Univ Annual Cricket Day
Sunday, 6th June 2010
The last Old Members' Cricket day, kindly organised by Nick Smith (1976), took place on Sunday 5th June 2011. All OM cricketers were invited to play. For information about future matches, please email Nick.
Read Nick Smith's match report from the June 2010 Old Members vs Current Students cricket match here.
Univ Alumni Cricket – a Brief History
There has been an annual cricket match between the current students and a team of alumni for many years – indeed, I am not sure when or why the first one took place. I can’t even remember when or why I played for the first time back in the early 90’s. But I’m certainly glad I did as it has been great fun ever since. Most of the credit for the long-term good health of this fixture should go to George Laurence (1969), the captain of the alumni team in those days. George was and is one of the great cricketing enthusiasts and he took it upon himself to organise every aspect of this fixture, recruiting a team of talented practitioners to give the current students a hard time. George’s infectious zeal was apparent in the catching practice he insisted upon before the game. George would whack the ball at us or past us, applauding the occasional desultory catch, while we waited for the first of the students to arrive, perhaps fifteen minutes after the designated starting time.
George led by example, cajoling the bowler in every delivery, applauding every piece of semi-competent fielding. Self-effacing about his own batting and bowling, he showed his true colours in the deep. Wherever he placed himself, the student batsmen would pick him out with uncanny inevitability. George would launch himself fearlessly through the air and get his hand or his head in the way of everything, saving certain boundaries and taking the occasional blinding catch. Faced with such a stirring example, what could the rest of us do but risk hamstrings and dodgy backs in the alumni cause?
But George is far from the only great character to illuminate this fixture. It was a team full of talent and competitive instinct. Amongst the stars, most years, were the Rogers brothers, James (1977) and Will (1973). James had played three years of first class cricket for the university in the late 70s, his batting full of graceful drives and pulls. Often he would start slowly, as if trying to remember his lines, before discovering the full range of his shots and building a huge score. His elder brother, Will, was the most deceptive of slow bowlers, lobbing up tempting off-spinners and then celebrating yet another easy stumping. No one was better at polishing off a tasty tail. Perhaps the heaviest scorer, year in, year out, was Shomit Dutta (1989). Shomit is a natural showman who had given the old boys a hard time in his student days and then came back to haunt his successors. Equally effective with bat and ball, he loves to be at the centre of the action and has been the difference between losing and winning on several occasions. Other batsmen who have regularly weighed in with big scores include James Mallinson (1978) and John Wheater, a fellow at the college.
Perhaps the real heroes of the team are the bowlers because all of us still feel capable of waving a stick at the ball (as long as we don’t have to run too many brisk 3s) but most of us suspect that our creaking limbs would not survive the unexpected exercise of bowling. Perhaps the most consistent contributor in this respect has been Jan Skarbek (1989), bustling in to the wicket and still pinging it down at a fair old lick. Most of us are content to amble around the field, hoping the ball will not come our way – certainly not on the ground because it’s far too far away these days and by the time we have stretched down towards the ball, it will have raced underneath and sped to the boundary. But none of us wants to field that far out for fear of having to throw the ball all the way back to the wicket-keeper. Most of us probably had good “arms” in years gone by but that’s not a skill that stays with you if you don’t use it. I guess the sorry truth is that, for too many of us, it is our only game of the year and that’s not quite enough to successfully imitate our younger, lither selves.
The students watch us huffing and puffing with a sense of wry amusement. Their opening bowlers glide in from the sightscreens and hurl the ball down at a pace that can be genuinely disconcerting to us oldsters. But the ball is rarely close enough to us to pose any danger to the stumps or ourselves and if we wave a bat at it, the ball tends to fly high past third man. And if we miss it, it’s four byes anyway. The sorry truth is that student cricket is not quite what it was in days gone by and the alumni, however old they get it, do tend to win most of these games. But the result fades quickly into insignificance in comparison with the pleasure of being back again in the groves of academe, especially when those groves are as immaculately presented as the Univ square tends to be. Perhaps that’s because they rarely play cricket on it these days! The alumni team changes dramatically each year but the sense of camaraderie is the same.
George found himself with new family responsibilities and relinquished the captaincy after the 2002 fixture. He asked me whether I would try to carry on this fine tradition and it has been a pleasure to do so. Fielding practice is now rather less compulsory but we still seem to win quite often. Every year, we look to find new volunteers and I very rarely have to say “no” to a would-be player, whether they have just graduated or last turned their arm over in 1937. There is space for players of all abilities and, with luck, all enjoy it equally.
Nick Smith (1976), Current Captain
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