appropriate for the players they had; 13
victories in 17 matches, the division won by 52 points and
Chambers finishing just 16 runs short of 1,000 in only 13 knocks.
Was this – like the wartime railway journey on the famous poster –
really necessary? Surely Division 11 wouldn’t be much different?
Fortunately, fate intervened in the shape of Sharnbrook’s decision
to resign from the league for 2007. The NCL’s policy of obliging
teams to ‘work their way up’ was abandoned on this occasion,
mindful perhaps of the carnage wrought by Chambers and
chums, and the committee proposed to the autumn AGM at
Wantage Road that Oundle Town should replace Sharnbrook in
Division Four. Those with long experience of these meetings,
where parochial self-interest is generally the decisive factor,
weren’t certain what the outcome would be, but in the event
common sense prevailed and the clubs backed the committee by
a solid majority. The events of 2007 proved the point as Oundle
– boosted by South African Tennyson Botes with 722 runs and 42
wickets – topped the division comfortably, while the Saturday
seconds began their trek up the league ladder too. The club’s
global outlook has attracted some top-notch players – and people
– to Oundle in recent years, not least future West Indies Test
captain Denesh Ramdin and Middlesex batsman Dawid Malan
who’ve enjoyed Sunday cricket at Milton Road whilst turning out
on Saturdays elsewhere. Malan’s Oundle debut in 2006 ended
with a duck to his name, but he made amends soon afterwards
with 156 off 134 balls in a Rutland League fixture against
Rushton at Milton Road, hitting seven sixes sharing a 191-run
partnership with Justin Jeffrey. In 2016 he made England’s T20
squad and was an important member of the side that brought the
County Championship title to Lord’s.
The 2008 season brought former University of Pretoria student
Martin van der Merwe to OTCC, and he succeeded in bumping up
standards to a new level by passing 1,000 league runs in each of
his three seasons at the Town – and guiding the 1st XI into the
NCL’s Division One. A tall, powerful left-hander (who could also
bowl handy left-arm spin) he hit the ball ferociously hard and a
couple of examples are still talked about. No team from a club as
successful as Finedon Dolben needs any sympathy, but van der
Merwe’s unbeaten 213 off 125 deliveries – featuring 13 sixes –
against their seconds at Oundle in June 2010 was nothing short
of brutal. And later that season he showed off his talents on the
league’s Twenty20 finals day at the County Ground in
Northampton, peppering boundary boards, sightscreens and
spectators with thumping drives, pulls and cuts. Chatting ahead
of the final - to be played between Oundle and Burton Latimer –
with former Northamptonshire paceman John Hughes, in the
Burton side that day, the author was told they had been
encouraged to get in some extra fielding practice before the
decider. “It won’t be any good,” reckoned Hughes, “unless we’re
going to stand there while someone fires bloody cannon balls at
us!” Van der Merwe’s 23 off ten balls set the tone for a
memorable win to earn silverware for the NCL’s oldest club in the
game’s newest format:
Oundle Town
M. van der Merwe c Mansell b Hanney 23
C. Wake c Mansell b Shelford 61
M. Hodgson b Scully 21
H. Ramsden c Hofbauer b Scully 10
J. Chambers c Sanders b Gahagan 17
P. Adams c J. Hughes b Bell 4
M. Outar b Bell 7
S. Brooks not out 2
R. Cunningham not out 6
Extras: 28 Total: 179-7 (20 overs)
D. Foster and J. Jeffrey did not bat
P Hughes 2-0-21-0, D Hanney 4-0-42-1, M Bell 4-0-21-2, J
Scully 4-0-24-2, D Shelford 4-0-38-1, D Gahagan 2-0-17-1
Burton Latimer
M. Bell c Brooks b Wake 5
B. Mansell c Wake b Cunningham 44
G. Hofbauer b Foster 29
S. Sanders c vd Merwe b Foster 8
J. Hughes c Foster b Ramsden 12
D. Gahagan run out 3
D. Shelford c Chambers b Ramsden 5
A. McClure c Wake b Ramsden 2
P. Hughes c Adams b Cunningham 22
J. Scully not out 5
D. Hanney not out 2
Extras: 5 Total: 142-9 (20 overs)
Wake 4-0-40-1, van der Merwe 4-0-24-0, Cunningham 4-0-26-
2, Foster 4-0-32-2, Ramsden 4-0-20-3
Oundle Town won by 37 runs
This was a characteristically ‘Oundle’ success in many ways; the
emphasis on spin, which bore the unmistakeable hallmark of
Wake senior; the South African connection; and a contingent of
School boys doing it for the Town – Wake junior, Ramsden and
Michael Outar, whose twin brothers David and Jonathan (both
left-arm spinners) had also played for both sides a few years
earlier. A delighted John Wake was quoted in the local press: ‘It’s
been worth the wait!’
