Page 22 - Demo

209 CENTURIES AND COUNTING
sumptuous Allan Border Field in Brisbane.
“The conditions were wonderful, superb for batting, but goodness me it was hot. I retired after my century with severe cramp and then had to get back on the eld to keep wicket for 50 overs! But they had all the physios and medical sta there that you needed. They play hard cricket in Australia
but they’re great people, great entertainers, o the pitch.
“And I must have achieved some kind of notoriety in Holland because once when I was elding
for Su olk in a two-day match against the full Netherlands side, someone shouted ‘Well elded Stucky’ from the crowd in a Dutch accent!”
Club cricket has changed considerably during Stuck’s life. Before 1971 there was no league cricket in the south, but friendlies on Saturdays and Sundays, all with the draw rule. Midweek cricket, where he scored plenty of his runs, has almost died out in recent years, mainly due the demands of modern work practices and the ease of taking holidays abroad. The Forty Club are one club who keep the midweek ame burning.
There was so much cricket around it’s no wonder that – discounting the likes of Jack Hobbs, who must have scored the lion’s share of their 200-plus hundreds in rst-class cricket – Stuck believes there are (or were) ve other people who have scored
a double-century of centuries in recreational or amateur cricket.
He knows of two from Essex active in the interwar period. Tray Grinter of Frinton-on-Sea, whose left hand was rendered useless in the Battle of Loos
in 1915, but still came back from the Great War to score another 100-plus centuries by the age of 50. Another was Len Newman from Chelmsford, who scored many of his runs for Alexandra Park.
Stuck says: “When I played for Su olk I just took my holiday and pretty much used it all up on cricket. In the end, it interfered with my married life so I had to step away from it, plus I was coming near the end of my time anyway.
“When I stopped playing rst-team cricket regularly in the 1990s I’d say club cricket was about as strong as I’ve seen it.
“But I’m not one of those people who say that club cricket was always better in my day. I’ve seen a lot
of Premier League cricket and the standard of rst-team cricket is very good, especially with money not being short in club cricket these days and overseas players being around. It’s almost county standard sometimes.
“I’ll never forget watching Grant Flower bat for Burwell one day against Vauxhall Mallards [in the 2010 East Anglian Premier League]. Paul Bradshaw, a very good bowler, was all over him and when they got to the meal break Grant was 19 not out and should have been out several times.
“I had a beer with him and arranged to go and watch him a few days later in Essex’s Sunday League game [against Gloucestershire]. He scored a brilliant hundred. It just shows the di erence in the quality of the pitches – even though most Premier League pitches are good – and the bowling perhaps being just that touch slower.”
Helmets became available only in the 1980s, and while Stuck usually wears one to bat, he never does to keep, as he can’t see the ball if it’s skied in the air. (I agree on that.)
The theory was tested to its fullest when Alvin Greenidge – the former West Indies and Barbados opener who would have played many more
Tests were it not for his namesake Gordon – came over to play for Clacton after being banned for joining the rebel tours of apartheid South Africa
in the mid-1980s.
“My God, he was some batter,” says Stuck. “He’d played club cricket in Holland before that and had discovered there that he could really get the ball through on their matting wickets. I’d say he could crank it up above 80 mph.
“But because he was a part-timer and only came in o three paces he insisted I stand up to him. Luckily he mostly pitched it up...” Remarkably, Stuck says he’s never su ered a bad blow to the head while keeping, just once in the mouth.
As if Stuck’s cricket wasn’t impressive enough, he was the BBC’s rst full-time computer software engineer and nished his career working in defence for BAE Systems.
And, given all that John Stuck has seen and done, it’s no surprise he’s written an autobiography. What did he call it? Well, Stuck in the Middle, of course.
Maybe if you’re playing a match in 2021, you’ll be lucky enough to run into him.
This article was rst published on The Cricketer website and is re- produced with their kind permission. To subscribe to The Cricketer magazine, visit https://shop.thecricketer.com/subscriptions
24
https://thefortyclub.play-cricket.com
ARTICLES