Episode 104: From the captains’ table – cricket in two village communities

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They’re no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans – hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects.

Horningsham Cricket Club playing against Bude Cricket Club (Credit Horningsham CC Facebook)

Two highly successful captains of village cricket teams, Tom Greaves of Reed, Hertfordshire, and Callum Widdows of Horningsham, Wiltshire, are the latest guests of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast. They share the problems and triumphs of making cricket thrive in local communities – where it belongs.

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Both were raised in the villages they now captain, but had little exposure to cricket in primary school. At around 12 years old each was inspired by watching the thrilling Ashes series of 2005 on free-to-air television. It led Callum into long practice sessions in his garden trying to imitate Freddie Flintoff, and then into seeking out the under-13 squad in the nearby town of Warminster. After an initially unpromising reception from the coach, this would give him his first experience of captaincy.

Cricket had had little appeal for Tom and his younger brother: they thought it a game for posh people. They were golfing tearaways (literally) carving divots from the lovingly tended Reed cricket pitch when practising their golf shots. One happy day the groundsman marched them into the nets and made them practise with bat and ball instead. They were converted to cricket, and the following summer alternated long net sessions with a dash home to watch the 2005 Ashes. Before long Tom was opening the batting for Reed’s under-14s and he has been deeply involved with the club ever since.

Callum’s commitment to Horningsham is fitted around the demands of running his family’s celebrated fish-and-chip establishment, the Star Fish Bar in Warminster. He gives directions and describes the sharp impact of the Ukraine war on the prices of fish and frying oil.

Callum explains Horningsham’s decision to withdraw from local league cricket, which had lost its enjoyment, particularly when a team arrived with a dominating overseas professional. Instead, they managed to arrange no fewer than 65 friendly matches in the season just past. They enjoy travelling and he searches out especially attractive destinations online. He cites several of them, including the splendidly apposite name of Plush, and Chilmark, famous for its copious teas.

By contrast, Reed are heavily involved in the competitive Hertfordshire Cricket League, in which they field three teams on Saturdays. On Sundays they play in the National Village Cup. Tom describes their Golden Years in the 2010s, when they won it three times. He shares the electric experience of playing in the finals at Lord’s, notably the attention and respect they were given by the staff and the inspiration they drew in one final from being treated as underdogs in the media. He emphasizes the unity of their team, nine of whom had come through Reeds’ colt systems, and sets out the rules which define a “village” and the eligibility of players. They are now playing in the Hertfordshire Premier League against major town clubs with fine facilities, former Test-playing professionals and lucrative bar receipts, and are gratified by their respectful response when they visit Reed.

Callum profiles some regular members of the Horningsham team, including the wicketkeeper-batsman in his seventies who is an authority on mediæval stained glass. (He does not reveal whether he has ever broken any samples with a six.) He also hails a resilient colleague who declared his most enjoyable season to be the one which included fifteen ducks. Two other stalwarts have established a local business making superlative craft gin. He reveals some unusual recruiting methods and tells the story of the wicket taken by a bowler who was eight months pregnant. (Her son has been allotted the wicket in his career total, almost certainly the first ever taken by a player of minus one month.)

They describe their villages’ efforts to involve children and youth players. Tom praises the ECB’s recent All Stars programme for the youngest children, which Reed had actually anticipated by two years. He describes the efforts they have made to retain players at the often difficult age of 15 to 16 and to fill the gap between junior and senior cricket. Cricket is having something of a revival in local state schools and he is proud of the contribution to this by Reed children.

Horningsham currently has few children of the right ages to recruit and Callum comments on the generational cycle, for clubs like theirs, of players coming together in youth teams, playing together, dropping out to raise families and then inducting their children. As a teenager, he had had to plead for the formation of a cricket team at his state secondary school at Warminster and still takes deep satisfaction from their victories over the local private school. He contrasts the playing conditions at local state schools (borrowed astroturf pitches, some with gaping holes and no place to pitch stumps) with those of the private schools. Tom believes that cricket still presents itself to state school pupils as a game for wealthier, privileged people and wishes that more of them, boys and girls, could discover as he did the fun of actually playing it and the shared, levelling experience of taking part in a team.

They both deeply regret the disappearance of cricket from free-to-air television and the migration of international series to competing pay channels. As a result, lower-income children have been denied the inspiration they both took from the 2005 Ashes series, and the present generation will miss the chance of mimicking Ben Stokes as they once mimicked Freddie Flintoff.

Finally each shares what is magic to them about cricket, on or off the field.

Horningsham CC: https://www.facebook.com/horningshamcc

Reed CC:  https://reedcricketclub.co.uk/

Callum’s fish and chips: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057121043414

Superlative gin:  https://stilllifegin.com

Get in touch with us by emailing obornehellercricket@outlook.com, we would love to hear from you!

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Peter Oborne & Richard Heller

Peter Oborne has been the chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, a maker of several documentaries and written and broadcast for many different media. He is the author of a biography of Basil D’Oliveira and of Wounded Tiger, a history of Pakistan cricket, both of which won major awards.

Richard Heller was a long-serving humorous columnist on The Mail on Sunday and more briefly, on The Times. He worked in the movie business in the United States and the UK, including a brief engagement on a motion picture called Cycle Sluts Versus The Zombie Ghouls. He is the author of two cricket-themed novels A Tale of Ten Wickets and The Network. He appeared in two Mastermind finals: in the first his special subject was the life of Sir Gary Sobers.

Oborne & Heller cricketing partnership

Jointly, he and Peter produced White On Green, celebrating the drama of Pakistan cricket, including the true story of the team which lost a first-class match by an innings and 851 runs.

Peter and Richard have played cricket with and against each other for a variety of social sides, including Parliament’s team, the Lords and Commons, and in over twenty countries including India, Pakistan, the United States, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Australia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand and Morocco.

The Podcast is produced by Bridget Osborne and James Willcocks at The Chiswick Calendar.

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