James Greenfield (BGS 1954-1961)

The Story of Jim's Bat?

I have been enthralled by the last two issues of The Old Bostonian, featuring extensively, as they have, contributors from my own era. I was especially touched by Robert Stanwell’s reference to the Woodville Road Test arena and my bat (The Old Bostonian - Issue 36)!

Actually, I think other bats were brought down as well - Nigel Land’s was split asunder one afternoon - but the most difficult part about biking down from my home in Sleaford Road was manipulating the stumps: I should think I was in breach of the Road Traffic Act clause something or other.

I thought about this in the summer of 1992 when I was clearing out Dad’s garage after my parents had decided that notwithstanding the ties of 53 years in Boston the time had come to take up the offer of a “granny wing” that my younger brother and his wife were developing on their house in Guernsey.

There it was behind the mower. One of those stumps! I don’t know about the other five, but they had certainly had some “welly”. So now it resides in my own Grace Museum, the loft here in Bramhope, Leeds.

I don’t think that the sports talent-spotting system at BGS always worked well in those days. I have Ted Cox to thank (“a dear soul”, as George Stephens says) for spotting me, but Rob Stanwell, a gifted all-round games player, should have been spotted much earlier than he was. When well-set at Woodville Road he would hit you over long-on for six, batting either left or right-handed, and as a bowler he could pitch a perfect length and turn it with either hand.

One day he decided to set a batting record that would stand for all time - and it has, although it is the manner of his dismissal that I will always remember. He was on 148, and I was bowling when Robert miscued an almighty heave that sent the ball into a vertical plane instead of the horizontal.

George Stephens was wicket-keeper, and the ball was coming down with snow on it. George was four years younger than us, but he was a cheery, gutsy little guy who was never fazed by anything. He crouched down on the ground in a posture that said: “If the ball goes through my hands it will have to go through my body before it hits the ground”. Man of the Match George pouched it perfectly.

Rob Ryan emerged at school with a real shiner of a black eye after one of these Tests. As to whether I had dug the ball in unacceptably short or whether Rob had swayed inside the line in order to pull me into the trees… opinion was divided on party lines. Questions were asked in the house by “Laddie” Lockwood, perhaps suspecting thuggery behind the bike sheds, but he dismissed a cricket injury as an occupational hazard.

A sort-of denouement to all this was the School v Staff match in 1960. Colin Vere, captain of soccer and cricket, century-maker at City School, Lincoln, the year before (possibly the first since Ted Cox in 1929), ultimately Head Boy and a Boys’ Own character if ever there was one, was absent, being on the Outward Bound course.

Dick Bland, left-arm opening bowler and grandson of the Sussex player at the turn of the 19th/20th Centuries, was captain and we proceeded to lose early wickets. Robert and I enjoyed a stand in which he hit 20-odd including one of his Woodville Road straight sixes (off Laurie Veale, I think). This was the first time we had had a crowd.

Bob Ramsden I remember so very well, both from Woodville Road and School Under-14 matches onwards. He talks of the bumper crop of 11-plus passes from Carlton Road in 1954: at St Botolph’s headmaster Fenwick Pearson was pretty chuffed with the nine we managed, although only three were boys. I still get Christmas cards from the other two, Nigel Land and Michael Weldon.

St Botolph’s closed many years ago, and has since been demolished, but didn’t its former deputy head, Mr Stevenson, go on to become headmaster at Bob Ramsden’s school?

I see Derek Coates in the football photo: as a fast bowler at school he was always chipping in with his “five fors” as they say nowadays, and Roger Wicks, who lived just down the road from me, became a fine opening bowler who succeeded Peter Pearson as OBA captain. I remember Norman Sands very well, but I would never have got into his soccer squad.

Me? I became little more than a visitor to Boston from 1962 onwards, but I have often envied those who stayed around the OBA cricket squad with dear old Bill Coppin as secretary. Another neighbour of mine in Sleaford Road, the late Alan Peck, a powerful left-hander, had played for BGS before the Second World War and during the 1940s was probably the best batsman in Boston.

Those were the days when OBA believed that the town club could not manage without the players it fed through. Pity the side folded!

I went to the Lincolnshire Echo as a junior reporter in 1962, becoming a sub-editor in 1967, and joined the Yorkshire Post as a sub-editor at the end of 1970. I was Chief Sub-Editor from 1981 until the end of 1996 when the big offer came.

During the 1970s I played for Kirkstall Educational in the then Leeds League, and in 1975 won my only personal trophy: I scored 125 not out against Colton, which was the highest individual score that year in a 2nd XI match, and for which I was awarded the Hemingway Cup.

Just one snag: the cup had endured a varied career, and before the war it had been awarded to bowlers, not batsmen. Its first recipient, in 1928, was Horace Fisher who bowled left-arm spin for Yorkshire as a deputy to Hedley Verity - and is the only man to have secured a First Class hat-trick on lbws! So, my name is engraved on the same list as his. Not many people know that!

Now I live in over-active retirement with Manchester-born wife Felicity, who is still in harness as Night News Editor of the Yorkshire Post, in the leafy suburb of Bramhope… I bash out the quarterly Yorkshire County Cricket Club magazine, The Yorker, on my home computer; I also do the computer side of the Yorkshire CCC Year Book; I chair the Wombwell Cricket Lovers’ Society near Barnsley - bit of a journey, and a bed of nails as well - and I am secretary and treasurer of St Hilda’s Church in Leeds. The Vicar of Dibley doesn’t know the half of it!

I always thought the true esteem of a master was whether he was affectionately referred to behind his back by his first name, rather than a nick-name. Stan Cawthorne, Ted Cox, Joe Gledhill, Dave Godfrey and Tom West all qualified in my time… and, yes! Phil Mayes. He wasn’t always “Killer”.

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