The Twelfth Man 2015

29 on to play for England. Hedley played in the Bodyline series in Australia, which was dominated by pace bowling – Larwood, Voce etc. Like so many players, the Second World War put a stop to his career, and tragically, in the case of Verity, ended with his death while fighting in Italy towards the end of the war. Sid then gave us other fascinating information on previous books and feats of the great man and how highly thought of he was by his army comrades. The Q&A session revealed even more, including Hedley’s, last match before he went to war where he repeated his 10 for 10 feat (for his local league club). March 19th – Patron David Frith James introduced tonight’s guest, David Frith, a leading cricket writer and historian, also a patron of the Wombwell Cricket Lovers’ Society who was once called by Tony Woodhouse, “the English Australian who plays cricket like a Yorkshireman”. David emigrated to Australia with his family when he was 12, returning to England in 1964, moving back to Sydney in 1971 for family reasons, but settling back in the United Kingdom in time for Dennis Lillee’s first visit in1972. He succeeded Tony Pawson as Deputy Editor of The Cricketer before becoming Editor from March 1973, going on to found Wisden Cricket Monthly , which he edited from 1979 to 1996. He has written dozens of books on cricket, specialising in the Ashes, and he became the first author to win the Cricket Society’s Book of the Year award three times, and his Bodyline Autopsy was described as Cricket’s “book of the decade”. In 2011 David was given the Cricket Society’s Ian Jackson Award for Distinguished Services to Cricket. David commenced by telling us about his latest book Frith’s Encounters . It is based on his articles, which appeared in The Cricketer magazine with many interesting stories and anecdotes, as you would expect. David then moved on to his early life in Australia and how he was influenced into cricket writing after meeting his England hero Alec Bedser. This brought about a career where he met the greatest players of the era. Starting with the greatest of them all, Sir Donald Bradman, David talked us through his meetings and discussions with all the greats of that day: Miller, Hutton, Lindwall, Tyson, Johnson, Larwood, Laker, Mailey, then later May, Compton, Oldfield, Bailey, O’Reilly. A complete who’s who of the greatest England and Australian cricketers of his day, together with so many fascinating stories and anecdotes which proved what an accomplished journalist and author David is. David’s views on the modern cricket establishment and set up might have proved controversial in some circles, but not at The Wombwell where I would suggest he had the audience 100% with him. The Q&A session was particularly lively with more controversial and frank views to conclude what can only be described as a memorable evening. March 26th – Coaching Presentation evening with Yorkshire’s Richard Damms and Yaasar Imtiaz Our last meeting of the winter season brought coaching awards with guests from Yorkshire CCC, Richard Damms from the coaching staff, along with young player Yaasar Imtiaz. Lots of young players from our winter coaching classes came along with their families, for the formal part of the evening. Ron Firth gave us a good background to each prizewinner, and it was so good to see so many keen youngsters and hear of their achieve- ments. The coaches were also presented with mementos in appreciation of their hard work, and after the presentation we entered straight into Q&A session with Richard and Yaasar. Yaasar explained his ambitions to become an established all-rounder with the second team and hopefully going on to play for Yorkshire first team. Richard gave us his overview of this year’s prospects with all teams at Yorkshire, Patron David Frith (left) receives his Wombwell glass from fellow Patron, Mike Cowan.