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In this episode we make use of the MCC Sound Archive to bring you the story of Blaina Cricket Club.

The MCC project, Taking the Field was aimed at recording the oral history of cricket clubs throughout the breadth of the UK. Members of the Blaina Cricket Club had already started recording their history for a published book.

The book can be bought here:

https://welsh-academic-press.shopfactory.com/contents/en-uk/p12_Blaenau-Cricket-Club.html

The Facebook page of the project still exists and can be found here:

facebook.com/takingthefield

We talked to Emma Peplow, who was the full time officer with Taking the Field and Alan Williams, long time member and Chairperson of Blaina Cricket Club. Interspersed with our interview with Emma and Alan are excerpts from the MCC Sound Archive. We have interviews with the following:

Diane Williams
Alan Williams
David Jones
Alan Lewis
and Ernie Barber

We hear about the history of the club going back to its earliest beginnings in the 19th Century and it's high point in the early 20th Century.

Emma and Alan talk about one of the highlights of the project which was being interviewed on the Test Match Special lunchtime slot during the Test Match against Sri Lanka.

Alan tells us about the early sponsorship of the club and one of the outstanding individuals who helped keep the club going in the 1920s, Evan Watkins. His wikipaedia page is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Watkins

Emma tells us about the international dimension of Taking the Field

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Ossie begins by talking about his experiences as Chairman of Glamorgan CCC and the difficulties cricket and Glamorgan faced in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

We move swiftly talking about the Kerry Packer Circus and it’s impact on the game. Ossie mentions the Tony Grieg affair which arose out of this and then talks about the Gatting affair in 1988 when England captain Mike Gatting was caught on camera pointing his finger at Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana. For more on that you can go here

https://www.wisden.com/cricket-news/the-gatting-rana-fall-out-when-a-whole-day-of-test-cricket-was-lost-to-a-player-umpire-argument

We then move to talking about the idea of a UK Board of Cricket. By the way Ossie gives us a little bit of history about the role of the MCC.

Ossie tells the story of the England AND WALES Cricket Board and how it came to be called that and the implications of that for the development of the first class game and it’s various academies and pathway organisations.

After finishing his work as an administrator with the first class game, Ossie talks about his involved with the founding and development of what was called the Cricket Foundation but what became the Chance to Shine Charity. In particular, we hear the story of how the ex Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, got involved and managed to get a huge investment form the government of the day to take cricket into primary schools.

We talk about Ossie’s involvement with the Sports Council of Wales and he talks at length about Tom Cartwright’s involvement as a coach in welsh cricket.

Ossie reflects on the game today with particularly interesting comments about the County Championship and Test cricket, including ‘Baz Ball’.

We end with Ossie’s thoughts on welsh cricket and the need to produce some more of our homegrown talent.

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In this episode we return to our chat with Ossie Wheatley. He finished as a player in 1969 but before that he was already becoming involved in the administration of the game.

To begin, he gives us an outline of his career, noting his involvement with English cricket form 1963 onwards. He tells us the various committees on which he served and the roles he undertook including being a Test selector. Latterly, he took up positions with the Sports Council of Wales. Along the way he gives a bit of background to his career including his recollections of the development of junior cricket in Wales. Most importantly, he intervened during the development of the ECB to ensure that the organisation would be known as the England and Wales Cricket Board, an insertion that became crucial, amongst other things, to attracting Test cricket to Wales in 2009.

He asserts his belief in the importance of successful elite sports teams in the development of cricket in any particular place.

We talk a little about Leslie Deakins, ex secretary of Warwickshire County Cricket Club and his impact on the club and creating Edgbaston as a Test ground.

We talk about the Clarke Report in 1965, what it set out to do, who was part of the committee and what it achieved. Along the way he talks about the nature of professional cricketers and the way they ensure they control the developments in the game and what might be the best way for cricket to develop. He airs his concern that developments today may mean the success of a few ‘super’ clubs at the expense of the others.

He talks about the experience of being a Test selector which he was for two years from 1972 to 1974.

We finish this episode by talking about how Ossie became Chairman of Glamorgan County Cricket Club in 1976. The team was experiencing a crisis with player sackings, Majid Khan leaving the club and a challenge to the committees running of the club. He talks about his deep concerns over the involvement of overseas players in the game and how it brought him to the point of standing down from the chairman’s role. He also talks about the poor facilities that existed in Wales for elite cricket and how that impacted on Glamorgan’s fortunes.

We talk briefly about Glamorgan’s visit to Lords in 1977 for the Gillette Cup Final and end with Ossie’s reflections on Glamorgan as a club and where it was in the late 70s and early 80s.