Village Cricket in the 1950s and '60s

Title

Village Cricket in the 1950s and '60s

Subject

Bill Day

Description

An excerpt from an oral history interview with Bill Day. Listen to him describe playing cricket for Warehorne in the 1950s and early 1960s; travelling to away fixtures in a hearse; inter-village rivalries; matches drawing to a close in time for church.

Creator

Michael Romyn

Source

Bill Day Oral History Recording

Publisher

Kent's Sporting Memories

Date

22 February, 2019

Contributor

Bill Day; Michael Romyn

Rights

Kent's Sporting Memories

Relation

Bill Day Oral History Recording

Format

MP3

Language

English

Type

Audio File

Identifier

Bill Day

Original Format

Audio File

Duration

5:56

Transcription

I used to play cricket for Warehorne, which is the local village, well I say local, it was the next village to us, and I played football for Warehorne, sorry, cricket for Warehorne and football for Ruckinge, and we were, Hamstreet were sandwiched between the two villages. And I played for Warehorne from the age of thirteen, and I played for Ruckinge, we were a young group coming through, all about the same time, it was quite interesting actually because they had a very good team, we then came through, we got to the age of fifteen, sixteen, somewhere around there, and sort of came in as a group. We had a junior team then, Ruckinge, and we came from there really, and took over, and then we won the cup in 1960. The Ashford and District Junior League Cup, or whatever it was, and won that.
MR: So you’re competing against other village teams in that?
BD: Yes. In those days sport was thriving in the villages, cricket and football.
MR: Would it be seasonal – cricket in the summer, football in the winter?
BD: Yes, and a lot of lads from the village played. It’s sad, I’ve seen the destruction of cricket in particular I think in the villages, and also football actually. I think it’s the advance of the motorcar. When I played for Warehorne there was only one man in the team that had a car, Jim Munge had a car , and the rest of us we hadn’t got, so we used to, for away matches, we would be taken in an Armstrong Siddeley, I think it was, it was a hearse during the week, for funerals, they used to clear all the silver knobs out of it, take all the stuff out, and we used to clamber into it, the whole team used to get into it. And the man who took the mourners and things, and the coffin, to funerals during the week, to crematoriums and churches, he used to take his top hat off and kept his starched shirt on, white shirt, take his tie off, black tie, roll his sleeves up and act as our driver for sport at the weekends.
MR: So you all crammed into it?
BD: We crammed into it. The only problem with it, when we were, we were pretty young, but we always wanted to – the great, those great days, you hadn’t got a clubhouse, a cricket clubhouse particularly, in village cricket, but you’d go down the local pub, so you’d have a few drinks with the opposition down there, so we used to go down there. He of course would have to take us in the limo down to the village, and he’d wait outside, he’d never come in, and used to sort of tut and look out the window and look at his watch.
MR: Why wouldn’t he come in?
BD: Well drinking wasn’t his thing, you know, he was teetotal and I don’t ever remember having a word with him because he was sort of a very quiet man, and didn’t say very much to anybody, and I got the feeling that he reluctantly drove us around. Working all week and then doing this. He looked the real part, he looked the part for the funerals he went to, he really looked quite serious, and I don’t ever remember him smile – a smile never cracked his face. I’m probably doing him down, a disservice here.
MR: So you got to know the lads from the other villages?
BD: Yes, the inter-village rivalry was intense. Cricket matches against Bilsington. Ruckinge didn’t have a cricket team but Bilsington had a cricket team, which is the next village on from them, and they used to play Warehorne, so Bilsington, Ruckinge, Hamstreet, Warehorne, that’s how they were dotted. And so Warehorne matches against Bilsington, the rivalry was intense.
MR: Would it attract a big crowd?
BD: Quite a lot of people would come and watch us, yeah, and they were more or less, well Warehorne we were out of the village a bit but the landlord of our ground was Darcy Dawes who was a very important man of the village, you know, and the family still live in the village now. And he used to walk onto the ground at times and we used to stand to attention, sort of doff our caps or whatever we were wearing. Cause in those days cricket had to end before six o’clock because of church, because there were evening services and so on, so there was a time limit on matches. That, in the time that I was there, I think that changed.