When our Memories outweigh our Dreams, we have grown Old
Bill Clinton
Hi everyone!
(Some say)
He was a regular Up in the Deckchairs in the days of CB Fry & Ranji back in the 1890s.
There are Decades where nothing
happens; &
There are Weeks where decades
happen
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
During the Sussex game away to Gloucestershire, I’ve been following events from Up in the Deckchairs with Vlad, Bill & Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry.
(Editor:
We all know Ol ’Ric believes that:
You should never let the Facts get in the way of what Really Happened …
But … POTUS Bill always watches from the Sharks Stand at the Sea End !!)
Down at Hove Actually it's been a Decade * sort of Week !!
* Strictly: 9 Years
Let me tell you the Tale …
A conversation at Sunday lunchtime with the Sussex Chair (The Best in County Cricket) led me - on Monday - to start e-following the Sussex IIs game v Glamorgan at Blackstone.
For the first time
Three Brighton Aldridge Cricket Academies (BACA) were
playing for the IIs:
Go Well, Messrs. Munt, Cripps & Moore!
Along with the BACA Boys…
Plenty of familiar names, full of promise in the Sussex XI: Archie, Dan, Charlie, Henry and Zach
The Sussex skipper was Bertie Foreman.
I’m a Big Fan of Bertie.
He’s got a Cricket Bag full of Aptitude & - even more importantly - Attitude.
In 2023/24 Bertie played for Manly Warringah on the
edge of Sydney Harbour.
At the end of the season, Bertie joined an illustrious
list of English cricketers to win the O’Reilly Medal, awarded to New South Wales
Premier Cricket’s first-grade men’s player of the year.
On the List is #SussexLegend Tony Greig, who was hosted by Bertie’s Grandad Denis when he first moved to Brighton from South Africa in the 1960s.
“He was always Uncle Tony to my Dad.”
But in Life - as Chuck Berry sang -
You Never Can Tell …
Having been captaining the IIs on the Monday, by Tuesday Bertie was making his First Class debut for Sussex in the crucial game v Gloucestershire at Bristol !
The Professional Cricket Association was soon tweeting:
How proud must Dad Michael must be!
And Grandad Denis, who passed away in 2016.
Denis played football for the
Albion.
And 130 FC games for Sussex.
I saw him play for Sussex at the Nevill - 60 Seasons ago in June 1964.
You could look up the Scorecard:
https://i.imgci.com/db/ARCHIVE/1960S/1964/ENG_LOCAL/CC/KENT_SUSSEX_CC_13-16JUN1964.html
But frankly … There’s absolutely no
need to.
It was a Regulation Win for Sussex
by 8 wickets over the Old Rivals, with Lord Ted scoring 117* in the 2nd Innings.
No prizes for guessing which #Sussex Legend (Hint: wicketkeeper, batted No.4) was with Ted at the end, with 57*
---
I was listening in the Study at
Merryfield to ball-by-ball commentary to the game on BBC Sussex Sport.
The commentator mentioned the Foreman Family story & it got me thinking about…
How many Families have played for Sussex?
Never happier than when I have a
Spreadsheet and with access to Wikipedia, it looks to me that there have been
130 Players from 55 Families.
Hint: Don’t forget that Ranji was Duleep’s Uncle !!
Every County has its Families. Gloucestershire: Grace, Kent: Cowdrey & Ealham, Middlesex: Compton, Nottinghamshire: Broad, Worcestershire: D'Oliveira & Yorkshire: Bairstow.
But does another other County have more than 55 ...
Plenty of familiar Sussex Family names:
Buss: Tony & Mike
Greig: Tony & Ian
Griffith: Billy & Mike
Langridge: James, John & Richard
Lenham: Les, Neil & Archie
Tate: Fred & Maurice
Wells: Colin, Alan & Luke
In Season 2025 I’ll tell a few tales about some of the Sussex Families.
Starter Question: Why were the two Turnours always known as Edward 4th & Edward 5th ?
Clue: the Turnours were not BACA Boys. Their family has a tradition of being educated at Eton and New College, Oxford
---
As the game progressed into the afternoon session of Day 1, the Lads …
Editor: Can you still be a Lad in
your(early) 70s?
Well …
Once a Lad, Always a Lad!
… the Lads - many of whom are lifelong supporters of the Old Rivals: Kent- were emailing & WhatsApping, looking into the Data Analytics for Result Predictions.
When you’ve been watching cricket for half a century & more, you very likely believe what William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun:
The past is never dead.
It's not even past.
One of the Lads found the Perfect Prediction.
55 Seasons ago he took a never-to-be-repeated 7-fer
in my first game as captain. These days GC still turns out for Harberton CC in South
Devon.
By chance, during the game GC was visiting one of his sons in Bristol who lives in the Greenbank area of Bristol.
Gloucestershire currently play most of them games at Seat
Unique Stadium (aka the County Ground, Bristol).
But like many Counties, across the Seasons they have
played at many other grounds – including Greenbank Cricket Ground, barely a
couple of miles from the current ground.
