Cricket

At this time, the boys had to arrange the fixtures, find a ground, supply their own equipment, and even pay a professional Coach. When the school moved to Rye Hill in 1870, a playing field was available, but it was too small for cricket and grounds had to be hired until the move to Eskdale Terrace in 1906. 

In retrospect, I think of the cricket professional at my old school, Ted Whitfield. I can still picture his weathered features, the face of a man who has spent many hours in the sun. Even in his sixties, he could bowl crafty little seamers in the nets and expose the technical shortcomings of callow schoolboy batsmen. At the same time, he infiltrated nuggets of cricketing wisdom into casual conversations at the end of practice. He had been a journeyman county batsman and a professional for Surrey in the 1930s; once, and only once, he recalled facing the great English fast bowler and exponent of bodyline, Harold Larwood, at the Oval. ‘Quick, very quick’, he commented laconically. And so, a treasury of knowledge and know-how is passed unselfishly from one generation to the next, a precious form of cricketing education.

Historically, cricket has always been supported by colleagues from beyond the PE Department. Michael Smalley (ON,1988-1995) who teaches Economics, will have fond memories of Geoff Swinden. Geoff, by training a chemist but also a self-taught computer scientist (and pioneer of that subject at RGS) and a genuine polymath, gave invaluable support to Dave Smith. He was an almost infallible umpire, meticulous record-keeper and always congenial cricketing companion. He was also one of those people whose views on cricket, though he had never played the game, were always wise and sensible.  

He played a huge role in organising our first RGS Cricket Festival in 1994, as well as the 1999 and 2003 versions, while continuing to umpire 1st XI cricket into his retirement. I suspect one of the things he would like to be remembered for is the formula he devised for the RGS Festival for calculating targets in matches disrupted by rain. There was, however, a problem: only he knew how to apply the Swinden Index and even he had to use a calculator! 

The school has also provided a steady flow of players to Northumberland age group teams and, to a lesser extent, Durham junior teams. Will Alexander, currently in Year 12, is a Durham player and recently played for the county against Durham University. Many ONs have graduated to high level recreational cricket, playing in the North East Premier League and representing Northumberland. Here one thinks of Lee Crozier (ON, 1985-1992), an off-spinner who has taken more than a thousand wickets in league cricket.  

Two recent old boys have played first class cricket, Nicky Peng (ON,1994-1999) for Durham and Glamorgan, and Richard Coughtrie (ON, 2002-2007), one of Durham Academy’s early recruits who later represented Gloucestershire. Peng, a top-order batsman and scorer of four first class hundreds, was very much in the modern mould - a muscular, front foot, hard-hitting batsman. (I once spent a lunchtime bowling to him in the nets when he was elevenand could not get him out!) His first-class debut was stellar: at the age of 17, he scored 98 at the Riverside against Surrey, then the strongest side in the County Championship whose attack included four England bowlers. The innings was described by Wisden as ‘quite magnificent’ and ‘the highlight of the season’.  

Tours abroad have been an innovation. Here the pioneer was Alex Brown, who took Under 15 teams to Barbados twice. Since then, Year 9s have returned to the West Indies and visited Dubai several times while our senior cricketers have travelled to Chennai and Sri Lanka. They are returning to the latter with Michael Smalley this December.  

Full co-education from 2006 saw the gradual introduction of cricket for girls. Girls’ cricket took some time to establish itself, but there is now a broad and coherent cricket programme for young women at the RGS, and our fixture list has greatly expanded. And how rewarding it has been to see our talented young sportswomen play a summer ball game so much more interesting and challenging than rounders. Ciara Boaden (ON 2016-2023) has been one of our female luminaries, good enough from the outset to play a lot of her school cricket with boys. Last year, she was one of the stars of Cambridge University’s victory in the T20 varsity match, scoring 77 not out at Lord’s.