The Twelfth Man 2013

9 Wombwell Cricket Lovers’ first presented an award to the Cricket Writer of the Year in 1965. It was the brainchild of Society committee member, Bob Midwood, who provided the trophy (where is that now?) and the first recipient was determined at the Society’s AGM that September. The former Middlesex and England leg spinner, Ian Peebles, claimed the inaugural prize. Since then most of the best- known cricket writers and journalists of the last 50 years have received the Society award. Among those that followed Peebles have been Ian Wooldridge, our Patron Michael Parkinson in 1967, Jim Swanton, John Arlott, Frank Keating, David Frith, Christopher Martin-Jenkins (jointly with David Lemmon in 1994), David Foot, Matthew Engel, Stephen Chalke (twice, once jointly with Derek Hodgson in 2004) and Duncan Hamilton (2009). When the eminent cricket correspondent J.M. ‘Jim’ Kilburn passed away in August 1993, Wombwell Cricket Lovers’ Society took the decision to dedicate their annual cricket writer award in his memory: as a lasting tribute to the long-serving Yorkshire Post word- smith. Kilburn was an early visitor to the Society: he came to Wombwell in 1953, 1955 and 1956. Only four writers have received the award on two occasions: Alan Gibson (1970 and 1971), Derek Hodgson (1988, and as detailed above, jointly in 2004 with Stephen Chalke) and Stephen Chalke (2000 and 2004). The fourth member of that exclusive list, Tony Lewis, received the award not twice, but four times: in 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1987. IN MEMORY OF KILBURN A review of WCLS’s Cricket Writer of the Year Award by Mick Pope The first recipient of the Society’s Cricket Writer of the Year award, Ian Peebles, pictured with Alan Knott (left) at Wombwell in 1965.