Qualification for the ECB’s national club T20 competition took
OTCC within touching distance of a place in the last four and an
appearance on Sky TV. Victories over Leicester Ivanhoe and
Cuckney in the regional stages sent the side to Norfolk and a
quarter-final against Swardeston. Andy Reynoldson – a Rutland
League regular replacing the ineligible van der Merwe – hit 61 and
Mark Hodgson a brisk 32 to lay the foundations for a score of
142-5; undoubtedly competitive but still a tad below
expectations. The home side’s reply ebbed and flowed but they
reached their target with three wickets and five balls to spare.
Disappointment for a sizeable travelling contingent although (the
result aside) a good day out was had by all.
Cup honours were all well and good, but the club was still aiming
for a place in the NCL’s Premier Division to prove that it had really
‘arrived’ in the Northamptonshire set-up. Cameron Wake’s
decision in 2009 to represent Oundle on Saturdays as well as
Sundays owed much to that often-stated ambition. Whilst at
school he had moved up through the age-groups at Wantage
Road and made it on to the professional books as an ‘Emerging
Player’ – also appearing for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and, as
already mentioned, the Durham UCCE side. But this intelligent
and competitive cricketer always retained a strong affinity to
OTCC, captaining them in the Rutland League, and duly left
Peterborough Town at the end of 2008 to shoulder the task of
getting his home-town club (for whom he had made his debut as
an 11-year-old at Whittlesey) up to where he believed it
belonged. In 2009 Oundle won NCL Division Three and also, for
the first time, the top division of the Rutland, as van der Merwe,
Wake and young Franco Marais piled up the runs; the following
season brought titles for all three Saturday sides, plus the T20
trophy. Just one step from the ‘Prem’ now.
But the winter of 2010-11 wasn’t a great one for the club’s
supporters, who learned that van der Merwe wouldn’t be
returning for another English summer, having obtained a teaching
post in Paarl. That removed potentially a large chunk of the
team’s runs and wickets, as well as an invaluable right-hand man
for skipper Wake and a marvellous coach and role model for the
young cricketers at Milton Road. Another South African, teenager
Leon le Roux, took over from van der Merwe for the Division One
campaign, and was ‘welcomed’ to the NCL with a golden duck
against old (if not recent) rivals Wellingborough Town at Redwell
Road as Karl Tapp claimed 10-33 for the home side, then a
league record. Le Roux had his revenge, though, in a sometimes
fractious return fixture at Oundle. Chasing 220, the hosts were
apparently out of the reckoning at 120-6 when David Foster
joined le Roux. With the former (who scored his own maiden
century at Earls Barton later that year before attracting interest
from Durham and then pursuing a coaching career in Yorkshire)
lending excellent support, the latter made a hugely-impressive
127 not out from 135 balls – concentrating on keeping his wicket
intact for nearly 40 overs before launching a savage assault at the
end to see his side home with seven balls to spare; a masterly
combination of caution and power. He notched 1,219 NCL runs
and earned the Clive Cross Trophy as the division’s cricketer of
the year.
Off-spinner Richard Cunningham, a club stalwart who takes his
cricketing pleasures seriously, also starred in 2011 with 43
wickets – while Peter Foster, younger brother of David, removed
54 batsmen for the 2nd XI and Matt Palmer hit the league’s only
double-century of the season for the thirds. The Premier Division
dream, though, was still just that going into 2012, and a points
deduction following the opening-day win at Kettering – thanks to
the kind of pettifogging bureaucracy that can give English
recreational cricket a bad name – made the OTCC faithful wonder
if it was going to be ‘one of those years.’ But the frustration soon
evaporated as Petrus Jeftha – the latest recruit from Boland –
ripped through sides to finish with 65 wickets at around seven
runs apiece, and victory over Wellingborough Indians on the last
afternoon on the campaign prompted celebrations….including a
noisy phone call to Genis, who was taking a year off from his
long-haul commuting between the Cape and Northamptonshire.
