The Club Cricket Conference Yearbook 2020

- 85 - John became their primary scorer for eight tours to the UK and Europe and this led him on to scoring for Cricket Victoria’s youth tours over here. For three seasons John scored for Ashburton CC in Melbourne. He became good friends with former Australian Test umpire Darryl Holt who recalls that, on one of his visits, “He was a catalyst in organising the Victorian Cricket Association’s Umpire’s Association to include Scorers within our Association”. Among the many UK clubs he was associated with were The Royal Household CC at Windsor Castle and Sir Michael Parkinson’s XI and September would see him in the scorebox on the Nursery pitch at Lord’s for the annual Cross Arrows matches. As late as last year John was still scoring at least four matches a week although his failing health was sadly there for all to see. Like all good scorers he was a statistician par excellence and scored 738 individual centuries. Buckinghamshire Over 60s made a presentation to him on behalf of the county when he scored on his 500th ground (final figure: 502, not including the Elysian Fields). Like so many umpires and scorers, John was a tireless toiler on committees. In addition to his work for Chipperfield CC, he was Fixtures Secretary for the Lee 75 League when it and the Three Counties League merged with the Thames Valley League in 1992; he immediately became Fixtures Secretary of the vastly expanded Thames Valley League and subsequently of the Home Counties Premier League from its inception in 2000 until his death. He also served Buckinghamshire CCC for a while as their Membership Secretary. Earlier in his life he was a respected and liked referee in the West Herts Football League and served on its management committee for many years. He did say that he once contemplated marriage but in the end felt it would interfere too much with his sporting activities! His working career was spent as an administrator for what became British Rail and he acquired a life-long passion for the UK railway system. When scoring an away match for our 1st XI he would often opt to travel by train, taking some tortuous route, in order to pass through a station for the first time and he would undertake similar journeys in the winter; if there remains any station which he did not visit in England, Wales or Scotland, then it only opened in the last few months. Somehow among all this, he found time to contribute to his local community in Sarratt, where he helped to organise the annual Christmas lunch for elderly inhabitants and was responsible for monitoring the state of footpaths in the area for the District Council. Nobody ever had a bad word to say about John: a kind and considerate man who would always find the time to help in any way he could. Sadly, the lung infection which had appeared to be responding to hospital treatment returned with a vengeance and he died on 12th November 2019 aged 76.