annual gazette | 11
A Tribute to David Buckingham Ken Siddle The following tribute to David Buckingham was delivered by Ken Siddle, the Senior Treasurer of the Cambridge University Cricket Club and a Fellow of Churchill College (as Professor (Emeritus) of Molecular Endocrinology), at David’s funeral on 1 March 2021.
I want to talk about David’s passion for the game of cricket, a passion that runs as a continuous thread throughout his life, and to which I owe almost 40 years of precious friendship with the loveliest man you could wish to know. He was born in Pymble, a suburb of Sydney, and like all good Australians was introduced to cricket at an early age. His skills were soon recognised and he played for his prep school and then Barker College for whom he took a hat-trick in a senior game against Waverley College in 1947 (he proudly retained the match ball with its commemorative engraved plaque). His cricket skills were further honed alongside those in chemistry at the University of Sydney, where he won what he always liked to refer to as ‘my Blue’. When he came to Cambridge to study for a PhD he played in a couple of trial games during his first summer but did not represent the University in matches of any consequence that year. I don’t know whether it was pressure of work or competition for places that kept him out of the first XI. In any event, he made his first-class debut for Cambridge the following season, 1955, playing four matches against the might of Surrey, Yorkshire, Essex and Middlesex. At the end of that summer, having completed his PhD in express time, he swapped light Blue for dark and took up a research fellowship at ‘the other place’. As far as I can see he did not actually play for Oxford University – he was after all no longer a student – but he certainly engaged with OUCC and soon became its Treasurer. For several years he turned out for the Free Foresters, an itinerant club made up largely of former Oxbridge players, whose annual matches against the ancient Universities were at that time accorded ‘first class’ status. With the Foresters he played several times in The Parks as well as returning to Fenner’s. David was primarily an opening batsman and (by this time) only an occasional off-break bowler – in his last first-class game in 1960 he opened the batting with Henry Blofeld, a name that will be known to some ‘dear old things’ from his colourful cricket commentaries of later years. His first-class record of 349 runs in 10 matches (with highest scores of 52 not out for Cambridge University and 61 for Free Foresters) may appear modest, but he played in a golden age of University cricket, with and against at least eight past and future England captains (Norman Yardley, George Mann, Peter May, Ted Dexter, Tony Lewis, Ray Illingworth, Brian Close and MJK Smith), one captain of Australia (Ian Craig) and many other great England test players (including Fred Trueman, Willie Watson, Bob Appleyard, Jim Laker, Tony Lock, Trevor Bailey, Doug Insole, Bill Edrich, Freddie Brown, Alan Smith and Bob Barber). He was never one to brag about his playing days, but could sometimes be persuaded to reminisce about facing Fred Trueman in his pomp, and would be quick to remind his listeners, with a characteristic twinkle in his eye, that Fred did not get him out!