Seven-and-a-bit years after joining the NCL, Oundle Town had
secured a seat at the top table. To make it an even better
summer, they saw off Brixworth in a rain-affected final at
Northampton to win the T20 for a second time.
To say the maiden Premier Division campaign in 2013 didn’t go
entirely according to plan would be an understatement. After a
narrow defeat at Finedon, the second match - against Horton
House at Milton Road on May 4 - was won by five wickets,
proving it could be done:
Horton House
T. Leonard b Hussain 28
S. Jarvis b Hussain 24
A. Shah b Hussain 9
E. Ruff b Jeftha 1
A. Morrison b Ramsden 59
J. Green run out 0
A. Neate c Ramsden b Cunningham 2
W. Knibbs lbw b Ramsden 28
S. Jhala c Ramsden b Cunningham 5
S. Finch b Cunningham 2
D. Shah not out 0
Extras: 14 Total: 172 all out
Jeftha 13-3-52-1, Hussain 16-1-49-3, Cunningham 15.3-0-43-
3, Ramsden 8-1-24-2.
Oundle Town
A. Martin st Morrison b Jhala 35
H. Ramsden b Finch 10
C. Wake b Green 48
M. Hodgson run out 4
P. Jeftha b Finch 44
P. Adams not out 13
J. Robinson not out 13
Extras: 6 Total: 173-5
J. Bolsover, B. Hussain, R. Cunningham and D. Oldham did not
bat.
Finch 11.5-0-45-2, Green 12-2-44-1, Jhala 7-1-45-1, Neate 8-
0-33-0.
Both county town clubs – Old Northamptonians and Northampton
Saints – were also beaten, and a total of nine victories secured a
creditable eighth spot in the table. On the downside, a ‘beamer’
incident led to Jeftha being banned for the second half of the
season. Had he been available right through to September, the
final placing must surely have been higher. A severe biffing at
the hands of Peterborough – or, more specifically, their
buccaneering opener Asim Butt – meant defeat in the T20 final
and a ‘diminuendo’ feel to the closing weeks. There was good
news for the thirsty, though, with the opening of The Badger Bar
in the pavilion, manned by mine host Pip Weatherington and
selling ale from the Nene Valley Brewery in the town; the shades
of Smith, McKee, Beardsley and Henry Richards doubtless
approved. And in the Saturday thirds, Callum Greaves added his
name to Oundle’s other double-centurions with 203 not out off
118 balls against Abington, while David ‘Slappy’ Ryan’s haul of 47
wickets equalled the divisional record.
Returning in 2014 (with Phil Adams replacing Wake, now teaching
at Sherborne School in Dorset, as captain), Jeftha completed his
suspension and was back on parade in May as OTCC – with Guy
Bolsover installed as the new chairman - looked to improve on
their showing in 2013. They did just that, winning 13 matches to
finish fourth behind Peterborough, Rushton and Rushden - and
were deprived of a chance to beat and overtake the men from
Short Stocks on the final Saturday of the season when their pitch
was deemed too wet for play. No other match in any division was
called off. Conspiracy theorists at Milton Road had a field day,
and if nothing else it denied long-time scorer Kim Weatherington
a suitable send-off before her sabbatical from the coloured pens.
The present author agreed to keep the seat warm for her for a
year or two.
But that last-day disappointment couldn’t detract from an
outstanding collective team performance, led by the new-ball pair
of Jeftha and Bashrat Hussain who shared 89 ‘Prem’ wickets.
Hussain, formerly with Peterborough, brought the bowling skill of
a true craftsman and a keen cricket brain to the OTCC mix – one
of the few players to have Mike Brearley’s magnum opus ‘The Art
of Captaincy’ as his pavilion reading of choice. Youngsters Marc
Bell, Ben Groom and Ben Graves all made the mark in the top
division, and the efforts of left-arm spinner Graves – including a
‘five-for’ at Wollaston and a last-ball wicket to defeat Brixworth
in a thrilling finale that had the red-bench-sitters on their feet –
brought the story full-circle.
Appointed captain of the School in his Lower Sixth year – and thus
joining the illustrious company of other ‘two-year’ skippers
including Sutthery, Richard and Marcus Beresford, Mike Mills,
Murley and Phythian – Graves took (figuratively at least) the same
two-minute walk from Reade’s ‘Thirty Acre’ to old Mrs Curtis’s
back garden that so many had taken before. The Main and Milton
Road – the gentle hotbed was continuing to do its work.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will…’
(William Shakespeare – ‘Hamlet’)
‘You can’t have big stuff all the time. You must have some little
stuff in between.’
(‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray)
Ben Graves was again the cricketing thread that bound together
School and Town in 2015. He scored an unbeaten century against
the Rovers to ‘christen’ the new J.M. Mills Pavilion on a
memorable Sunday in May – the opening ceremony performed by
Tom Harrison with members of the Mills family, and many of the
donors who had made the new facility possible, in attendance.
He signed off for the School with a superb 148 off 139 balls
under cloudless skies at Kimbolton, also taking hundreds off
Stowe and Uppingham en route to 894 runs with an average
pushing 70, plus 40 wickets at 15.30. ‘One of the best all-
rounders the school has produced, he led from the front, both on
and off the field,’ noted Wisden. No wonder his was the first
name on the Assassins’ board.
Curiously, though, the most remarkable performance of the
season barely featured him at all. The match at Loughborough
Grammar School looked certain to be rained off; only ten overs
were bowled, Oundle batting first having won the toss, before the
weather intervened. But they were able to get back on later, the
game reduced to 40 overs a side, and the opening pair of Tristan
Tusa and Simon Fernandes (Graves had been delayed on a train
from London and so wasn’t available to go in first) proceeded to
take the LGS attack apart. They posted a 311-run partnership
with Tusa smashing 203 off 136 balls, featuring 17 sixes and 15
fours – only the fourth double-century in the School’s history and
the first since Philip Mair plundered Lord Lilford’s XI in 1923.
Fernandes contributed 102 and Oundle went on to win, following
another rain interruption, by 102 runs.
Oundle School
S Fernandes b Chopra 102
T Tusa c Truss b Chopra 203
B Graves c Carmichael b Chopra 14
J Fischer not out 0
C Fletcher not out 1
Extras 24 Total: 344-3 (40 overs)
B Curry, F Johnsrud, T Lambton, H Lawes, H McLay and T Warner
did not bat.
Sheard 8-0-55-0, Royle 5-0-32-0, Lodhia 6-0-38-0, Carmichael
6-0-51-0, Chopra 7-0-62-3, Truss 6-0-63-0, Mike 1-0-22-0,
Nathwani 1-0-19-0
The efforts of Graves, Tusa and Fernandes made it a memorable
final season in charge for John Wake. His retirement was marked
by a host of official, semi-official and downright informal
occasions – the pick of which, perhaps, coincided with the annual
fixture against MCC. Many of his old charges came back to play
for the Premier club, including his son Cameron, and the lunch
interval was extended considerably beyond its usual length by an
emotional speech or two. There were more warm words at the
end of a closely-fought match, with headmaster Charles Bush
(also retiring from the School) and Ben Graves both hitting
precisely the right note. The outgoing Master-in-Charge was
presented with copies of Wisden’s Almanack covering his years at
the School and dry eyes were unsurprisingly conspicuous by their
absence. The former Cambridge University, Lancashire,
Hampshire and England batsman John Crawley – with over 24,000
first-class runs and 37 Test appearances to his credit – made the
short move from Oakham to replace Mr Wake, who agreed to
continue working with the School’s young cricketers in a part-
time coaching role.
The shortest form of the game suited OTCC down to the ground
in 2015. They successfully defended their Rutland League T20
title on finals day at Peterborough, and began an ultimately
successful campaign in the NCL’s Hevey Twenty Cup with a
staggering batting display against nine-man Weekley and
Warkton at Milton Road. Callum Greaves (97), Petrus Jeftha (69
not out) and big-hitting newcomer Zeeshan Manzoor (68)
boosted Oundle to 296-4 in their 20 overs, easily a competition
record. They won the match by 196 runs and then powered past
Raunds and Rothwell to book what should have been another
enjoyable day out at the County Ground in Northampton. Sadly,
rain prevented any cricket and the semi-finals and finals had to
be re-scheduled. In the semis, another destructive partnership
between Greaves and Jeftha – and four wickets for Colin ‘Sugar’
Ray – sank East Haddon, and Finedon Dolben provided the
opposition in an evening final at Overstone Park CC. The weather
relented just in time and Finedon’s 130-7 was chased down by
Oundle in the final over with six wickets in hand, Mark Hodgson
named Man-of-the-Match for his decisive knock of 55. Phil
Adams lifted the trophy in the gathering gloom – and the club
faithful could celebrate a third triumph in this competition in the
space of six years.
