The Players Team In A Previous Year – c1981 – Thanks Frank Dillon
I made a right pigs ear of writing up this match originally, combining memories of the 1982 and 1983 games. It took the good offices of Mark Ellicott to put matters right in the matter of the 1982 match.
On the back of my 1982 derring-do (one catch, following a series of mishaps), presumably I qualified as an incumbent (Mark Ellicott was absent all year 1982/83) and was therefore invited along to the Players net session, which my diary shows taking place on Monday 20th; the day before the match.
If our captain, the late Toby Bourgein (who sadly died in 2020) had hoped, on the back of my willingness and enthusiasm to contribute, that there was some innate cricketing ability to be teased out in the nets, he was probably sorely disappointed.
Hardly surprising, given my relative lack of ability and the fact that I probably hadn’t played for five years or so. Even house games at school had resorted to using me as a neutral umpire towards the end of my schooldays. I was keen on the game but out of practice & quite useless by 1982 (and 1983). Latterly I got a little bit better again.
But Toby was the loyal sort and anyway probably only had eleven volunteers from which to pick his team, so I was in again.
As in 1982, I didn’t expect much of a role and yet again got pretty much what I expected.
Again I fielded, almost certainly with my trusty skiff of ale for company, but I recall nothing of note this time around.
The 1983 Keele Festival match proved to be an historic win for the Players. I recall Toby holding back a couple of our better batsmen who were more or less able to finish the job when we were six or seven down. I recall one of the match-winning batsmen fell just before the target, so I was sent in to achieve a glorious 0* without even facing a ball.
I have no photos from the 1982, 1983 nor the 1984 match, but this one from a couple of years earlier, thanks to Frank Dillon, should give the reader a pretty good feel for the look of the mighty Players team.
With thanks to Frank Dillon, this picture of an earlier “Players” team, probably 1981
If anyone out there has more memories and/or photographs of our festival week beer matches, especially this game, I’d love to hear from you.
By 1982, the annual Gentlemen (of the right) v Players (of the left) cricket match had become an iconic feature of Keele Festival Week. It was many years later that I learnt that this “tradition” had only started a year or two earlier. Keele traditions were a bit like that back then.
The Roping In
I made a pigs ear of writing this event up previously, combining my memories of the 1982 match with the 1983 match, having forgotten that I ended up playing this match three illustrious times while at Keele; my last appearance being 1984.
My mistake was spotted by Mark Ellicott, whose name I had delicately left out of my previous write up of this first occasion, as it was for an “intoxicated” Mark that I was hurriedly found and roped in as a late substitute. Mark pointed out that it must have been 1982, as that was the summer during which he was caught up in all this stuff and he was involuntarily on sabbatical from the University the following academic year. Mark later went on to be a Students’ Union sabbatical, stretching his Keele duration yet further.
On the topic of this 1982 cricket match, my diary entry merely says, with surprisingly little enthusiasm:
Got roped into playing cricket all afternoon.
Here is the Mark Ellicott substitution bit of the story, as I originally wrote it, before Mark got in touch. Naturally I have now cleared with Mark the idea of attaching his name to the story:
“I got a knock on the door early afternoon…a certain wild-haired student (even more wild-haired than me), who latterly – more latterly even than me – became a sabbatical, had been experimenting with an acidic chemical – presumably something to do with his subsidiary or extra-curricular studies – and had accidentally ingested rather too much of the stuff…
Mark Ellicott two or three years later
…he might have been experiencing something like this:
In short, the accidental acid victim was away with the fairies and I was in the team.“
Mark describes his experience slightly differently, presumably starting the evening before:
It was on Results Day for finalists in the summer of 82. I had scored two tabs previously and was working that day as a waiter in Oysters wine bar serving up bottles of wine etc to celebrating finalists. I dropped one tab whilst working idiotically enough and after ten minutes when nothing was happening even more idiotically dropped the second. Thereafter it all gets hazy, but like you I have kept a diary since I was a kid so can refer back. I must have wandered away from my workplace because the next thing I remember is wrestling with an anonymous young woman outside the Computer Science lab. Then it’s several hours later and I’m sitting in the Union bar with Truda Smith, Mark [Bartholomew], Simon [Jacobs], Anna [Summerskill] etc. I’m completely incapable of speech at this stage. I hear Truda’s disembodied voice explain to people “he’s tripping, keep an eye on him”. Next thing I recall I’m hiding under a bush by Keele Hall and Mark and Simon come looking for me, find me, and gently return me to the Union and a disco where I have a vague recollection of ‘dancing’ to ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’ by Soft Cell. Then I’m at a party in Stoke talking to a woman who runs a chippie. Completely brilliant day that was !
