Famous Cricketers No 82 - H.E. 'Tom' Dollery

Warwickshire captaincy commitments, but when asked again after he had retired, he accepted. He was a selector in the two seasons, 1957 and 1958, a period of outstanding success for the England team. However, he didn’t really appreciate the continual travelling and overnight stops associated with the job, and with a busy pub to run he resigned after the second year. Sadly, he contracted a form of cancer in the early Seventies, and this, combined with the bouts of malaria caused a gradual deterioration in his health for the last fifteen years or so of his life, and in his last two years he was in very poor health indeed. Tom Dollery eventually passed away on 20th January 1987 in The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, aged seventy-two. His name will forever be associated with Warwickshire cricket, and at Edgbaston there is the constant reminder of him in the form of The Tom Dollery Members Bar and Restaurant, recently refurbished and officially opened by his widow, Jeanne. Jeanne is the most vivacious eighty-something year old I have ever met, and still helps out behind the bar at the Edgbaston Golf Club! As well as Jeanne, their son David, a successful criminal solicitor, is also often to be seen at Edgbaston watching the play from the Dollery Suite, and David’s daughter, Abigail (Abi), Tom’s granddaughter, carries on the family connection at Edgbaston as a member of staff working in the Marketing Department. 11