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OPUS • Issue 7 • Autumn 2012
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Cage Cricket – “From Street to Elite” The names Mike Barnard, Richard McIlwaine, David Rock and Jon Ayling may be familiar to you as the four Portsmouth-born OPs who have played first-class cricket for Hampshire since the war. Perhaps you remember taking the opportunity to watch Hampshire in the days when they played regularly at the United Services ground just north of the school? If so, the more senior among you may recall Neil McCorkell, who kept wicket and often opened the batting for Hampshire from 1932-1951. On retirement, Neil moved to South Africa where last March he celebrated his 100th birthday. Neil was born in White Hart Lane (Road), Old Portsmouth and learned his cricket at Portsmouth Town School and in local church sides before Hampshire found him. When he retired, he had played nearly 400 matches with 17 centuries and at the time was Hampshire’s leading wicketkeeper. Less happily, he is the last Portsmouthborn Hampshire cricketer from a state school to enjoy a successful career with the county. The Hampshire side of 2012 won two trophies for the first time in its history including as many as eight players produced through their junior ranks. In more than 80 years since Neil McCorkell made his debut, players have come from Gosport, Fareham, Basingstoke, Winchester the Isle of Wight and Southampton but the only Portsmouth exception to the four PGS boys is Lawrie Prittipaul who played around 10 years ago, having been educated at the city’s ‘other’ private school, St John’s College. In addition, the days of Portsmouth club sides competing with the best in the region have disappeared. There is no Portsmouth (or Southampton) based club in the top two divisions of the Southern League. There may be all kinds of reasons for this decline – having taught in local comprehensives, I suspect aspiration is a bigger local issue than ability - but too few ‘Pompey’ youngsters have sustained experience of cricket as a sporting option. Whatever the reasons, Prittipaul is spearheading a way to encourage local youngsters (boys and girls) to enjoy cricket through ‘Cage Cricket’.
Cage Cricket is a version of the game that resembles an outdoor and broadly (but not exclusively) inner-city version of indoor cricket.
It is, if you like, a structured form of the street cricket that produced many fine players in the years before the motor-car rendered this a hazardous activity. Before any purists among you cry ‘no ball’, let me stress that as Hampshire’s Hon Archivist I bow to no-one in my commitment to the history and traditions of the great game but the waste of potential talent in inner cities is a tragedy and if the Olympic legacy is to mean anything it must embrace every opportunity in every sport. I believe that Cage Cricket does that and its philosophy of “From Street to Elite” stresses that there is an aspiration to support the best Cage Cricketers to move towards the traditional forms of the game.
Cage Cricket, developed in Portsmouth, was formally launched on Tuesday 12 June 2012 at the Houses of Parliament. Sir Ian Botham and Rod Bransgrove (Chairman, Hampshire Cricket) were among those who supported the launch in person while many cricket people, MPs and others came to watch and participate. The event was covered on BBC’s South Today, Sky Sports News and a BBC news item featuring Sir Ian and Crispin Blunt MP is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ uk-politics-18410125.
Cage Cricket is a continuous, intense form of the game, played in multiple use cages that function equally for basketball, tennis and other hard surface sports. Batsmen are required to attack but with careful control of shots – out of the net scores nothing. Every player bats, bowls and fields and of equal importance, every player umpires and scores. For young people this provides invaluable social and sporting experiences.
Pipe Racks & Bookends Random Thoughts of an old OP
When I joined Portsmouth Grammar School in September 1932 I was a small, shy, reserved loner and I think I stayed that way until I was invited to join His Majesty’s army in 1942. I started at the bottom in Lower 1 and with a modicum of luck and having done lots of homework I graduated steadily in the ‘A’ stream until 1939 when I found myself in Upper Five B. Throughout all this time my progress was largely uneventful and unspectacular. The only time I was mentioned in The Old Portmuthian was in 1934 being a cast member when Lower 2 did a short play in French called “ Les Jumeaux Pois” in front of the parents – I can’t imagine what they thought of it!
