LCS Meeting Thursday 17th January 2019.

A very happy and healthy New Year to all our readers.

We are now well on the way to a new season of hope and expectations for our team

Malcolm Nash

our first speaker of the New Year

If you were at this meeting you will know that one of our members was not well, I spoke with a friend of the gentleman the next day, glad to say that he is OK.

Just a little bit of information to start 2019, since I first set up this web site, nearly 6100 people have taken a look, most interestingly, 43 of those people, were in Japan, not noted for playing cricket, BUT! Could this web site see the start of a new test playing nation? Who knows?

The weather for this photo was not quite as good as the photo above

120 odd brave folk battled a very cold and blowy January night, to listen to Malcolm Nash, the first of our 2019 speakers. Malcolm gave us a very thorough run down of his career. His memories of individual innings, matches and bowling performances, was phenomenal, to listen to Malcolm talk about the great and the good of Grace road cricket, was for some of our members a walk down memory lane.

Howard introducing our speaker

for a man most remembered for ONE OVER this all round cricketer had some astounding career stats.

The body of Thursday night’s meeting contained less of the normal anecdotes and stories, from our speaker’s time playing and more about Malcolm’s actual matches. His recall from the games he had taken part in, was encyclopaedic, with not only his match figures, but also that of his Glamorgan teammates, and the opposition players. To relay again these details in this report would be boring to say the least. At the meeting, Malcolm took us with him into the past, and you could still feel his enthusiasm for the game coming through his descriptions of individual matches. So for this report I will concentrate on the second session of the meeting.

Malcolm had driven from south Wales and arrived early for our meeting,

so autograph collectors took the opportunity to get there past Cricketers Who’s who signed.

During the introduction Howard told us that society members have had first chance to buy tickets for the Chris Lewis play, the take up of tickets so far has been poor, with only a total of 5 people to date buying tickets. Please if you do intend to buy a ticket and go to the play, purchase it at the February meeting, the county have put the other 100 tickets on general sale, if our allocation of 100 tickets is not selling, our members may lose the chance to purchase tickets, 200 seats is all there is.

Glenys Odams checking the raffle prizes before the start of the meeting

I was given a bottle of whiskey for a prize. Please if you have any unloved Christmas presents, I’m always looking for raffle prizes

My friend Rik Hughs dressed for a cold night; I won’t tell you what was said!!

With Malcolm being such a character, he was very easy to talk to, I was lucky enough to speak with him before the meeting, a real joy to listen too. Here you can see Howard enjoying some of his stories. The large box in the middle of this photo, contains a very special copy of his book, this is one of a small limited edition, also signed by Sir Garfield, cost, just £250, a collector’s item for sure. He did sell lots of copies of his book, but alas, not that one.

Before the meeting, two Welshmen get together, Bleddyn Jones and Malcolm, chatting away in a foreign language? Don’t know what was said, BUT, it’s making Howard laugh!

As always, the book stall was open for, business as normal, thanks to our dedicated ladies

Lots of our stalwart members to be seen in these two photos, thanks to your support we can

attract an excellent number of people to our meetings. In the 5 meetings so far this winter over 800 people have attended

Only 2 of the original front row lads on parade NO SIGN of Alan!

I think they are saying OH NO!! is that a photo of Alan sunbathing TOPLESS!! (Alan SORRY if your still not to well)

After the raffle break, which this month made £112, many thanks to one and all, the running total now stands at a fantastic £647. Anyway, onto what Malcolm started the 2nd half with, he said that when he was playing league cricket, back in his youth, if you’d done mildly well and got some applause, there was a collection taken up, he thought the raffle takings were part of his payment for the night, he should be so LUCKY! As always many thanks to Janet and Phil, and Bob for their very valuable help

The grey shopping bag was a very nice prize, the gentleman who won it, said his wife would be very pleased

During the Q&A, Malcolm was asked for his thoughts on some of the modern ideas about how cricket should move forward; I think this photo sums up his reply pretty well.

telling the audience his thoughts on the “100” Malcolm like most of the people he was talking to, are traditionalist cricket spectators

who like to watch the longer formats of the game, 4 and 5 day matches.

Howard’s introduction told us that Malcolm had moved to California then onto Kansas. Here he is telling us about his exploits in America; Malcolm told us that the sheer size of the country made it difficult for teams to play each other. He said there were cricket teams in both New York and in LA, but there are 3000 miles between the two cities.

Malcolm telling us that in 1978 he scored his second century at Grace Rd.

As you can tell those hardy souls who did turn up had another very enjoyable evening

Many thanks for getting this far.

The next LCS meeting is on Thursday 28th February, when Ken Burney, will be telling us all about Wally Hammond. Hammond only played for one county side during the whole of his cricket career, Gloucestershire. Ken will also be bringing with him, lots of Hammond memorabilia, for our members to look at.

Phil Veasey

On behalf of the LCS committee