Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Society Year Book 2013

25 Sheffield Cricket Lovers’ Society Bob Jackson if he would be prepared to chair a similar style evening “A Review of the Past Sporting Year”. Bob readily agreed and, joined by our two regular journalists, Kevin Howells and Les Payne we were entertained to an exciting review; Soccer and some cricket memories from Bob, a solid review of Yorkshire CCC year by Kevin and a very interesting input from Les who explained to us how the new Rotherham United Stadium came to be named The New York Stadium. Fortunately we were spared a full rendition of New York, New York from Les, nevertheless it was a great contribution to a fascinating evening. We hope that such an evening will continue to be a regular event in the future. Many thanks to the three contributors who were also on top form in the Question and Answer session. 27th February 2012 True to his word Jack Birkenshaw MBE was our next Speaker. Jack, yes another Yorkshireman. He told of his early interest in cricket playing for his Grammar School and the Yorkshire Schools. Naturally he wanted to play for Yorkshire and he was delighted when he was selected to play in the County Championship making his first class debut at the age of 17. Jack subsequently went on to play another 29 games for Yorkshire but was never to win his county cap and in 1961 he moved to Leicestershire. Jack went on to play for England in five tests but pointed out that he was competing as a spin bowler with Ray Illingworth who at the time was regarded to be the first choice off spinner. He left Leicestershire in 1980 and had one further season with Worcestershire finally retiring as a player to take up Umpiring. He umpired from 1982 to 1988 in over 250 matches including two test matches and six ODI’s. He later returned to Leicestershire as a coach, a role which he also undertook with the England Ladies team. He was awarded the MBE for services to cricket and his evening with us demonstrated his passion and commitment to Cricket. We all felt that his MBE was well deserved. A perfect gentleman! Wednesday 7th March The revival of our Quiz evening!! Not quite the format of earlier Society Quiz evenings but a very pleasant evening planned and Masterminded by two schoolteachers Richard Scholey ably assisted by Ian Wyleman . Six teams,varying in size and ability were led through eight rounds of questions, subjects were wide ranging and certainly not all cricket. Lots of good humour and some very strange answers sorted out the pecking order and the winning team (who do not wish to be named ) were acclaimed as the rightful champions. The evening was great fun and everyone felt that it was worthy of repeating next season.