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Tuesday 14th August
From The Archives

40th Anniversary of Oswestry Martyrs CC

A glance around the Oswestry School Staff Room to identify practising and aspiring cricketers, a suggestion from Senior Master, David Lewis, for an appropriate name and a trawl through Old Oswestrian lists for further support and the concept of Martyrs C C was born.

The reality materialized during the summer term of 1967 in the shape of a few evening games against local opposition on the Maes-y-llan, site of the death in battle of King Oswald, Saint and Martyr.  Of those matches, no record survives, though a challenge to Oswestry C C for a Sunday fixture during the summer holidays prompted greater care and details of the match are preserved.

During the next four decades, over 150 matches have been played.  Twenty/twenty (to adopt the current terminology) matches against Frankton, Cae Glas, Knockin and Ellesmere College Common Room were regular fixtures.  The eclectic composition of the team who, individually, played for a range of different clubs precluded the possibility (or even the desirability) of the Martyrs becoming a properly constituted club with ambitions to play league cricket but matches were held in mid-week and, where opponents were prepared to delay their post-season groundwork, late into September.  In 1979 a match against Whitchurch C C took place on October 10th!  Other clubs prepared to accommodate us included Chester Crossbatters, Northop Hall, Lilleshall, Shrewsbury and Wroxeter.

For 3 years in the eighties, a mini-tour took the Martyrs to matches against Worcester Nomads C C and Wombourne C C.  Against the latter, in 1982, Martyrs conceded their highest ever total, 304-7 declared, which included a 39-ball century from the host’s No 5 batsman, whose feat was recorded in ‘Wisden’ magazine, Martyrs’ only experience of national coverage.  (Before the assault began, Ken Byers had figures of 15-2-17-3.  Convincing a deluded captain that he would surely dismiss the aggressor and with a studied reluctance on the part of others to bowl in the circumstances, he finished with 26-5-119-3!)  At 10-4 after six overs, Martyrs faced a massive embarrassment, but a closing score of 214-8 over 60 torrid overs earned an inglorious draw.  The tour was enlivened by a Bowls Championship for the players at Kidderminster, the highlight being PSJ’s achievement in losing one of his woods in the rhododendron bushes adjacent to the bowling green.

Among the many individual performances, four in particular are memorable:  Don Humphreys' 65 no in the inaugural match (anticipating his ‘annus mirabilis’ of 1968 when he became the first Oswestry player to score 1,000 runs in a season), Les Ward’s 111 against Wombourne in 1983, Andrew Leggatt’s 8-47 against Wroxeter in 1984 and an astonishing innings of 70 by a 15-year-old Mark Wilson in 1982 also against Wroxeter – all of them match-winning contributions.

In the School’s 600th anniversary year, the Martyrs are pleased and honoured to be marking its own, less conspicuous, achievement in this match against Oswestry C C whom we thank for its hospitality.

The Martyrs play Oswestry CC in a special match this weekend.

Alan Stratford