Summer Times is the Journal of the Old Scarborians Association

Barnes, by contrast, had a more studious ap‐
proach, being probably the best off‐spinner
the school produced. He had a teasing flight,
and gave the ball a genuine tweak. He was
also a very stylish and productive batsman,
and an intelligent captain in 1952 and 1953. He
and Robson had both been called to the York‐
shire Junior’s nets in 1951, and Barnes was
selected for the Junior XI’s tour.
After he left school, Peter played regularly for
English Universities over a period of four
years.
In 1952, Barry Jubb emerged as a leg‐break
bowler, the only one of his kind I remember
playing for the school, but I would love to
know what lay behind Mr Haigh’s Old Scar‐
borian assertion that he ‘bowled the most
lethal full toss that we have seen for some
time’.
John Yeadon and ‘Geezer’ Merriweather were
both very sound batsmen by this time, and
with Barnes, Robson and the young Overfield,
formed the backbone of the 1953 team that
won the Hospital Cup. Other good players
such as Tom Jones, Derek Hargrave and Frank
Ankrett came to the fore only after my time.
And though I later saw Ray Bloom play very
impressively for the town team, he was still
only a colt when I left in 1952.
The school was knocked out of the Hospital
Cup that year by The Nomads, a team that
was made up largely from local schoolmas‐
ters, including Haigh and Hovington. For
reasons I still do not know, Don Barnes asked
me to open the bowling at the pavilion end,
even though I had never previously bowled a
ball for the school. I seem to remember bowl‐
ing right through the innings without taking a
wicket, but quite economically, while Peter
Robson bowled his explosive stuff from the
Seamer Road end. I particularly remember his
delight when he got opener Haigh for a duck.
When we came to bat we faced old boy Stan
Lewsey, who bowled medium pace off a pecu‐
liar jerky marionette‐like run. He came in from
the Seamer Road end with the bright red set‐
36
ting sun right behind his arm, with no sight
screens. Not surprisingly, though Don Barnes
got 37 and I got 42, we found it impossible to
score quickly enough, and fell short by just 9
runs.
The glorious story of the Hospital Cup win the
following year, with notable contributions
from a couple of new names – Overfield and
Moor ‐‐ has been told elsewhere, and all I will
say here is that I would have given anything
to have been part of that great team.
This story is primarily about the players in my
time at the school, but it would be wrong not
to pay tribute to the masters mentioned earlier
on for their contributions. Others non‐players,
such as ‘Bomber’ Stirling and John Rice, gave
a lot of their time as scorers, and were truly
members of the teams (Rice introduced stroke
diagrams, I remember, and later achieved
success in his own right as captain of the 2 nd
XI).
And there’s one other ‘cricketer’ I must men‐
tion. Revan Tranter, my friend for more than
60 years. He played a couple of games for the
Second XI, and the pinnacle of his cricketing
career was taking 5 for 24 for the Librarians
against the Boxing Club. In truth, he had a
quite remarkable antipathy to anything re‐
motely athletic – Brad’s sword dances in PT
lessons pushed him well beyond his limit.
Moreover, the vision in his right eye was so
bad that he horrified the marshals on the fir‐
ing range, when he did his national service, by
attempting to fire his rifle left‐handed!
But though he was never one of the school’s
star players, he developed a life‐long passion
for the game. To this day, in his California
home he stays up half the night following the
fortunes of England’s overseas touring teams
on his computer. And if you want to know
anything about the fortunes of the Yorkshire
team or the latest lunacies of its management
there is no better authority than Revan.
In this account of my personal recollections it
has not been possible, for reasons of space, to
name every one of those congenial team‐mates