History of Bucks CCC

Batting first in chilly conditions, Middlesex were checked by two Atkins run outs and their last wicket fell with six of their 65 overs unused. However, there was no fairy tale outcome; the home side’s total of 269, with 86 from Bob Gale, proved more than enough as an attack spearheaded by the England bowler John Price, and with Fred Titmus in support, soon put the shackles on Bucks, for whom David Janes hit out well to make the top score of 32 in a total of 111. The rest of the season was to prove anti-climatic. Though no matches were lost in the Championship, only two of the ten fixtures were won. Eleventh place was not good enough to qualify for the Gillette Cup, and the ultimate irony was that failure sprang from the desire to play positive cricket when acting captain Robin Peppiatt sacrificed first innings points, when they were there for the taking, in pressing for victory in the final match against Hertfordshire at Slough. Peppiatt now looks back ruefully on a decision for which the team manager berated him, but he was not to know that so many other counties, still with a couple of rounds of matches to play, would struggle against the weather, and that most of the late season games would end as draws. The coup There was a settled pattern to the fixtures around this time. The counties were able to choose their opponents, to be played home and away, and not since 1958 had there been any change in those Bucks elected to play. Each summer began with a tour of Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and there were games with neighbouring Berkshire and Oxfordshire. There was also a regular cycle of grounds used for the home fixtures. Until the inclusion of Ernest Turner’s in 1965 there had been no new venue in Bucks since 1951, when a match had been taken to the Aspro Sports Ground, Ben Barnett’s home club, for the first of four years. Thereafter, the appointed grounds were Ascott Park, Chesham, Slough and High Wycombe, where two matches were always played. This apparently happy arrangement suited the county better than the clubs, who were irked to be out of pocket on Bucks matches, especially as they often felt they had players whom the county should have been choosing. Instead, they saw others with little involvement with the local club scene come sweeping in. This discontent would fester on for more than 20 years and come to a head at a vitriolic AGM in the 1980s, but it first found expression in the spring of 1966. The malcontents at this time also harboured objections to what they saw as preferential treatment often given to those with a public school background. The Bucks teams of the period were in fact drawn from all walks of life, and plenty of those who played regularly had certainly not attended independent schools. Nevertheless there was some substance to the objectors’ case, especially with the Young Amateurs, whose ranks were often tapped to make up teams. Though no-one in Bucks cricket was regarded with more universal affection than Tom Orford, his unabashed concern about the educational establishment his Young Amateurs had 70 The coup David Janes hits out