ENGLAND and Gloucestershire great Jack Russell helped Stroud kick start their 175th anniversary celebrations on Sunday.
The club’s most famous old boy returned home for a special party which featured matches on adjoining pitches against the Gloucestershire Gipsies and a Gloucestershire Cricket Foundation Disability side.
The day also marked the official launch of The Farmhill Years, a fascinating new history of the club written by member Richard Cox that includes a foreword from Jack who, 50 years after becoming a member of Stroud’s very first youth team, remains touchingly grateful for the chance to take the first steps on a cricketing journey that led to the highest echelons of the sport.
Copies of The Farmhill Years, signed by both Richard Cox and Jack are now on sale, price £15, while it is also available through Amazon.
David Moore was the man who drove the formation of that junior side and, half a century later, it seems very fitting that he will be enjoying the 175th celebrations as both Stroud’s oldest current player and its longest serving president.
Pic: Simon Pizzey
The 76-year-old had, in fact, joined the club 60 summers ago and has the distinction of being its leading scorer with a small matter of 17,370 runs under his belt from a remarkable 952 matches.
David is also 15th on the all-time bowling list with 496 wickets and would love nothing more than to take four more and reach the 500 landmark before the summer is over.
The event included a ceremonial raising of new club flags at either end of the pavilion, the presentation of awards plus the sale of tickets for a major fund-raising raffle.
There was also a silent auction with items under the hammer including tickets for the England-India Test at Lord’s.
Pic: Simon Pizzey
Dozens of photographs tracing Stroud’s rich history were dusted off to complete a new display inside the clubhouse.
It’s a club in rude health, witnessed by the fact that it currently runs four open age Saturday sides, a ladies hard ball team along with All Stars for youngsters aged from five-to-eight, under 9s, 11s, 13s and 15s.
These junior sides remain vital to Stroud’s future with more than a hundred girls and boys playing cricket here each year while around a quarter of players in the Saturday league sides have graduated from the ranks.
Chair James Collins said: “There’s nothing better than being here on a Monday and seeing so many of our youth members running around on the two pitches.
“And on a Saturday, there’s a unique atmosphere when there are two senior games taking place, side by side … when one match finishes, people move across to the other to watch and encourage whoever is playing.”