Ironically, the regional round of the national T20 tournament took
place at Finedon – and, despite the result of the county final,
officials at Avenue Road did a superb job of organising the day
and making Oundle’s players and supporters feel very welcome.
Adams’ big-hitting pulled off an unlikely win over Loughborough
Town before the side just ran out of steam against highly-fancied
Bury St Edmunds. But there was consolation for Oundle in the
spin bowling of young Jack Bolsover – son of the chairman – who
harvested 15 wickets in the last five rounds and impressed many
good judges with his flight, control and steely nerve.
With Manzoor and the consistent Alex Martin sharing over 1,300
Premier Division runs, seventh place in the table was a solid
enough return. But 2016 brought a halt – just a temporary one,
everyone at Milton Road will be hoping – to the club’s long run of
success in the NCL. Bashrat Hussain, the new skipper, found
himself having to contend with poor availability and (with Martin
and Manzoor, the two batting stars of 2015, both playing
elsewhere) a weakened squad. Graves showed admirable
commitment by travelling up from London for roughly half the
league games, and was comfortably the side’s leading run-scorer
– including a century against Wellingborough at Milton Road in
the first of two victories over the side eventually relegated. The
second fixture, at Redwell Road in August, was an understandably
nervy affair because defeat might have meant the end of Oundle’s
four-year stay in the top flight. Ben Groom’s 89 boosted his side
to 215 all out, but Wellingborough looked in good shape at 170-
4 until Jonathan Dalley held a crucial skier in the deep off Jack
Bolsover’s bowling. It triggered a collapse and the Badgers
prevailed by 18 runs with an over to spare. Dalley’s catch earned
him the ‘champagne moment’ accolade at the club dinner a few
weeks later. But the thirds as well as the firsts had to scrap hard
to stay up, while Rushden beat Oundle narrowly (reflecting the
two league meetings between the sides, when the margins of
defeat were two wickets and three runs!) in the first round of the
T20. Fortunately, the John Wilcox Cup provided a taste of
something much sweeter as Alex Martin’s cool head prevailed in a
feisty final at Barnack against a Grantham side who appeared to
some of the Oundle faithful to have been watching too much
football on television.
It wasn’t the only contentious match of 2016. The so-called
‘Battle of Bretton’ against Peterborough in May became a talking
point around the NCL; but there was, as the lawyers might say, a
spot of ‘previous.’ As far back as June 1898 a row broke out
when Oundle could only find ten players to face their local rivals,
and one of those pulled up injured early in the match.
Peterborough were dismissed for 86 and Oundle had put 80 on
the board when their eighth – and, it was assumed, last – wicket
fell. But the OTCC captain suddenly produced another cricketer
from somewhere and sent him to the crease, even though he had
taken no part in the match up to that point. That being so, ‘the
Peterborough captain objected to his going in,’ according to the
Stamford Mercury. ‘A heated discussion ensued, but there was no
further play and the visitors claimed the victory by six runs.’ And
no NCL Disciplinary Committee then to weigh the evidence. On a
brighter note, Mark Hodgson (voted in as Saturday captain for
2017) scored his 10,000th run for the club in all cricket during the
final Rutland League fixture of the summer – he and Peter Foster
(in prolific form on Sundays) both passing 1,000 runs for the
season overall.
The departure of Graves left, understandably, a large hole in the
School side but there was a major highlight at the end of the
season when Simon Fernandes – glimpsed previously playing a
supporting role to double-centurion Tusa against LGS the year
before – was named in the MCC Schools squad for their annual
contest against England Schools Cricket Association at Lord’s; a
considerable honour. Simon’s brother Charlie turned out
occasionally for OTCC on Sundays in 2016, while another Oundle
School pupil – James Esler, just 15 – made a highly-promising
debut for the club’s Saturday First XI, smacking a confident 47 off
59 balls against Northampton Saints. The links were cemented
further as John Crawley’s daughter, Ellie, made her mark in
Town’s Under-11s set-up, winning the age-group’s Top Batter
accolade, and appeared in the ground-breaking match between
OTCC’s women and an Oundle School girls side. ‘Start them
young’ remains the motto.
AFTERWORD
‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me…’
(Matthew 25:35)
‘Like Easter, it has no fixed place in the calendar. Sometimes it is
early, always with the possibility of it being a false alarm, and
sometimes it is an unconscionable time a coming; but come it
eventually does.’
