Cryptics Cricket Club Celebrates 100 not out

Nomadic cricket continues in strong health

The Cryptics Cricket Club flourishes as one of the countries better known wandering Clubs.  The 2010 Centenary Year celebrations have left this vibrant club in exceptionally strong health, ready to continue onwards towards its double century. 

This remarkable club was founded in 1910 by J G (John) Fawcus, and other undergraduates, while he was at New College, Oxford.  Early in its life it survived the ravages of the Great War and then later the Second World War. In all other years it has played some forty to fifty fixtures annually against hospitable opponents, having no home ground of its own.  It has also completed some sixty eight overseas tours.

The success of a club of this nature is always down to the considerable efforts of its many dedicated servants.  Having founded the club, J G Fawcus remained its secretary and also lead most of its overseas tours until his death in 1949, when he was succeeded in that secretarial role by Harold Fawcus for the next 50 years, through to the age of eighty in 1999.  Since then the administration has been more widely spread, although the founder’s grandson, David Fawcus, has had an overall coordination role in the planning of this year’s centenary celebration - with considerable support from numerous committee members.  

David Fawcus said: ‘The Centenary was planned with two objectives in mind.  Firstly a worthy celebration of past achievements and secondly to position the club well for the future in a changing environment where wandering cricket comes under huge competition from leagues and other competitive commitments.  We believe we have achieved both these aims’.

The club began its centenary year by making its first tour of South Africa, a fitting destination since the club boasts of having had fifteen Test and International players among its club members, two of whom went on to become South African Test captains – to match the several that held the England captaincy in their time.

The club centenary dinner was held in the Long Room at Lords in March 2010.  The occasion was presided over by the centenary year President, Tony Beadles, who was for many years Assistant Hon Secretary and leader of the clubs more ambitious long haul overseas tours in the 1980’s and 1990’s. We were addressed by John Barclay, President of the MCC, which was fitting as club records reveal that as many as eight former MCC presidents were also members of the Cryptics.  Jamie Dalrymple, the current captain of Glamorgan responded on behalf of the club.  His father, Dougie Dalrymple, took over as Hon Sec from Harold Fawcus, and Jamie scored his first overseas half century playing for the club as a young teenager on the tour in Malaysia in 1995, led by Tony Beadles.  John Barclay’s most entertaining speech found mention in a Daily Mail by-line a few days after.

This season the club has completed its usual pre season short European Tour (a more recent annual warm up instigated and managed by Nick Priestnall, as the club seeks to emulate the tactics of the first class counties) and its full list of regular UK fixtures.  These include the traditional Southern, Northern, and West Midlands tours which have been a backbone over the years.  Originally they provided summer holiday cricket and conviviality for the club’s largely schoolmaster based membership, but the tours continue successfully today with the club’s playing membership now drawn from a much wider occupational base.

 In addition there have been several special centenary celebration fixtures.  In the three day Centenary Festival held in July at Radley College we defeated the MCC despite their last minute call up of West Indian legend, Courtney Walsh.  The Presidents X1 comprised representatives of many of our leading opponents, who we were able to invite to join us for dinner after we had proved our supremacy on the field.  Finally we had a marvellous fixture against one of our long standing opponents, an even older wandering cricket club, The Free Foresters, who were founded in 1856. As a testament to the past, and prelude to the future, this fixture was played for the Wingfield-Digby Trophy, which will be competed for in all future years.  The late Michael Wingfield Digby was a colourful member of both clubs and at the end of a hard fought day the trophy was presented to the Cryptics by his widow, Jacky. 

The Cryptics were privileged to play The Cross Arrows at Lords on 14^th September 2010, where Simon Halliday, Master in charge of Cricket at Harrow School, scored a further 100 to add to his century in the Festival fixture with the MCC.  Poor weather intervened, allowing a timely departure to the evening reception organised by Malcolm Watson in the Officers Mess at the St Johns Barracks, home of the King’s Troup.

The club is greatly indebted to Bill Blackshaw one of its dedicated elder statesman who researched the archives, and his own encyclopaedic memories, to produce a wonderful history of the club that is also something of a social history of the development of wandering club cricket over the past 100 years.  Many members have enjoyed reading his accounts and the BBC Test Match Special Team found time during the Lords Test against Pakistan to mention this memorable work, before their attention was drawn by contemporary issues with international repercussion.

The season ended strongly looking forward to the future with the election of the youngest President in its history, Andrew Lewis, to succeed Tony Beadles and take the club forward under new management into its second century.  As a current player, not of school master origin, he and his committee are well placed to attract to the membership quality cricketers who love to play wandering cricket at some tremendous venues in the UK and overseas (we look forward to Argentina in 2012) against a range of strong opponents, where the concept of “taking part” is not wholly lost to the league concept of “winning at all costs”. 

David Fawcus

October 2010

Last Updated ( Saturday, 02 April 2011 13:02 )