Look back in (East) Anglia - recalling the Taverners' tussles with the Edrich family

Mick Jagger and his Rolling Stones cohorts – topping the charts at the time with (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – might have begged to differ, but a good time was guaranteed if you were in the vicinity of Ingham Cricket Club’s Old Hall ground in September 1965. For it was to this picturesque farmland setting amid the Norfolk Broads that the Taverners XI, in all its weird and wonderful iterations, travelled on no fewer than eight occasions between 1963 and 1974. 

Once there, the most-exotic cricketing bedfellows – where else could one see West Indian great Everton Weekes followed in the batting order by broadcaster David Frost (a handy keeper-batsman) – would don their whites to battle it out against an XI comprising one of cricket’s great family dynasties. Skippered by England and Middlesex stalwart, and local lad, Bill Edrich, one of four first-class cricketing brothers alongside Geoffrey, Brian and Eric – with cousin John arguably the most successful of them all – yellowing scorecards of these fundraising encounters, unearthed from the archives as part of the Taverners’ 75th anniversary celebrations, offer a delicious snapshot of the decade.

A treasure trove for ephemera lovers and cricket tragic, they tell of run-laden affairs on a postage-stamp ground made smaller still by boundaries downsized to pack in the expectant crowd. And pack them in they did, as Paul Borrett recalls. Paul’s father, Jack, was captain at Ingham Cricket Club and a close friend of Bill Edrich’s cousin George. Between them the pair raised £600 in 1950 to purchase the club land for a square at Old Hall farm. 

These yearly encounters with the Taverners were catnip to a cricket-mad Paul, then just 19. Now a sprightly 76, the enthusiasm in his voice for those occasions is still obvious down the phone. “It was just before the John Player League started on television, so there was very little apart from Test matches broadcast back then,” he recalls. “Dad used to borrow seats from Latham – Norfolk’s ground in those days – and he’d put them round the ground. And, as you can imagine, we used to get cars in and everything – thousands and thousands of people – as many as 7,000 one year. Half of them probably didn’t pay because they used to come through the hedge at the back!” he laughs. 

“And we’d bring the boundaries in – they’d probably only have been about 45 yards!” That would account for some fairly jaw-dropping scores, even in the pre-tip and scoop age; not least 1965’s encounter on Sunday 12 September – the penultimate fixture of the Taverners’ dozen outings that summer, which also included games against ‘Old England’ and ‘Old Surrey’. 

An aggregate run-count of 809 ended in a draw as the Taverners, who fielded 12 – including a 23-year-old Mike Brearley opening the batting and Clive Radley, two years his junior batting at three – finished 404 for 10, one run short of the Edrich clan’s mammoth 405 for 8 declared (John Edrich hitting 148, Bill Edrich 88*).

As you’d expect, the finer details are somewhat blurry more than half a century later. Mike Brearley, who scored 24, remembers precious little other than fond memories of it being great fun. Radley scored 41 that day and took 3 for 8. “Really?” he laughs. “I can’t believe that – who did I get out?” He played in all but two of these games and remembers the occasions with a smile. For him, they helped forge connections still intact today.  

Paul Borrett had been his closest pal at Norfolk School, and Radley was then on the cusp of establishing himself in Middlesex’s first XI, having been brought to the club’s attentions by Bill Edrich. One can only guess at how many hours Radley spent in Mike Brearley’s company in subsequent years with Middlesex, and these matches were instrumental in helping cement that friendship. “I actually got to know about the Taverners through playing these games,” Radley recalls. “I think Mike was up there staying with me for the weekend, because I lived up that way and Ingham was my club. There was a real Middlesex connection – Ian Bedford – my first captain there, and a lovely bloke, and Eric Russell played in that game, too – and I remember Peter Parfitt played a few.” 

“And,” he adds, “this wouldn’t have been in 1965, but I remember a game where Garfield Sobers played. The racing driver Graham Hill picked him up from the Waldorf Hotel and drove him up and back in his Jaguar XJ60. I don’t suppose they worried too much about the speed limit at the time! Graham said he was asleep all the way up, strapped his pads on, smacked a couple of sixes over the church, came back and went to sleep again!” 

Borrett, no cricketing slouch himself as a batting leg spinner who played 50-plus games for Norfolk, corroborates the story. In the first Edrich-Taverners’ match in 1963. Sobers hit 62 batting at five.  

“It’s quite a job to recall just how many people played,” he says. “My dad definitely played in the first one – and I can remember Peter May turning out.” 

May captained and scored 111 in 1964’s game, during which an unfortunate Roy Castle’s 11 overs went for an eye-watering 94. Besides the players, Borrett also fondly remembers the antics of ‘Mr Pastry’, AKA Norwich-born actor and one-time Taverners president Peter Hearne. “The crowd used to love him – he’d get on his bike and ride to do third man at either end.” 

When the day was done and the coffers counted in honour of the National Playing Fields Association, the post-match fun began in earnest. And as you might expect from a convivial host, Bill Edrich was always well to the fore. “He was absolutely brilliant,” says Borrett, who made his Norfolk debut under Edrich’s captaincy. “We were all in awe of him – you didn’t see them on TV then, you only knew about them through the papers – he’d been through the War as a squadron leader. He did well to get to bed at all if he’d played – once he’d had a few you couldn’t get rid of him! He was a lot of fun – they were such a jolly lot, the family. That third innings was something else.” 

The cricketing and cultural landscape has dramatically altered in the intervening years. These days there are no cricketing Edriches left in Norfolk, as Paul Borrett poignantly observes, but at Ingham time has stood still. “The ground’s virtually the same,” he says. “I still look after it – the pavilion’s very similar. And we’ve still got photos of those matches in the clubhouse.”  

Borrett made a special trip to the club during lockdown to send some images across. Faded they may be, but the memories remain full of colour, as Clive Radley, who was still turning out in the odd Taverners game up until last year and is now on the board at Middlesex, concurs. “A lot of it might have been engineered to suit the crowd – you could mishit it for six there, but they were great fun to play and raised money for a good cause.” Though a 75th anniversary is traditionally diamond, the nostalgia here is the purest gold.