1,000th wicket for St. Georges cricket legend!

This is the follow up to this article originally posted in June

CRICKET MAN TOMMY

Last week we had our club dinner at the delightful Leeds Cobble Hall Golf Club restaurant and Tony was presented with a blazer, appropriately patch pocketed with the St George's Church Cricket Club badge and an embroidered gold "M" (being of course the Roman for 1,000) below it. To his great surprise, because of the man's humility, he didn't twig what was going on, despite strange guests turning up at the dinner and the numbers far exceeding those of recent years!

Just as importantly we feel, his 'long suffering cricket widow' Chizz was presented with a large bunch of flowers, to record her significant contribution to the 36 season unbroken quest!

Tony as usual ran the show at the dinner and his special guest speaker Tommy (Tony to his mates) Cooper came in to deliver some classic comedy (photo on the left). Chizz is the one with her head in her hands!!

Tony returned on Tommy's departure (to rapturous applause - that's for Tommy - not Tony's return!) and presented the season's awards with suitably eloquent and comic comment. He finally sat down (after also organising the dinner) enjoying the top drawer food and service, thinking that the night's drama had concluded only to be totally gobsmacked by what followed.

Another club steward, Martin Bates, promptly rose to his feet to deliver a witty and heartfelt "key moment" analysis of Tony's involvement with the club: from its humble beginnings in 1975, when just the one match "Bachelors versus Marrieds" was played, through to the first of its 2 cup successes in 1988, with Tony hitting the winning runs; his personal nadir in 2004 when he collapsed and "died" in a match on our ground at Harewood; to his greatest triumph to date (in cricketing terms anyway) of captaining the club in 2005; to the National Christian Cricket Club title and, as if that wasn't enough, throwing in a Man of the Match performance as well. Finally, of course, performing the "Champagne moment" of this - indeed any - season when, on 26th May, he knocked over his 1,000th club wicket at about 8.50pm in the dark and damp of a cup match against our long standing opponents Cambridge Methodists (the very same opponents where his life could so tragically have ended 6 years earlier!). Martin concluded by presenting the aforementioned blazer and flowers. Tony, in time-honoured fashion, thanked Martin for his kind words and everyone in the club for their prayer and support over the years, before for once being lost for words as the emotion of the moment took over. God certainly broke the mould when he made Tony!

The photo on the right is Tony looking resplendent in his blazer with just a hint of pride showing!