All the game’s greats started – or end up – at local clubs alongside local players. So what is it like sharing your home dressing room with a legend?
Josh Burrows09-Sep-2010When Shane Warne retired from international cricket in 2007 with 1001 wickets, his reputation as the game’s greatest bowler was confirmed. But in 1992 that same cocky Victorian was not deemed good enough to deserve a second season at Accrington CC. At 20 Warne had played a summer with the Lancashire League side as an overseas player – one of several cricketing giants who have spent time picking up cheap runs and wickets in English club cricket.Warne was picked up only at late notice when the club’s first-choice overseas player was injured. Accrington’s Peter Barratt remembers how it took Warne only two days to fax back the contract he was offered before turning up a few weeks later with his cricket gear and a reputation for giving it a bit of a rip.”He was a good friend for the five months he was with us,” recalls Barratt. “Yes, he misbehaved and he was a bit over the top sometimes but he wasn’t bad at all. He was 20 years old and wanted to be one of the boys. He had to be told a couple of times that the club professional had to keep himself fit. Whenever he was in any difficulties he’d always call me up. That included things like boils on his bum or car breakdowns.”Despite taking 79 wickets that season and attracting the interest of Australian selectors, Warne could not keep his place at Thorneyholme Road. “He was popular with spectators but the committee decided that he didn’t get enough runs,” recalls Barratt disbelievingly.At Lansdown CC in Bath the members would have been only too happy to have their overseas player of 1973 come back for a second term. But the old-timers at Combe Park are happy enough to be able to tell stories about the one year they played alongside their own legend – Viv Richards.He was a 21-year-old West Indian prodigy when his love affair with the West Country began. Len Creed, then chairman of Lansdown and a Somerset committee member, had spotted him while on holiday in Antigua a few months earlier and Richards had jumped at his offer of a season in England.While he was at Lansdown Richards lodged with the third-team captain, Alan Bees – a thoroughly mediocre cricketer who became a very close friend. It was Bees who introduced his new mate to jazz and cider, and in return the big Antiguan spent a season thrashing length deliveries through midwicket.”There was Accrington’s Peter Barratt
Viv Richards, West Indies
121 Tests, 8540 runs, Avg 50.23, HS 291
187 ODIs, 6721 runs, Avg 47.00, HS 189*
Lansdown’s Martin Veal
Wasim Akram, Pakistan
104 Tests, 414 wickets, Avg 23.62, Best 11-110
356 ODIs, 502 wickets, Avg 23.52, Best 5-15
Smethwick’s Gordon McKenzie
Allan Donald, South Africa
72 Tests, 330 wickets, Avg 22.25, Best 12-139
164 ODIs, 272 wickets, Avg 21.78, Best 6-23
Knowle and Dorridge’s Ian Maddocks
Adam Gilchrist, Australia
96 Tests, 5570 runs, 47.60, HS 204*
416 dismissals, 287 ODIs, 9619 runs, Avg 35.89, HS 172, 472 dismissals
Richmond’s Chris Goldie
“He was an absolute gentleman but, believe you me, he was flipping fast,” says the club secretary, Gordon McKenzie. “He didn’t take that long a run-up and he never held back. He was the quickest thing I’ve ever seen at Broomfield.”One poor batsman got one that rose off just short of a length and broke his jaw. If it had been anyone else’s short ball the lad could have got out the way but Wasim was that quick that it just hit him.”After Akram left, the respite for Birmingham League batsmen was only brief. Three years later Allan Donald turned up to play for Knowle and Dorridge a few weeks after retiring from Tests with 330 wickets and a reputation as one of the game’s fiercest competitors. Anyone expecting “White Lightning” to take things easy on aSaturday afternoon was to be disappointed.”As soon as he walked across that line on to the pitch he wanted to win. It didn’t matter whether he was playing for South Africa, Warwickshire or Knowle and Dorridge. It was a game of cricket and he didn’t like to lose it,” recalls K&D’s Ian Maddocks.”There were one or two batsmen who thought they were better than they actually were and decided to have a little chat with him. That didn’t go down very well and, if you were stood at slip, you took a couple of paces backwards because you knew what was coming.”Donald’s season at K&D was curtailed by injury but like Akram, Richards and Warne he greatly enjoyed his time out of the international spotlight. No player, however, has maintained his association with a club as keenly as Richmond CC’s illustrious adopted son – a lad named Adam Gilchrist, sent over in 1989 aged 17 with a note from his dad explaining that he had been looking in quite good touch.”What stood out about him was his willingness to tuck in and score big hundreds,” says Chris Goldie, captain of the 1st XI in a summer during which Gilchrist scored more than 2,700 runs in all competitions. “I said that season that I thought he could go all the way. It sounds prophetic but it was just obvious that he was going to become an international opening batter.”More than 20 years later and having reached the pinnacle of international cricket, Gilchrist came back to Richmond’s Old Deer Park in June to play a Middlesex-Glamorgan Twenty20. He hammered 51 on the pitch where he first started breaking English hearts as a club cricketer and then strolled into the bar as if he had never been away.”It’s a mark of the lad that he volunteered himself to play at Richmond,” Goldie says. “I think it was an emotional time for him, going back and playing on a ground that he has very fond memories of.”Two decades previously, despite studying by correspondence while living in the pavilion at nearby Twickenham CC, the young Gilchrist was every bit the model first-team professional – though he was a technically minded accumulator rather than the batting tornado he became. His dedication has continued and he now helps run a scholarship that gives a young Australian a chance to spend a season with the West London club. Each player comes with a similar recommendation from Gilchrist’s dad, Stan.Warne may have been more fun off the field, Richards more laid back, Akram and Donald more vicious on the pitch but in Adam Gilchrist Richmond CC got particularly lucky. “He’s a genuine Richmond man and a special guy,” says Goldie. “We’re all very proud of him.”
