Berkshire Cricketers 1844-2008

INTRODUCTION Cricket spread quickly throughout Berkshire in the 18th century with matches being reported in towns such as Bray, Longworth, Reading, Sonning, Tilehurst and Wokingham. As early as 1748 London beat Berkshire, 5 a side, and in 1769 Surrey beat Berkshire on Datchet Common although it is not known if a properly constituted County Club actually existed. There are subsequently regular newspaper references to Berkshire playing other counties and MCC. However, in the mid 1800s it is possible that there may have been a County Club in existence as, according to Rowland Bowen, there was a report in Bell’s Life on the Club’s AGM on 4th May 1841 with no indication it was a new Club formation. There have been matches traced spasmodically between 1844 and 1872 and where the scores are available the players have been included with their averages in the first section. It is not been possible, however, to trace if the Club was in continuous existence throughout the period, although it could have been reformed around 1856. Opponents in this period included Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Wiltshire. The present County Club was formed on 12th March 1895 with HRH Prince Christian as the Club’s first President. It was advocated that the county ground should be at Reading. The Club has been in continuous existence since and entered the Minor Counties Championship from 1896, although it played two matches in 1895 against counties playing in the Championship. The main opponents over the years were Buckinghamshire, Devon, Dorset, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. On the revision of the Championship in 1983 when it was divided into two divisions, East and West, Berkshire was put in the Western Division and opponents subsequently have been Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Herefordshire (who replaced Buckinghamshire in 1992), Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Wales (who replaced Somerset II in 1988) and Wiltshire. After the formation most home matches were played at the County Ground, Kensington Road, Reading until 1939, but after WWII home matches have been played at various grounds throughout the County. Prior to 2008 the County has only had limited success winning the Minor Counties Championship in 1924, 1928 and 1953, and the Knock Out Cup once, in 2004. However, in 2008 the County won the Minor Counties Championship and was the beaten KO finalist. I wish to thank Roy New the Berkshire Secretary for his substantial input in tracing and providing scorecards and obtaining player’s details. I have also been given help by Roger Heavens, Julian Lawton Smith and as always by Don Ambrose to which I am again extremely grateful. I also am indebted to Tony Webb who has been an inspiration again and has readily supplied me with endless detail now for some years. Kevin Preston has kindly provided the information on players appearing in Minor Counties representative matches. Peter Wynne Thomas, Peter Griffiths, Philip Bailey, David Morris and many former and current players and officials have also provided me with information and once again their help is much appreciated. I also wish to thank Peter Griffiths and CricketArchive for providing the averages, which has substantially reduced the time needed to compile the book. Unfortunately due to large gaps in the availability of the official scorebooks, scores have had to be taken from newspapers and these inevitably have not always been accurate. The averages for the period 1895-2008 do not include friendly matches but relate to Championship matches only. In the earlier period a start date for the biographies has been taken as 1844 as in earlier matches many of the players were shown without initials, making identification almost impossible, and in some instances summary scores only could be traced. Also that year was the first recorded County matches after a possible County Club formation in the early 1840’s. 3