The Twelfth Man 2013

27 Micky made his debut for Surrey against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane. “Our biggest game of the season was against Yorkshire”. He was part of that great team that won the County Championship for years. “We were brought up in an environment of we won as a team. We won the Championship because we had four great bowlers, Alec Bedser, Peter Loader, Jim Laker and Tony Lock. Tony was a chucker and he knew. He found out by watching himself on film in a cinema in New Zealand and he cried when he saw his action. The amazing thing about Tony was that he took 150 wickets in three seasons with three different actions. One year he took 150 wickets with his old action, then 150 when he threw and 150 with his new remodeled action.” Micky retired from the game in 1972 and returned in 1979 as team manager for Surrey. “When I returned as manager I found that the dressing room wasn’t a happy one. But I wouldn’t have gone back if I hadn’t known that we had some good players in the dressing room. We got to four finals in four years but we only won one of them. We finished in the top five in the County Championship.” In 1986 Micky became the first manager of England. “I was asked to be assistant manager on the 1986/87 tour to Australia because the powers that be didn’t want to go down the route of football, but I didn’t want that, I wanted to be the manager. At 12 o’clock I was told I would be the assistant manager and at 3 o’clock they came back and told me I was the manager.” “In that England dressing room we had the right number of talented players. Before that tour the Press said we couldn’t bat, bowl or field but we won everything on that tour.” Neil Whitaker 18 October – Keith Booth Tonight Keith is going to talk to us about Surrey’s Tom Richardson, who he will argue was the greatest fast bowler of all times – brave words in the county of Trueman. Yorkshire-born Keith graduated from Reading University with an honours degree in French, which did come in useful in tracking down Tom Richardson’s last days. Keith’s early career was in retailing and university administration, but he has now completed almost two decades as scorer with Surrey County Cricket Club and is approaching his 100 in International matches. In between all this, and with the help of his wife, Jennifer, who is Second Eleven scorer, he researches and writes about Surrey’s giants of earlier years. Tom Richardson follows Edward Pooley, Charles Alcock, George Lohmann, Ernie Hayes and Walter Read into his canon of Surrey biographies. He also wrote Atherton’s Progress , a diary of the 1994/95 West Indies tour, when Keith acted as scorer to BBC’s Test Match Special team; Knowing the Score: the Past Present and Future of cricket scoring , making eight books in all. George Lohmann, Pioneer Professional , won the Cricket Society’s Book of the Year award for 2007. Keith’s highly entertaining introduction commenced with a very important year in our history, 1912. It was the year in which Barnsley won the FA Cup, the sinking of the Titanic, and the death of Tom Richardson. Keith also gave us the background to another fine Surrey player of that era, Walter Read. The fascinating history of those two Surrey stalwarts, whose backgrounds differed dramatically, was the stuff Stephen Chalke (left), Brian Workman and Micky Stewart Surrey CCC scorer and author, Keith Booth, receives his WCLS glass from Mick Pope