Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Society Year Book 2023

7 by Andy Pack & Mike Gibson Dennis had a better average as opener than most 21st century greats, and also was the first to popularise the helmet. He attributed that to him playing the County game into his 40s and posting over one hundred centuries. He made a slow start before breaking into the Warwickshire 1st X1, in part because his county had opted for the services of West Indians, Rohan Kanhai and Alvin Kallicharran. But his stroke play and determination saw him blossom into a batsman who regularly made bowlers despair. His achievements and stats are truly phenomenal and worth looking up, at County and Test level alike. His Test average over 50 games was 46.32 and his failure to achieve Ashes glory because of the Chris’s topic - ‘The Real Neville Cardus’ - suggested that any preconceptions about one of the game’s most coveted writers would be, at the very least, challenged. And they were as Chris had made an in depth study about the enigmatic man most of us were aware of but knew very little about. Cardus was allegedly born in 1898, his mother a prostitute and father unknown, but he later changed his first name by deed poll. The journey through his life included his first visit to Old Trafford in 1899, although Cardus could surely not have remembered it at only a few months of age! Intriguingly, this revelation speaks to a theory that emerged during his eventual Cardus rewrote history 1 December 2021 Chris O’Brien Author journalistic career that began in Manchester in 1917 … Cardus led a colourful life, widely regarded as an excellent and much revered journalist, despite a propensity for sometimes embellishing the facts. He changed the way the game was presented in the media, bringing in a more descriptive, lyrical style that proved influential, much loved and admired. He is believed to have written articles on cricket matches that he had not even seen, though it is fair to point out that an ‘article’ is very different to a ‘report’. Later in his career he was offered the opportunity to do some radio work but was refused permission to do so by his employers, and he died in 1975. Up with the greats 15 December 2021 Dennis Amiss MBE Former Warwickshire & England opener brilliance of Lillee and Thompson was perhaps his biggest regret. The 1987 season was his last season at 43 years old. He scored over a thousand runs in every English season from 1965 -87, a stunning run spanning 23 seasons. His 43,423 First-Class runs make him the 12th on the all-time list. Amiss served as both Chairman and then CEO of Warwickshire, became a national selector in 1992, and a former Deputy Chairman of ECB. He was one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1975 and became an MBE in 1988.