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1940s

1949 – Cricket Re-appears in the Parish Magazine

Blackburn, another Herts player, topped the batting in 1949, averaging 56, and arranged for a monthly parish magazine column on the Club, following the example of the Club’s founding father, the Rev. C. M. 0. Parkinson.

Freddie Taylor was second in the batting averages of the second team which in their most successful season up to then won 17 out of 24 played. He did the same next season.

The firsts won just over a third of theirs under Eric Parker, captain for the season after Bob Woodbridge’s retirement. King topped the bowling and won a Herts cap.

Sadly, the Club president, Miles Brunton, and Bob Woodbridge who suffered a stroke, both died around this time.

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1940s

1948 – New Players Arriving

Talented players made their mark very quickly on the Club.

1948 saw opening bat Chris Dexter strengthen the batting. A fitness fanatic, he was to score 1,000 runs twice in pre-1970 league days. Now 68 (in 1984), he “hopes to play this season – God willing.”

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1940s

1947 – First Real Post-War Cricket

“The best season since I joined,” was how Bob Woodbridge described the 1947 season at the A.G.M. There were now 190 members (three-quarters non-playing) and almost 40 colts. In 64 matches played, the firsts lost eight out of 33 games and won 15; the seconds won 14 out of 24. And Miles Brunton, the Club president, who owned the ground, pledged it would be available for as long as the Club wanted for just £1 rent p.a.

Playing standards went up, though the Club only had about 40 playing members, from which four teams were picked each week-end, and sometimes teams were “strengthened” by Men’s Club members. Douglas Jardine joined after moving to Radlett and later played a few Sunday matches for Radlett each season in the ’50s until he died in 1958.

Radlett was rich in characters at that time. They included Ian Phillips, who was later to appoint himself match secretary for the second team and hunt around the Radlett bars on Saturday mornings.

“If you were under 80 and went down to the Men’s Club, there was a good chance of you playing,” says John Clark, current joint third team skipper (in 1984).

The Rev. Ken Blackburn, the local vicar, was another. He followed Colby (31.7) in the first team batting averages with 23.2 and held a regular place until he changed parishes in 1958. He scored a century before lunch at Chipperfield. and could also bowl.

He was good with collections too – One Saturday in the changing room, all the money fell out of E. C. ‘Sinky’ Sinclair’s pocket, whereupon the Vicar picked it all up with a smile, saying: “I don’t suppose you’ll be at church tomorrow, ‘Sinky’. so I’ll take this for the collection!”

One could never suppose anything about the first team wicket keeper of the ’40s and ’50s, Larry Baker. He was one of the bravest, standing up to Leslie King at his fastest, but according to several players of the time, “one of the maddest drivers. You never knew when he’d turn up at a match. It just depended on which ditch he’d pulled his car out of!”

Jimmy Upsdale was more timid about his prowess on the field. He never bowled his ‘innocuous slows’ until after the fall of the eighth wicket and was quite successful.

The year would not be complete without mention of David ‘Fred’ Taylor, present captain of the Club (in 1984), who in his second team debut as a 13-year-old, defended desperately against superior Harpenden bowling to force a draw.

photo: pavilion in 1946

 

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1940s

1941 – Wet, but the Girl Guides Arrive to Play in Radlett

The year 1941 had an unusually wet summer, but under Bob Woolbridge’s care (and the help of Brunton, Down and the RAF) the new ground began to blossom as one of the county’s finest.

The Girl Guides Cricket Club thought so, for they used it throughout the season.

Records were not kept for the following three war years and the main Club committees did not meet again until after the end of the war in 1945.

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1940s

1940 – Dwindling Fixtures and Subs Suspended

And so to the war years. The Club fixture list of over 60 games in 1938 had dwindled to just 24 in 1940 as players disappeared into the forces.

But the RAF No. 80 wing, based at Aldenham Lodge (site of Lodge End), also used the ground during the war years and bumped up the fixtures to about 50 each year.

That season subs were suspended until the war ended, but play continued and Roy Watson made a few brief appearances at number four in the batting order.

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1940s

1940s

After the Second World War, Radlett was fortunate to have a band of players who also worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the viability of the club. They were Leslie King, Ivor Golby and Chris Dexter.