Page 10 - Bray Celebrity Cricket Programme Final

MATT ARMSTRONG
MAIDENHEAD & BRAY CRICKET CLUB
OA Singular Man and a Dying Breed
n the wall of the boundary encyclopaedia of local cricket and next to the road is a plaque can at the drop of a hat give the commemorating the years of career averages, the inside leg
service that one man has given to the measurement and fascinating
club and marks the renaming of that the end of the ground from the prosaic Road End to the intriguing ‘Reaper End’. It’s in fact, in honour of his nickname Reaper, as in Grim Reaper or just Reaps for short but more of that anon. It’s a small tribute but to those who know him it speaks volumes.
His real name is Matt Armstrong. He is a man of my vintage. We played together as colts and in various senior teams at the club. The difference is that whilst I drifted away from the game, he remained a constant as a player and has been so for over forty consecutive seasons. Whilst I burned myself out like a wayward comet, occasionally hitting the cut stuff with my lame attempt at tearaway fast bowling, Matt dished up his metronomic medium pace with a control of line and length that would have made my Uncle Geoffrey and his love of the ‘corridor of uncertainty’, purr with pleasure.
But he’s more than just a player. As a colt he scored for the first team with the result that he is now a walking
personal insights, like the fact that their Auntie Viv keeps award winning budgerigars, about anyone who has made more than a handful of appearances from any club in the locality.
He is also a Club man through and through serving diligently as fixtures Secretary and, whilst in that role, seamlessly managing the transition from organising games using Quill pens to posting them on social media. He has single handedly kept Sunday cricket alive at the club whilst all around us grounds lay empty by both captaining and arranging 40 over match ups with an assortment of nomadic clubs of varying capabilities.
In the close season he keeps limbs loose by arranging golf matches for his cricketing mates who revel in being part of an unofficial ‘Reaper Tour’ and he remains a passionate Essex supporter spending time at Chelmsford in all weathers watching the glory of Gooch, the rise of Cook and the demise of ‘proper cricket’ in the maelstrom of technicolour biff and bash.
Everything he does is done quietly, selflessly but resolutely without a smile on his face. And when it comes to Matt that is indeed the rub and the source of his nickname. I’m not sure who first gave him the Moniker ‘Reaper’ but whoever did was struck by inspiration because Matt would be right at home piloting a boat of lost souls to the Underworld whilst complaining about the tides, weather and the fact that he cant see more than two feet in front of his face. He is a man for whom life is a glass fully empty who can sit in the evening sunshine after bagging a 5-wicket haul and announce to whoever is listening that the long-range weather report expects at least 50 days of rain in the coming months. He walks into the room with the air of a man expecting an object to fall on his head and is suspicious of optimistic, enthusiastic souls who he tries, often in vain, to bring around to his way of thinking.
But we wouldn’t have it any other way. He is one of those people that every amateur club needs to survive and thrive. People who operate behind the scenes, seeking neither thanks nor recognition but simply doing it because it’s in their blood and they know more than anyone what would happen if they, like many of us,
MAT