When I gently suggested to Mark that I might link his name with my cricket-career reviving incident, he replied…
…please go ahead and use my name. I’ve never been embarrassed about my psychedelic experiments then.
The Match Itself
Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect much of a role for The Players and got pretty much what I expected.
I was reminded of this 1982 match in August 2018, after Adil Rashid had a rare “thanks for coming” (TFC) test match – i.e. he did not bat and did not bowl in the whole match – a very rare event in test cricket – written up here…
…but not quite so rare an event in beer matches. Indeed, both the 1982 & 1983 Gentlemen (of the right) v Players (of the left) match at Keele were TFC matches for me. I did not bat; I did not bowl, but…
But the ball tends to follow the team donkey. I recall the Gentlemen doing rather well against us at that stage of the match, with Mike Stephens (Secretary 1980/81) batting well & properly, along with a beefy, sporty fellow…I think his name is Steve Bailey, who had been the Chair of the Athletic Union, providing some humpty to the innings.
I’m pretty sure the above picture shows “the humpty chap”, Steve Bailey, at the 1980 Christmas Ball – apologies if I have grabbed a picture of the wrong humpty chap.
Three times the humpty chap lifted the ball skywards in my direction. Three times I failed to catch it. One of those misses was a juggled attempt which failed even after several potential reprieves. One I think I lost sight of completely, perhaps even running the wrong way.
Toby sent me to backward point instead, where he suggested that catches were far less likely but I might at least save some runs if I continued to put my body (the only asset I seemed to be bringing to the party) on the line. I think I brought my skiff of ale infield with me.
A few balls later, Mike Stephens executed a firm, albeit slightly uppish, late cut, which should have hurtled to the left of a diving backward point for four…
…but the diving backward point, me, somehow contrived to dive at the correct moment and the ball contrived to stick in my hand. A stunning, potentially match-turning catch.
It might have looked like a left handed version of this one from school a few years earlier, c1979, for which I was the photographer, not the catcher.
I recall Mike Stephens stomping off in an uncharacteristic huff of “it’s so unfair. He can’t catch for toffee…”
I have no photos from the 1982 game, sadly, nor the 1983 nor 1984 ones, but this one from a year or two earlier, thanks to Frank Dillon, should give the reader a pretty good feel for the look of the mighty Players team.
With thanks to Frank Dillon, this picture of an earlier “Players” team, probably 1981
If anyone out there has any more memories and/or photographs of our festival week beer matches, I’d love to hear from you.
In our first term at Keele, Simon Jacobs and I signed up for a drama workshop thing, run by Brian Rawlins. Brian helped make drama great fun and gave us a great deal of freedom to do what we wanted to do in this extra-curricular group.
I’m not entirely sure who else was part of the group, other than Jonathan (Jon) Rees whose name helpfully appears in my diary and on the single relic I have from the experience.
That first term of ours also coincided with a big debacle over Princess Margaret’s invitation (or lack of invitation) to the students’ union ball. We decided to parody that debacle with a piece of street theatre as our contribution to the debate and as the culmination of our term’s drama work-shopping spree.
My memory of the whole thing is fairly hazy, but the diary and relic provide some help. Here are the relevant extracts from the diary:
11 November – decided to write play
13 November – met Simon and Jonathan in evening to write play
18 November – drama rehearsal good fun
25 November – rehearsed skit in evening – good fun
2 December – easyish evening – drama rehearsal
…and there the references cease. I know the intention was to perform the skit in front of the union on the day of the ball, but my diary is entirely silent on the matter so I wonder whether our skit was scuppered at the last minute. Simon might remember and I am due to see him very soon indeed at the time of writing (April 2016) and so shall update if his memory adds anything to the pile.
Meanwhile it seems from the relic that it was Jon who preserved a copy of (most of) the script and ensured that I had a copy in my memory box. The hand-written skit itself looks like Simon’s writing if my memory serves.
It reads as juvenilia, which is what it is – heck we were all just 18 at the time – but looking back I think we were quite plucky in our first term tackling this particular political debacle head on in this way.
Anyway, here’s the script. You can drill into the pages to make them bigger/legible size. Unlike my handwriting, this stuff is actually legible. I should add that the character Katy is Katy Turner, the President of the student’s union that year, Mike is Mike Stevens, the Union Secretary that year.