Greenbank in the 2020s
From 1922 to 1928 just 20 FC games were played at Greenbank.
By co-incidence the first was against Sussex; as was the penultimate one in July 1928.
In the Sussex XI in 1928 were Jim & Harry Parks, John Langridge (brother of James and Uncle of Richard) and captain Arthur Gilligan (brother of Harold; and of Frank, who played for Essex).
Three Sussex Families in the One Game!
*** Can anyone find a FC match with
more than THREE Families?
(Editor: See below for one with FOUR !!!)
As for the Result back in 1928: Sussex won by an innings & 65 runs.
I did e-follow the rest of Day 1 & Day 2 … but I
“knew” the result would be:
A Sussex win by an innings.
And so it proved just before lunch on Day 3 …
Sussex won by an innings & 7
runs!!
#NeverInDoubt
Winning the game meant that Sussex were promoted to
Division 1.
After 9 long, long Winters, which
began back in 2015 when we lost to Yorkshire & were relegated …
We are back where we belong!!
For Bertie it will be a game to be Remembered Forever!
I wish him Massive Success in what I hope will be a long career.
---
Season 2024 has just one round of Championship games left to play.
Sussex play Middlesex at Hove.
As Season 125 comes to its end with Sussex’s 2,827th
game since 1890 … There is all to play for.
A Win would make the Season’s Win Rate the highest ever.
Look out for a Special Blog!!
As for Season 2025 … I’ve Saved A Deckchair for YOU!!!
Vlad, POTUS Bill, Antoine & I are waiting for you.
After all ….
Why read a Lord Ric Cricket
Blog, when you can star in your own.
See you soon!!
Lord Ric of
Beckley Furnace
Dozing up in
the Deckchairs
PS
I long ago realised that
Answers rarely fully come from the Numbers alone.
Scorecards are just the start to
understanding What Really Happened!
When in the many years to come Bertie
looks back at the Scorecard of his debut game, indeed he will see that he
scored 2 runs (bowled by Zafar Gohar, 1 of 6 wickets for 76 runs) & bowled
12 overs for 36 runs, with 1 maiden and no wickets.
But as Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry
said:
You cannot plant an acorn in the
morning & expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.
As I listened to the game in Bristol, I thought back to game at a
Horsham in June 1949.
Sussex v Cambridge University
https://i.imgci.com/db/ARCHIVE/1940S/1949/ENG_LOCAL/UNIV/SUSSEX_CAMB-UNIV_UNIV_11-14JUN1949.html
There were four Sussex Families playing in the game.
*** Surely that must be a Record ??!!
Not to mention five future Presidents of MCC!
Sussex had a strong XI.
The Langridges: brothers James & John
George Cox Jr, whose father George Snr also
played for Sussex
Billy Griffith, former Sussex captain and father of future Sussex captain Mike
David Sheppard would go onto captain Sussex & England … & become Bishop of Liverpool
The Light Blues had some Top Players:
Future Sussex captain Hubert Doggart (brother
of Peter), Doug Insole & John Warr would all play for England.
And - along with Billy Griffith * – become Presidents of MCC.
* As would son
Mike
Oliver Popplewell would also become MCC President
John Dewes also played for England.
But Top Players though there were
aplenty, what is it about a long-forgotten drawn outground game three-quarters
of a century ago that led me to think of it 75 years later?
Well …Making his debut, the Sussex
No.7 was just 17 years old.
Looking at the Scorecard, he
scored 12 in the 1st innings & 1* in the 2nd.
He bowled 4 overs for 9 runs, with
1 maiden and 1 wicket (Popplewell bowled for 11).
In the next quarter of a century
the debutant would only take 50 more FC wickets (including 1 in Tests, the only
England wicketkeeper in C20th to take a Test wicket).
But he would play 562 more games
for Sussex (plus 46 Tests) and score 29,126 more runs for Sussex.
As Antoine would say: It was a
game for planting Acorns!
Regular readers of the Blog may have
been surprised – when reading the Sussex Families List – not to see one
particular Family (2 brothers & a son) they would be certain that I
would have been sure to include …
When I think of POTUS Bill and When our Memories outweigh our Dreams, we have grown Old … I don’t choose to go through the detailed arithmetic of my:
Dreams & Memories Ratio = Years To Go / Years Gone
I’ll leave You to estimate yours…
As Dylan sang: May you stay Forever
Young
By the time it is 2099 – 75 years
on from Bertie’s debut – even I accept that my days Up in the Deckchairs will
be but a (recent!) memory.
May there be a Blogger somewhere remembering
the Debut Game at Bristol back in 2024 & telling Bertie’s Tale.
Of how an
Acorn became a Mighty Oak.
Hopefully The Gods will allow me
to watch with the #SussexLegends – including Grandad Denis – from high above
the scoreboard at the Cromwell Road end.
But wherever I am …
I know I
will still be Telling the Tales about the Sussex No.7 who make his debut at
Horsham in 1949 …
Forever Young ... Jim Parks !!
Family is not an important thing.
It's everything.
Michael J Fox
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