Famous Cricketers No 51 - Don Kenyon

Southampton. During the close season Don was appointed to the Test Selection panel, a post he held until 1972 during which time England won 23, lost 11 and drew 33 Test Matches, winning The Ashes in 1970/71 and retaining them in 1972. During the Winter of 1964/65 Don led Worcestershire on a World Tour during which they played two first-class matches in Rhodesia. A second title was won in 1965 after a run of ten wins from their last eleven matches, a marvellous way to celebrate the club’s centenary. In the winter of 1966 Worcestershire visited Jamaica and played a first-class match against a Jamaican Invitation eleven at Montego Bay. Don retired at the end of the 1967 season with a Worcestershire record of 34,490 runs and 70 centuries, the latter record broken by Glenn Turner in 1982 and broken again by Graeme Hick in 1998. He joined the committee in 1968, remaining in office until 1982 and at the club’s AGM on 3 March 1986 Don became the first ex-professional cricketer to be elected President of Worcestershire, a post he held with much distinction until 1990. The first day of the 1987 season, 25 April, was something special in the Kenyon household, the day that their grandson Daniel Kenyon Jackson, was born. Don loved every minute of the time that he spent in the nets with this young man during the last two summers that he spent at New Road and when he had chance to relax and watch the cricket Daniel would bring along young friends to collect his grandad’s autograph. When The Stourbridge Cricket Society was formed in the early seventies Don became President, and came to his last meeting on 24 October 1996, when the speaker was Lord Howell. Always looking a picture of health it came as a shock to everyone when Don died suddenly on the evening of 12 November 1996 whilst preparing to show his cine-films of the 1964/65 Worcestershire World Tour, film that had been transferred on to video. In March 1997 Jean went along to the Kenyon suite at New Road with that video tape and members saw what Don had meant to show on that sad Tuesday. I began watching first-class cricket in 1946, the first season after the War, and Don Kenyon was my first cricket hero. I will never forget those happy memories of him rattling the fences at New Road and clearing the ropes at Dudley, Kidderminster and Stourbridge. Thank you Don. 5