History of Bucks CCC

Oxford University and Kent. He was now Labour MP for Buckingham, and he would soon carve out a distinguished career as a television journalist before returning to the Commons as a Conservative. In 1948 his batting was rusty. Seven innings brought only 100 runs with a single fifty reminding spectators of what might have been. One man who bucked the trend and now batted with authority was Tom Busby from Buckingham, the younger brother of Algie, who had been a regular pre-war player. Squat and chunky in appearance, and with a voice that branded him of good farming stock, he had made two earlier appearances in 1936, scoring just one pre-war run before announcing himself purposefully with a century against Bedfordshire in 1947 when he shared an unbeaten partnership of 298 with O’Connor, still the second highest stand in the county’s history. Now playing more regularly, Busby was the mainstay of the batting in Oliver Battcock’s team. Two other pre-war players also returned in 1948. John Aubrey-Fletcher, whose father had succeeded to the presidency on the death of Dr PH Eliot, Bishop of Buckingham, two years earlier, played nine matches but could not re-capture his pre-war form and did not reappear again. Jim Hastie, who had played once as a 19 year-old in 1939, embarked on a more substantial post-war career that stretched to 1954 and saw his aggressive left-handed batting and brilliant fielding in the covers win him a place in the Minor Counties team to play Kent in 1951. There was an elderly feel to the side with the new captain almost 45 when he took over, but plans were afoot to ensure a steady flow of young talent in the years to come. For this Bucks will always be indebted to Tom Orford. Elected to the committee in 1945, he was to devote his life to the service of youth cricket. His Colts team, soon to be re-christened Bucks Young Amateurs, first took the field in 1946. In November 1995, just two months before his death, Tom Orford, now president of the county, was able to speak without notes at the dinner to celebrate the golden jubilee of his brainchild. In 1948 the first of a long line of Orford’s protégés took his place in the full county side when Robin Peppiatt was chosen to play against Staffordshire at High Wycombe. The young Peppiatt had taken 45 wickets as an opening bowler for Winchester, but he had not found favour with Wisden’s acerbic reporter of public schools cricket, EM Wellings, who described him as ‘a youngster in whose person are combined all the modern bowling faults.’ He was one who ‘presented a full view of the trundler’s chest to the batsman’ in search of the increasingly fashionable inswinger. It was an action that did not sustain Peppiatt into adult cricket. There were a few early wickets for the county, but the sharp swing of his youth soon deserted him and, playing intermittently through to 1965, his later contributions were as a middle-order batsman, dependable slip fielder and occasional captain. His greater contribution to the Bucks cause was off the field, where he joined the committee in 1952, in fear of uttering a word with Franklin in the chair, but serving without a break until he became president on the death of Tom Orford. Robin Peppiatt looks back fondly on his induction to adult life as he set off for his second match, against Norfolk at Kings Lynn. “This should look after you, boy,” his father had said proffering a fiver to cover his son’s expenses. “Then we stopped at a pub on the way and I found myself in a poker school with Oliver Battcock. I’d only got this fiver, so he’d got me taped!” Things looked up for Battcock in 1949, though there was a dire start to the season at Christ Church, where Bucks chose to insert the opposition and had to wait until the Oxfordshire score had reached 264 before claiming their first wicket. Jack Mendl, one of the finest of all minor counties cricketers, made 195 that day. A loss by ten wickets in this match was followed by two drawn games, after which there was a splendid run of six consecutive victories. Another win in the final match, against Bedfordshire at 61 Battcock takes over