The Westminster launch is evidence of the ambition of this project and there is now a Cage at Hampshire’s Ageas Bowl, which is in constant use on match days. The local pioneers hope to spread it far beyond Portsea Island, but it was conceived in Somerstown and developed in Landport. PGS boys including Andrew Marston, Jack Marston, Will Smitherman and Reuben McArdle der Karapetion were among the first to play and suggest improvements. Reuben’s father Trevor McArdle is Lawrie Prittipaul’s Cage Cricket partner and the duo hopes to establish a highly visible centre on Southsea seafront alongside the tennis and beach volleyball. Perhaps it will spread rapidly and stand eventually alongside the great achievements of Hambledon’s cricketers 250 years ago. It is a wonderful opportunity to provide an exciting experience for our boys and girls – and incidentally, if, like me, you participated in last year’s (very) old OP’s match even you might enjoy this version – it’s an intense workout but there’s little running required! For more information, please visit www.cagecricket.com Dave Allen OP (1958-1967)
Mr Charlesworth with Upper Five B
I passed through many masters’ hands over the years and still remember some names if not their subjects: Messrs Ensor, Bayes, Watson, Heritage and some who were given rather unkind nicknames: Fatty Baxter, Beefy Pearce, Nosey Parker, Stiffy Ladds, Bill Willis and of course Slimy Barton. One who escaped our cruelty was our form master in U5B, Mr Charlesworth, who I remember as a small, mild mannered father figure who attempted to instill some discipline and sufficient knowledge to enable us to pass the school certificate which I managed to do first time, much to my amazement.
Also in the yard was a larger corrugated iron gym, a place that filled me with foreboding as I wasn’t built to climb ladders, ropes and wall bars, nor to vault over horses. It was ruled by an ex-naval PTI named Bellinger who tried to build up some muscle in us weak and weedy specimens. I dreaded the time when he said “Get your boxing gloves on, three minutes in the ring”. I remember names of some fellow pupils, friends like Gilbert Trower, Ken Wigmore and Derek Herbert; form members Paul Gibb, Fred Northover, Bob Stewart, Mervyn Francis, Doug Lockhart, the Bott brothers, Ray Layton amongst others and others by repute or by sight – Alan Bristow, Sam Barnard, Frank Cranmore, Harry Pearce, Wally Organ, Phil Norster and Alan Donnelly. Some have passed on, a few during the War cut down in their prime, but what of the others? If I remember, Wednesday afternoons were designated as a sports period at Hilsea. My lack of athleticism meant being detailed to make up the number in a team and this resulted in me trying to avoid having the football passed to me in case I was tackled and flailing a cricket bat around in the vain hope of hitting the ball. We were also
forced to do cross country runs, but I will pass over that without comment. Apart from Sports Day, this was really the only sporting activity practiced in those days, although I must admit I used to look in admiration at those first eleven stalwarts, the Stobbs brothers, Lanyon, Collier, Ashton, Clavell and all the others. Some memories are blurred with age, but odd ones crop up such as the tuck shop in the basement where the toilets were and rows of pegs for our raincoats, detention periods in the Common Room (several times!) and having to wear the school cap at all times in public. Then there were the dreaded visits to E4. When the school was evacuated to Bournemouth, I was billeted with 2 or 3 others in a house in Southbourne and lessons were taken in a house nearby – the name unremembered. My outstanding memory of this period was of waking on the cliff top to the Sunday afternoon concerts by the Municipal Orchestra at the Pavilion. Looking back, I had 7 years of first class education which, although they may not have led to a high profile career, made me proud to wear the school uniform and to be a part of the ongoing history of Portsmouth Grammar School. Maurice Ralph OP (1932 -1939)
Wally Bartle tried to interest us in Art, unsuccessfully, and Mr Asher was in charge of woodwork. This took place in the hut in the grounds of the old school, but I think his efforts only equipped us to produce mis-shapen pipe racks and bookends. Headmaster James Priory (centre) hosts a Reunion for PGS Leavers 1935-45, November 2008. Maurice Ralph is seated far right.
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