Bits and Pieces

Welcome to our page of cricket facts - weird and wonderful stories that sustain many a cricketer through a long winter or a long innings! Please send in more of these stories.

• John Barnes played street cricket with Malcolm Nash (a great bowler, and rather unfairly remembered because Gary Sobers hit him for 6 sixes in one over when playing against Glamorgan).

• Neil Rollings bowled Alec Stewart and his brother with consecutive deliveries.

• Lionel Glassey once opened the batting and got run out in the first over, without facing a ball, while going for a fifth run (a club record). Umpiring duties and a quiet spot on the field, resulting in him spending 90 overs in the field without actually touching the ball (NOT a club record).

• Our current President, Richard Cogdell, played cricket at school with Bob Willis, when the future England captain and fast bowler was an opening bat!

• Hugh Bell Run Out Club Latest - only three people have ever managed to run Hugh out, and he remembers every detail of every incident. The three major achievers are Ian Holland ("proud of it"), John Barnes ("happened so long ago I cannot remember anything about it, but quietly proud of it as well") and Hugh Carter (- big, big grin -).

• Run Out Club for everyone else - Pride of place last season (1999) goes to Matt Baker, who managed to have Hugh Carter run out by a direct hit from the mid-wicket boundary. Hugh had not faced a ball, of course, and was being watched by his parents who are no doubt bemused by the fact that their son spends so much time at the weekends walking out to the middle, charging down the wicket in vain, and then walking off again without even touching the ball with the bat.

• Hugh Bell rose even more in club folklore: with the way he handled a huge defeat, in the 2001 IntraClub test match, which ended the season. Skippering a side to defeat by 75 runs is no mean feat, but to be out for a duck, third ball, and be hit out of the ground by Fraser Murray, having already dropped him on nought, usually calls for hara-kiri. Instead he could be found in his usual place: propping up the Microbrewery bar, merely morosely contemplating retirement.

• One of the less pleasant tasks for the comittee is having to tell players they are no longer required. And so it was in 2002 that the selectors called Fraser Murray in. "You're pish" they told him. "You'll be completely out your depth in Division 1 of the Strathclyde League, why don't you move to some Division 4 side where your stonewalling batting will be apreciated". Pathetically he tried to make a case for himself, pointing out how, in his two seasons with us, he had averaged 81. "You don't impress the Uni Staff with mere statistics, we're a style team", he was informed. Finding someone to take him off our hands was a bit harder, but eventually we heard on the grapevine that Glasgow Accies were strapped for cash, so the treasurer gave them some to take him.