County Cricket Matters Issue 18

Martin Chandler | 8:53am GMT 17 March 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 38
Author: Chave, Annie (Editor)
Publisher: County Cricket Matters
Rating: 5 stars

With its March 2024 edition County Cricket Matters comes of age, so perhaps increased maturity is only to be expected. There seems to be more in the way of reflection this time around, and perhaps a realisation that lovers of First Class cricket and the county game are not quite the endangered minority that at one stage we thought we were. The threat to the game we love may still be very real, but perhaps in truth we are in a majority.

Certainly Annie’s editorial strikes me as being along those lines, and perhaps after all the work she has put in we can allow her the self-indulgence that she takes with her first interview, which is with the young Somerset wicketkeeper batsman James Rew, and his father Chris.

I have to say that had this interview appeared a couple of issues back it might, in a fit of petulance on my part, have resulted in CCM not, for the first time, getting a five star review. The delay has however meant that I have got over young Mr Rew averaging 96.00 against Lancashire, and taking three centuries from the Red Rose last summer. Even if I hadn’t though Rew’s admirable attitude towards red ball cricket would certainly have won me over. 

From Somerset the narrative moves to another county yet to secure a County Championship, Northamptonshire, and Graham Coster’s account of a lifetime following a county he discloses no obvious link with. His piece is memorable for two main reasons. The first is for introducing me to a word that had never previously been near my vocabulary (‘irruption’) and second for the realisation that one of the treats described, the visit of a touring Test team for a fixture against a county, is such a sad loss.

When, after more than 30 years, I rejoined the Cricket Society a few years back Peter Hardy was the editor of their excellent regular bulletins. Given the natural affinity that exists between CCM subscribers and the society it was an obvious move for both for Peter to contribute an essay extolling the many virtues of the society to CCM’s membership.

Following his remarkable account of England’s 1953/54 tour of the Caribbean, Who Only Cricket Know, David Woodhouse immediately became one of my favourite writers. He is a man who clearly cares about the game’s literature as much as I do, something his current series of articles in The Wisden Cricketer has served only to highlight. Further confirmation, if such were required, comes in his CCM essay on the subject of writings on county cricket.

Peter Thomson’s contribution is rather more light hearted, yet in its own way thought provoking. The premise is the simple one that English leg spinners need to have three initials to have any real prospect of being successful. Ridiculous I hear you say, and I can’t really disagree, but there is a surprisingly large body of evidence to support Thomson’s admittedly tongue in cheek contention.

The controversy in Yorkshire that was stirred up by Azeem Rafiq’s revelations has rightly been taken extremely seriously, but has perhaps had the incidental effect of concentrating the mind on that subject in Yorkshire. Chris Fauske’s fittingly titled Cricket for Everyone is a timely reminder of the not dissimilar problems that resulted in Essex asking Katharine Newton KC to produce a report into allegations of racism made against the club by Maurice Chambers and Jahid Ahmed.

The second interview is, to say the least, a bit Yorkshire. The questioner is CCM Deputy Editor Jeremy Lonsdale, who must know as much about the county’s cricketing history as any man alive, and the man he is talking to is John Fuller, who runs the Cricket Yorkshire website and who probably knows as much as anyone about the current club cricket scene in the county.

Cricket is the Dickens of Sport doesn’t, at first blush, give any real clues as to what Greg Watts’ contribution is all about. In fact it is about our glorious game and just how much of the English language it makes use of. It is a little off beat, and is not without humour, but above all is an interesting and original piece of writing.

Selecting a favourite piece in any edition of CCM is always fraught with difficulty and regular changes of mind, but this time round Alan Wilkins certainly has his nose in front, His cleverly titled essay on the magnificence of the County Championship in the era in which he played, The Million, is a wonderful piece of writing on its own, but the more so because, although clearly not written for the purpose, it doubles as a splendid tribute to the legendary Mike Procter.

One thing that CCM has not really covered before is the collecting of cricketana, perhaps on the basis that that is a subject only for the over 18s. If so it is certainly a subject which is embraced in CCM18, David Woodhouse’s piece on books being joined by Martin Weiler’s contribution on a rather more ‘niche’ area of collecting, match tickets.

Then, just as I thought CCM 18 might contain nothing of purely historical interest John Stone’s contribution arrives. This time it is a profile of Les Jackson, one of the greatest bowlers county cricket has ever seen. Jackson played in just two Tests, one in 1949 and another in 1961, but he really should have been an England regular, and a significant part of the essay deals with why he wasn’t.

The final essay in CCM 18 is Donald Histead’s ‘The Greys’ at the Cricket. The Greys are a hockey touring team of which Histead is a member but, more relevantly for present purposes, a group who meet annually at different venues to watch a county cricket match, and it would seem they welcome all fellow spectators into their fold.

And then there is just the back cover, and that crossword from Princely Entry, which looks a bit different this time round – maybe for once I will get somewhere with it?