History of Bucks CCC

wickets in an innings is Oliver Battcock. Rogers played on through the 1974 season but after his red-letter day he took only 19 more wickets for the county. Laurie Champniss, the foil to Rogers at Bray, had begun his Bucks career in 1971, and he brought welcome variety to the attack. His leg breaks and googlies, delivered with a wheeling action off the wrong foot, commanded respect for their accuracy. Never as big a spinner of leg breaks as the preliminaries suggested, Champniss could turn his wrong ’un prodigiously. “A great character,” Ian Feasey remembers, “he was a stickler for field placings. He would make sure everybody was in the right spot before he bowled. He’d shout to the three men in the covers to make sure they were in line. He’d even move the umpire six inches.” Another Champniss idiosyncrasy was his practice of wearing three sweaters almost regardless of the weather. His 106 wickets for the county came at only a fraction over 20 apiece. Parry had other spinners at his disposal in his final year. More orthodox leg breaks came from Michael Sant, an Australian who played at Amersham, while there was left-arm spin from Peter Plummer, a former Young Amateur who returned to Bucks cricket after four years with Nottinghamshire. He occasionally made useful runs, but his bowling suffered by comparison with that of Ray Hutchison, who played the first of his three seasons in 1973. Hutchison was a dentist from New Zealand, who arrived in England having played 31 matches for Otago and quickly made his presence felt at High Wycombe. Slightly built but ferociously competitive, his prior reputation was as a batsman, but his left-arm spinners soon started to bamboozle club batsmen in the nets at Wycombe and he quickly proved himself as an all-rounder in the truest sense. Never afraid to give the ball air, in the three years in which he played for Bucks Hutchison secured 118 wickets at 14.51 - no post-war bowler has taken so many at a lower cost. With the bat he averaged 31, and in the field he was in a class of his own at cover point with a wonderfully strong arm. “As good as Colin Bland,” Chris Parry asserts, “and in overs cricket he was worth 15 or 20 runs.” New batsmen emerged during the time of Parry’s captaincy. Keith Edwards, who played for Amersham, is recalled as a beautiful striker of the ball. “On his day the best batsman in Bucks by far,” says one who played with him “but he hit the ball in the air too much.” “He looked such a good player,” says another contemporary, “but he never made the runs he should have.” Over a hundred matches without a century and an average of just below 25 suggest that this may be a fair assessment, though Edwards’ fielding helped to assure his place in the side – he had a memorably strong flat throw from the boundary - while, like others who batted in the middle order, he often perished in the cause of quick runs, especially with the introduction in 1969 of a rule awarding first innings points to the side scoring most runs in their first 55 overs. Another who had begun in 1971, David Mackintosh, had learnt his cricket in Scotland, where he had attended Paisley Grammar School and Glasgow University. When his work brought him south he joined the Amersham club, whose cause he was still espousing as chairman and captain of the third eleven in 2005. An effective rather than elegant batsman, he was possessed of an eye that allowed him to hit across the line, and he is recalled as a bustler at the crease, one who kept the fielders on their toes with quick running. Mackintosh had already been capped by Scotland before winning his Bucks cap in his first season. 79 Gillette Cup excitement: Chris Parry & David Mackintosh Ray Hutchison