Vale Roger Gibbons

The world of cricket, and Gloucestershire cricket in particular is a poorer place after the passing last week of Roger Gibbons at the age of 80. President of the county club between 2019 and 2022 Roger’s greatest legacy will, I have no doubt, prove to be the continued success of the Gloucestershire CCC Heritage Trust.

The trust is a charity dedicated to the preservation of the county’s history and was established in 2014. There at the beginning, and later when the Museum and Learning Centre were opened at the county’s Nevil Road headquarters in Bristol, Roger was one of the Trustees.

It was in that capacity that I came across Roger a few years ago, and in various email exchanges he kept me up to date with the Museum’s occasional publications. Roger himself was the author of the best of them and, while there is no full length book in my collection that bears his name, his monographs have been some of the most welcome additions in recent years.

It must, I suppose, be possible and even likely that Roger had some assistance with the design and lay out of the booklets, but at their heart was the fascinating content. In each case the monographs covered examples of diligently researched and lesser known aspects of Gloucestershire cricket made all the better by the fact that in addition to acquiring a thorough understanding of his subjects Roger was also an excellent wordsmith.

He began 2015 with In Memoriam, a tribute to the Gloucestershire cricketers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in the Great War. That one was reprinted in 2019 together with three more. The monograph that remains my personal favourite concerned the scarcely credible story of a proposed tour of India by a Gloucestershire side back in 1936/37, The Tour That Never Was.

The other two 2019 titles were Delayed in Transit, an account of the formation of and playing record of the West of England XI, a side that played through the wartime summers of 1944 and 1945, and Dealings With a Dead Man. That latter title I am confident would never have seen the light of day had it not been for Roger. It is the story of his discovery that, for many years, the game’s historians, archivists and statistician’s had misidentified a man who made three anonymous performances for Gloucestershire in Victorian times.

And that was that, for three years until 2022, when four more titles appeared from Roger’s cottage industry. Concerning CB Grace was the first, a memoir of the legendary WG’s youngest son, Charles Butler Grace, who appeared on four occasions in the First Class game. George Pepall: Cricketer and Countryman, was, like Dealings With a Dead Man, a look at a man who played occasionally for Gloucestershire around the turn of the twentieth century who had an interesting back story.

The other two 2022 titles are fascinating glimpses at social and cricketing history. Holidays at Home: Gloucester Cricket Week 1943 looked at the holiday time entertainment available to Gloucestershire’s populace in wartime, and Bristol Cricket Challenge Cup Competition 1885-1892 reconstructs the history of something the Victorian club game ultimately wasn’t quite ready for, a knock out cup.

In the circumstances I had rather hoped that, another three years on, we would have seen another quartet of publications from Roger but, sadly, his passing would seem to have put an end to that idea unless there are titles in the course of preparation. If there are I sincerely hope that they are sufficiently well advanced to enable his colleagues at the Heritage Trust to finish the projects and get them into print.

As well as a historian Roger was also a collector but I am told that, unlike some cricket tragics, he was interested in a good deal more than cricket. An accountant by profession he was clearly, from the fulsome tributes that have appeared in the last few days, excellent company and a fine raconteur. I did meet him once, as recently as last November, at an event organised by Stephen Chalke at Lansdowne Cricket Club. For me it was an enormously enjoyable event, meeting many people who I had only ever corresponded with by email. At one point Roger came up to me, apologised for interrupting but said he wanted to introduce himself and said that doubtless we could talk later. Sadly we never did, and now never will, but even in that briefest of meetings he exuded bonhomie, good humour and knowledge. The accompanying photograph of him signing some of his monographs in Boundary Books’ showroom, captures that very well.