The Twelfth Man 2015

23 October 2nd – John Sadler Former Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire batsman John Sadler opened the Society’s 63rd winter programme and, as the Derbyshire batting coach, he promised his Derbyshire players a hard winter of training. Cricket has been John’s whole life. At the age of eight he was playing for Ossett. He played for all the age groups for England from U13 to U19. At 18 he played two home series against Sri Lanka and West Indies and after retiring from first-class cricket, the wheel has gone full circle as he plays for Ossett at the weekends. “At Yorkshire, I earned an Academy contract and then a second team contract but I never played for the first team. My proudest moment was when I was awarded my second team cap by Arnie Sidebottom but a month later I was released”. When he was playing for the different age groups James Whitaker spotted him. “He was impressed by me as a person and offered me a two-year contract at Leicestershire. The dressing room at Leicester was a tough place because we had a lot of Kolpak players, Pakistanis, West Indians and Australians; we were a group of individuals. I moved to Derbyshire in 2008 but things didn’t go as planned, I didn’t get enough runs so at the age of 28 I retired.” He added: “I found retirement a tough time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I had always had an interest in helping people, then last year Derbyshire restructured their coaching and I was asked to be the batting coach as well as the second team coach. I believe that the club is now moving forward and that there are exciting times ahead. We have some talented youngsters including Tom Taylor and Greg Cork.” John knows that Derbyshire as a second division team will find it hard to keep all their young players. “The smaller counties will struggle because the gulf between the two divisions is phenomenal. If a big club comes in for a player and offers them more money then you have to accept that they will move on. But we still want to get back into the first division. ” Wombwell’s Winter Season 2014/15 Reviewed by Tom Hudson and Neil Whitaker Photos: Brian Workman, Brian Sanderson, Malcolm Cusworth and Beryl Ambler October 9th – Grahame Lloyd Grahame, a celebrated cricket author and all round media person, was introduced by our chairman, who outlined Grahame’s books – Six of the Best and its sequel Howzat , both written about cricket’s most famous over. These books raised this intriguing question: in what other sport could two books be written about one over lasting a couple of minutes? Grahame (assisted by John Parkin) made an excellent effort of explaining as follows: Firstly the scene is set: St Helen’s cricket ground, Glamorgan, on 31 August 1968. Glamorgan v Nottinghamshire. Notts were batting with Garfield Sobers at one end and John Parkin at the other. At this stage we will have to cut a long story short, not wanting to steal the book’s thunder, therefore famously: Sobers hit the bowler Nash for 6 sixes in one over to make history as the first person to achieve this feat in English county cricket. ‘The ball’ used in the over (a Stuart Surridge) was the only type of ball used by Glamorgan at that time. The last ball of the over which was hit out of the ground, was eventually retrieved and presented to Garfield, who took it back to Nottingham and subsequently gave it to a Nottingham official, John Gough. Many years later in 2006 ‘the ball’ was sold for £26,000 at Christie’s auction. Christie’s claimed it was one of three balls used in the over and this is incorrect also ‘the ball’ was not a Surridge it was a Duke ball!!! The next time it surfaced in 2012 at a Bonhams’ auction, Grahame questioned the ball’s authenticity and it was subsequently withdrawn from the sale. There you have the basics and, if interested in the full story, please read the books. The Q&A session ended a fascinating evening. October 16th – Mark Arthur Yorkshire chief executive, Mark Arthur, hotfooted from Downing Street to our headquarters to finally make a Society meeting. Mark was determined to visit the Society to make up for last winter when he had to cancel at