(Henry Longhurst – ‘The Day’)
‘We’ll do the best we know;
We’ll build our house and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.’
(Richard Wilbur/Leonard Bernstein – ‘Candide’)
There are plenty of precedents in literature, art and music for
portraits and impressions of particular places by outsiders, and in
truth that’s what this book is. Admittedly my great-great-great
grandfather John Goodman was born just up the road in the
village of Barnwell in 1815, the year of the Battle of Waterloo,
subsequently travelling to Northampton to find work in the shoe
trade and raising a family there. And the same arm of the
Goodman clan lived for many years in the village of Thornhaugh,
between Wansford and Stamford, about ten miles from Oundle.
But it’s taken us a while to return.
A few years ago, I found myself drawn increasingly to Oundle, its
cricket and cricketers, its beguiling blend of old and new, fired by
the infectious enthusiasm of the Wakes and Merwe Genis, old and
valued friends, and fuelled by any number of magnificent Coffee
Tavern breakfasts. Now my son plays youth cricket for OTCC,
proud to wear the cap recalling the founding fathers of 1826,
while the old wall at the north end of the Milton Road can act
simultaneously as wind-break and heat-reflector – a happy
combination for any spectator in an English summer – with the
masonry bees buzzing around and the occasional ‘Chad’ viewing
the action from the road.
From a journalist’s perspective it’s extraordinary to consider the
town’s links with the game at its highest levels – whether it’s
Oundelians Adam Chadwick tending the treasures as MCC’s Head
of Collections and Tom Harrison running the national governing
body, OTCC’s Alex Martin holding five catches at Headquarters in
the match between MCC (captained by Brian Lara) and
Hertfordshire in 2014 to mark the bicentenary of the present
Lord’s ground, Sir Michael Pickard (one of the original ‘Assassins’
and distinguished former Chairman of Governors at the School)
serving as President of Surrey CCC across the river, John Wake
managing England age-group squads or his successor John
Crawley bringing Test match experience to the task of developing
the School’s young cricketers.
And the town’s cricketing connections were strengthened further
in 2012 by the official launch (by Graeme Swann) of the Oundle
MCC Foundation Hub, establishing another valuable connection
with Lord’s and offering top-class coaching to a selected group of
young cricketers from state schools in the area.
The Oundle-born Royalist poet and playwright Peter Hausted
penned these lines in around 1632:
Have you a desire to see
The glorious Heaven’s epitome?
Or an abstract of the spring?
Adonis’ garden? Or a thing
Fuller of wonder? Nature’s shop displayed,
Hung with the choices pieces she has made?
Here behold it open laid.
I don’t believe the composer Ebenezer Prout, also born in Oundle
– and of whom it was said that he ‘heard pealing voices and
sounding glories in a generation (he lived from 1835 to 1909)
whose ears were tone-deaf to them’ – ever got around to setting
those words to music, which is a pity. It might have provided a
suitably stirring anthem for the town. Hausted may or may not
have had in mind the green fields upon which OTCC and the
School currently play cricket, but nearly four centuries later the
‘desire’ is still there in a big way; a remarkable symbiotic
relationship.
John Wake’s fellow Ashingtonian Sid Waddell once spoke
movingly of a ‘Darts Valhalla’ where it’s possible to sit in the
clouds sipping mead and watching the great ghosts play. The
eternal rightness of things suggests something similar for Oundle
cricket. Take a look around and see Don Tagg and Mike Mills
trying to out-spin each other; Bertie Grace still doing his
damnedest to impress Dad; Lord Lilford tossing himself a few
catches and dispensing celestial rosy red apples to outstanding
performers; Henry Richards, Wilfrid Timms and Godfrey Pumfrey
batting in the nets with Jack Buswell, Christopher Gimson and
Richard Winch slinging them down, as Bill Montgomery and Allan
Watkins offer a few tips at the back of the net; Jimmy Lowe
posting notices to ensure everyone is where they should be at the
appointed hour, in between discussing education matters with
Henry St John Reade; ‘Whippet’ Burnham, Mike Amps and ‘Riddler’
Davies keeping an eye on proceedings from the pavilion balcony;
Viv Weatherington cutting the heavenly cucumber sandwiches;
Mark Canner, Dennis Clark and Edgar Edis checking that the
scorebook adds up; and Arthur Marshall jotting down a few notes
for his next article. It was, is and hopefully always will be a
wonderful tradition to be part of.
Andrew Radd
February 2017.
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