History of Bucks CCC

When he first took over, David Smith had inherited a team that was breaking up. Gooch and Bond had both played their last match and Bailey was soon to follow them into retirement. Of the batsmen Cordaroy had given up and the best player, Hayward, had obtained a contract with Hampshire. So, even with the imported players, Bucks were starved of success in the new captain’s first three years: fifteenth, eleventh and nineteenth in the table – with only Cornwall and Cumberland below Bucks in 1982 - represented years of struggle in which the principal problem lay with the bowling, where there was an increasing burden on the shoulders of Lyon. Of bowlers nurtured within the county, Cardigan Connor, born in Anguilla, was first blooded as an 18 year-old in 1979. He played his club cricket at Slough with David Smith, who championed his cause against those who argued that selection was premature. Connor served five years’ apprenticeship with Bucks, carefully nursed in his early seasons then spearheading the attack in his last two summers; but it was only after he had moved into the first-class game that he revealed his true worth with more than 600 first-class wickets for Hampshire. Another whose time with Bucks was brief was Philip Newport, a product of the Royal Grammar School at High Wycombe. He had distinguished himself in junior cricket, but he was still learning his trade when he made his Bucks debut as an 18 year-old in 1981. The next year Worcestershire had snapped him up and by 1988 he was to become the second Young Amateur to win a Test cap, taking the Man of the Match award on debut against Sri Lanka at Lord’s. Ian Hodgson, a three year blue at Cambridge, was earmarked for greater things than he achieved as a quick bowler. An arduous university season and a troublesome knee combined to reduce his effectiveness, though he made useful runs including one century, against Hertfordshire at High Wycombe in 1982. Another youngster to take the new ball around this time was Jon Coles. Like Hodgson, he played for Gerrards Cross and he is currently the highly regarded team manager of the senior county side. Eleven matches and 14 expensive wickets tell their own story of his struggle to make the grade as a minor counties player. In 1982, the most unsuccessful of Smith’s years in charge, 18 of the 25 players chosen for Bucks had been Young Amateurs. The principal pace bowlers, Connor, Coles and Hodgson were among them, as was Stuart Ridge, who had opposed Hodgson in the Varsity Match, and who played three games for Bucks. Alumni of the Royal Grammar School were prominent and some did well: Paul Dolphin played in all the matches as an opening batsman, scoring a fine century in the season’s only victory against Suffolk at Ipswich; Peter Harvey, who played with Dolphin at Beaconsfield, hit a century in the return match against Suffolk at Chesham, and Tim Russell, wicket-keeper and batsman, started out on a county career that would stretch to 2000. The North Circular team: Brian Poll and David Smith 87 Ian Hodgson David Smith