The Twelfth Man 2019

Alan Hill (L) with Chris Barron Alan Hill played for Derbyshire from 1972 to 1986 and has the unusual distinction of being one of only two players to make a century without hitting a bound- ary, a feat that he described to us as taking place at Griqualand on an outfield that had not been cut due to a broken mower. This was only one of several amusing anecdotes in which Alan demon- strated an ability to poke fun at his abilities. He described playing against Jack Simmon’s Lancashire at Old Traf- ford - after some 30 or 40 min- utes without a run, during which several trains had run past the ground, Simmons exclaimed ‘Come on, Hill! The bloody trains are winning 4-0.’ Michael Melford once described him as ‘a model of self-denial’. And in one press report it was said that ‘Hill batted with the reckless abandon of a frozen stalactite’. During a match against Yorkshire, Tony Nichol- son once observed, ‘I wouldn’t want to see him bat on my front lawn. I’d shut the curtains.’ After retirement from playing, Alan became a first-class umpire for two seasons before taking up coaching in schools, including as head coach at Newcastle-under- Lyme School. In the Q&A session Alan gave us some thoughts on issues in to- day’s game, observing that local clubs were struggling to retain players in the key 15 to 25 years- old. He was looking forward to a great summer in 2019 at the international level but observed that too many players at that level seemed unable to adapt between different forms of the game. In county cricket too many clubs had sadly become dependant on the one-day game for income with little interest in the second division of the championship. In thanking Alan for an enjoy- able and amusing evening, our Secretary Chris reminded Alan of his time as ECB Cricket Devel- opment Officer for Staffordshire in the late nineties when he had presented Chris with his level 1 coaching award with an obser- vation from the instructors that they had ‘managed to scrape him through’. 32 33 ALAN HILL 21 March 2019