Warwickshire’s members have been asked to choose 11 former servants of the club to have areas in the new pavilion named in their honour. First and foremost, seven men will be honoured by the naming of suites within the new development after them. Brian Halford nominates his ‘magnificent seven’ and offers some other suggestions for gestures towards deserving figures from the county’s past.
Well done to Warwickshire on consulting their followers on the naming of suites in the new pavilion.
It was a rather strange idea to offer members a list of only 15 men, with some startling omissions, when there are probably twice that number of players, coaches and administrators who would probably garner votes in an open vote.
The stipulated 15 – Dennis Amiss, Tom Cartwright, Leslie Deakins, Tom Dollery, Frank Foster, Geoff Humpage, Brian Lara, Alvin Kallicharran, Nick Knight, Billy Quaife, Dermot Reeve, Rowland Ryder, Alan Smith, ‘Tiger’ Smith and Mike Smith – all have their merits but it is a little baffling that Bob Woolmer and Allan Donald, to name but two, are deemed less worthy of inclusion than, say, Humpage and Lara.
Why offer a shortlist of 15? So rich and vast is the cast of contributors to the county’s long and illustrious history that dozens of candidates would no doubt harvest some support?
However, the compiling of any list is an invidious business. Every list in the history of the world, right back to the very first one drawn up by Adam and Eve when they sat down to make their inaugural ‘Things to Do’ list (a document of some length) has been prepared in the knowledge that it will be subject to rethinking, juggling and challenge.
So it is with this one. If asked to give the names of those people after whom the suites in the new pavilion should be named, would any two Warwickshire followers plump for the same seven?
Probably not. But anyway, here’s my fourpennyworth on the seven suites.
The Dennis Amiss Suite
Probably the only name that would appear on every list. With a Warwickshire connection spanning well over half a century there is a case for naming the entire pavilion after Amiss who scored 35,146 first-class runs (and took 15 valuable wickets) for the county before becoming chief executive. Although, with £20million to repay to the city council, the club is understandably looking for a lucrative naming-rights deal for the whole building.
The Tom Dollery Suite
The first professional to captain Warwickshire to the county championship title, Dollery was a fine batsman, astute strategist and talented leader. He put the needs of the team first and demanded that every player did so. Sadly, he fell out with the club later in life but his ground-breaking leadership deserves permanent recognition now that the old ‘Dollery Bar’ is no more.
The Allan Donald Suite
The words ‘great servant’ are often a back-handed compliment, referring to a journeyman who has plugged away prosaically for years. But Donald, while a brilliant fast bowler, was a great servant as player and then coach: from the spotty youth who fetched up at Edgbaston in 1987 to the magnificent bowler through the 1990s, to the coach who played his part in developing Chris Woakes and Boyd Rankin into players who could bowl the Bears to the title in 2011. Donald’s influence remains.
