SUCC is sad to announce the passing of Keith Towndrow, in October, after an extended battle with lymphoma. Keith was a prominent member of the Club in his younger years, from 1986-1991. Keith’s father, Peter, and mother Ann, were active volunteers at the Club and Peter was Chairman for several years. Peter has written a lovely summary of Keith’s cricketing career and involvement at the Club (attached) which those who played with him will remember with fondness. Peter would love to hear about your recollections of playing cricket with Keith too.

SUCC send our condolences and best wishes to Peter at this difficult time.

Keith sadly lost his battle against the rare lymphoma he developed in 2022 on 22 October, five years to the day after he lost his Mum, Anne.

We both turned up at the Jack’s Booth Ground on a Friday evening at the start of the 1986 season, where Ian Gordon-Finlayson was running Colts training, struggling somewhat to keep at least 30 youngsters interested and in some sort of order. Keith was 13, and, having already had a season of competitive school cricket, he was anxious to join a local club. After introducing ourselves, I volunteered to stay and help Ian by gently bowling in the net which was then by the entrance gate. At the end of the session Ian asked if I was available the following day, as he knew the team was at least one short. Thus began our association with the club.

During that season Keith played in all the Colts games, and in a number of Sunday games whenever there was a space available. The Colts league wasn’t strictly age restricted, apart from being for under-16s, and all the games were essentially friendlies, with no end-of-season league table. Batsmen had to retire after scoring 25, and in one game against Woolhampton this meant Keith leaving the crease after the first 7 balls of the match!

The following season, as well as playing Colts cricket, Keith was inducted into the Saturday and Sunday senior teams. With Alfie Rahman as Captain of the senior teams, Keith was often given the opportunity to bat and bowl, as Alfie was a magnificent advocate of bringing on the junior players. Maybe it was Alfie who taught Keith the art of leg spin, as it certainly wasn’t me (!), and it was this string to his bow that enabled him to eventually make the Berkshire under-16 team. Meanwhile, life in the lower reaches of the Hampshire League was a great apprenticeship, and we played many games together. We also played most Sunday games, with mainly the same players who had played on the previous day.

Keith continued to represent SUCC at both Colts and senior level, and in 1988 he was selected for the Berkshire under-16s, essentially as a leg spin bowler who could bat a bit in a rather cavalier manner. This was cricket at a different level, and he always remembered his experience facing Mark Butcher, who would be described as a medium paced bowler in his own career - he was the fastest bowler Keith encountered.

The following season he was asked to be Captain of the county team, as he still qualified for that age group. Before the first match, the manager of the team had to step down, and I unexpectedly found myself catapulted into a role I hadn’t anticipated. It was, however, a very enjoyable experience, particularly the encounter with Surrey, which Berkshire won by a considerable margin, with the Surrey manager keeping his team in the changing room for an hour, pointing out that they had just been beaten by a load of country bumkins. I particularly relished our handshake after he had finished his tirade.

The county coaches had put Keith forward for a trial as a leg spinner with Hampshire, where he found himself bowling to several of the first team squad. He was commended on taking a few wickets, but he quickly found out that one very good ball per over wasn’t quite what they were looking for - a lesson every bowler needs to learn! However, Hampshire did sponsor him for an NCA Coaching Scholarship at Lilleshall, where his main coach was Paul Pridgeon of Worcestershire.

At the end of 1989 work started on the new pavilion, and when the actual building work was finished in the early Spring of 1990, the club didn’t have sufficient funds to pay for the cost of decorating. Anne volunteered to supervise this, but after the first session, which was well attended by both cricket and hockey players, she found herself essentially on her own, as the volunteers were only interested in “slapping paint on” as one of them put it, and not in the preparation. Keith spent many hours after school at the club helping his Mum, while I was often cooking dinner ….

In the 1990 season Keith continued to play for the club at weekends, whenever school matches permitted, and in the occasional midweek Guy Jewell Cup game at May’s Bounty in Basingstoke. One of my proudest moments was batting with Keith in a Sunday game at Finchampstead when he scored his maiden century.

He was asked to captain the newly formed Berkshire under-17s, and in one game at Reading against Wales I found myself promoted to scorer as no-one else was available. Keith was also selected to play for the Berkshire Bantams in the Esso Festival at Oxford, where he encountered one or two players who would go on to greater things, including a 15 year-old Marcus Trescothick.

That season, it was decided to hold an internal club six-a-side competition, together with a fête, to raise desperately needed funds to repay those who had loaned money to help to pay for the new pavilion. Eight teams competed in the sixes, either comprised of club members, or linked to SUCC in some way, and as organiser I probably made a mistake in inviting Keith to put together a team of young players. He turned up with five more who had represented the county, and they duly won the competition. Overall, there was some outstanding cricket though, and the competition was declared a success, especially as more than a thousand pounds had been raised on the day.

In December, Keith was a member of a Berkshire Youth squad which toured eastern Australia, playing matches in Singapore and Malaysia on the way. It should probably be pointed out that I went along as the travelling umpire, and Anne was welcomed as the tour “Mum”. Even 19-year olds need consoling when they think they have lost their socks! Keith proudly displayed the SUCC club name in full on his kit box, especially as this was the lowest ranked club on the tour. Not many games were won, as all the Aussie teams were more than keen to beat the Poms, but I had the privilege of seeing some exceptional cricket from the middle.

At the end of the tour, the Berkshire coach (and county opening bat), Martin Lickley, suggested to Keith that he really needed to be playing in a higher standard of cricket than a regional division of the Hampshire League. I knew the Captain of AWE Tadley CC, and Keith reluctantly decided he had to make the move. In those days, AWE Tadley were playing in the old county division 2 in the Hampshire League (the Berkshire League wasn’t then in existence), which would now be the equivalent of division 3 of the ECB Southern Premier Cricket League, so he would certainly be moving up, and he was sort of confident that he could play at that level. In the event, he went straight in to their first team, and had two seasons there before he went off to university. It might be of passing interest that AWE Tadley CC are now languishing in the lower reaches of the Hampshire League, whereas Sully are playing at a somewhat higher level ……

Although no longer living locally, Keith maintained contact with SUCC, via the now-defunct inter-club six-a-side tournament. In 1996 he brought his new team, Stopsley CC, down from Luton, and they ran out winners at their first attempt, beating Sully in the final. Keith’s score of 48 not out is still a record for the final (where Martin Booth had scored 38 not out in the first innings). Stopsley were runners-up the following year, and the club, in its new guise of Offley & Stopsley CC, continued to support the tournament until 2005, by which time Keith had moved to Yorkshire.

Keith joined Cawood CC, his local team near York, but continued to regard Sully with extreme affection; indeed, he guested for them in the sixes tournament in 2006. He was Chairman of Cawood at the same time I was Chairman of Sully, and he will be sorely missed by his adopted club.

Peter Towndrow