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The Story of Hanslope Cricket Club
Part 5 - Rise & Fall in the M.K. League : 1984-1995 |
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The number of cricket clubs in Milton Keynes was growing rapidly and it was only time before a league was formed. The three town clubs, Bletchley, Stony Stratford and Wolverton, were all involved in leagues that took them many miles from home, but their third teams were natural members of any new league, together with the various village clubs who were now fast being enveloped by the new city. The league began in 1981, but Hanslope were not founder members. The club played two more years of friendlys before the Saturday fixtures inevitably began to dry up. 1982 saw a mini crisis. Derek Beazley had retired as fixture secretary the previous year and his successor, John Barrett, had an awful time trying to get two games each weekend. There was no trouble for Sundays, but on Saturdays many of the old opponents had joined the new league.
1983 was a little better, but the following year the club took the inevitable step and joined the Milton Keynes league. By now it had been going a few years and entry had to be into the lowest of three divisions. The aspiring clubs of the new city were already in the self styled Premier division; some had even changed their names to match their new status. It wasn’t even normal promotion and relegation, as any club winning Division 1 had to apply for election to this Premier division. Any team finishing bottom of the Premier division also had to apply for re-election. Already there were whisperings of ’closed shop’ around the clubs. Anyway, it was Division 2 for Hanslope, so all that could wait. Most of the teams at this level were of a lesser standard, and several easy wins followed, but the league title wasn’t to be. Milton Keynes Village, one of the strongest village teams, had joined the same year and they won the division, with Hanslope as runners up. A club’s long term success is wholly dependant on its members, particularly its officers. If you look at the lists of officers at the back of this booklet, it isn’t difficult to see where Hanslope CC’s long term durability comes from. In 60 years there have been only a handful of people filling each post – seven secretaries, six fixture secretaries and only five treasurers. It is from this unheralded consistency that the long term success of the club develops, just as much as it does from the more visible jobs of captain and chairman. When you consider that the club has had only ten playing captains and seven chairmen in the same time, then an overall pattern of stability is seen. The time of Hanslope CC’s entry into the MK league happened to coincide with other major changes in the club’s officer corps. After almost 30 years in the post, and well into his fifties, Bob Baird had every reason to feel it was time to retire from the captaincy. However he was now one of the very few playing members with any experience of league cricket. His last season as captain was the club’s first in the new league, and he unerringly steered the team to promotion. It’s quite a record to captain a team to promotion in its first season in a league, and to do it twice, with twenty years between the two, is quite exceptional. Certainly it was a case of going out on a high. But not quite. One more season as captain, in Division 1, in 1985, and then he hung up his spikes for the last time. Barry Stimson’s long reign as secretary and fixture secretary had come to an end a few year’s before and, with Fred Brown having vacated the chairman’s post in 1983, it left only Ted Ansell of the generation that had seen the club through the successful sixties. Ted’s steady hand on the club’s purse string remained in place for another seven years until Ken Reynolds took over in 1993.
So now we have a club with a team in division 1 on Saturdays, a full Sunday fixture list, a youth team competing in the local youth league and cup and friendly games in mid-week. That is some load for a village club’s new officials, and you might think it might have bitten off more than it could chew. It hadn‘t, and much of the credit must go to the forethought of having developed a youth team several years earlier. New young players were now coming through to the senior teams, to join with (not so) old hands like Trevor McLean and John Barrett. Here were two village lads who’d seen, and then occasionally played with, the team back in the County league days. Now they were the experienced ones. Already Trevor was well established as a bowler who was totally dependable, and very difficult to score off. In his younger days the more mercurial John had been pretty quick, but now he slowed down. His bowling was more variable than Trevor’s but, at its best it was lethal. When he had his eye in he could also destroy opposing bowlers with lusty blows a-plenty. The MK league had a format unlike the 40 overs each that we are familiar with today. The matches were nominally 88 overs, and if the team batting first didn’t use up its maximum of 44, then the opponents got them too. All three results were possible, but if you batted second, and hung on for a draw, you had to get pretty close to the first team’s total to get many points out of it. There was no limit on the number of overs per bowler; several clubs took advantage of this and would have one top bowler who could plug away at one end all afternoon. For Bow Brickhill the formidable Bob Carder was a prime example of this tactic. The subtleties were not evident in Division 2, as most opponents had no more idea than Hanslope, but now things changed. Many of the teams in Division 1 were pretty streetwise, and a mid-table position was all that was achieved in 1985.
John Barrett took over as captain for the 1986 season, and with a solid bowling attack of Trevor McLean and himself, together with young bucks Alan Brown (nephew of Fred) and Paul Meachem, it was rare for the club to be facing a really big score. Batting was less predictable, but it was bolstered by the arrival of David Spinelli, former long-term captain of the now defunct Castlethorpe club, who now lived in Long Street. Despite some improved performances, the club wasn’t able to secure promotion again, so it was full steam ahead for 1987.
For 1987 Dave Spinelli was persuaded to take the post of captain, with John Barrett continuing as fixture secretary, a post he had held for four years already. After two frustrating years trying to make the final leap into the rarefied atmosphere of the Premier division, it all fell into place. An outstanding season, helped by some strong new players introduced by the new captain, led to the club’s first trophy for many years. Would the new Division 1 champions sweep all before them again, as they marched on to face the self-styled big boys in 1988?
It wasn’t to be; the roaring boys of Division 1 became the whipping boys of the Premier Division. Bottom of the table and relegation was all that 1988 would bring, as far as league cricket was concerned anyway. It was a difficult year as several of the previous season’s top players, including the captain, had either retired or moved on to pastures new. Trevor McLean had taken over the captaincy, but the team was ill-equipped for such heady heights. Despite some sterling performances from Trevor himself, Alan Brown and Paul Meachem, the club’s batting proved far too fragile at this level. At least the Sunday side was still going strong, and there was a whole pack of useful young cubs cutting their teeth in the youth league and forcing their way into the weekend sides.
The single-wicket competition was a hotly contested affair which has somehow disappeared from the fixture list. Although one of the regular league stars often won it, there were often major upsets that became legendary as the years faded. One typical such deflation of reputation was when Alan Brown, fresh from centuries and big scores in the league, was dismissed second ball by sometime umpire John Hellings, when needing only to score a single to win their first round match. Tragically the untimely death of James Owen, not long after this photo was taken, led to the club introducing a new annual award in memory of this promising young cricketer. Again the strength in depth of the club’s officers kept it on an even keel. Trevor McLean also took on the post of fixture secretary, and mention must be made of chairman Archie Sains. Archie had been a club member for several years when he took on the chairmanship in 1984. Though never claiming to be a superstar, he had become a regular lower order Sunday smiter whose occasional (very) slow stuff could sometimes winkle out the most obstinate bats. As chairman, Archie was a major figure in seeing the club through what was to be a period of protracted transition. The giddy heights of the Premier division weren’t to be seen again, but the club now had some good younger players coming through. Robin Coles had been a regular wicket keeper throughout the seventies and early eighties and now, together with other senior members and parents, he became involved with the youth team. It was always a struggle playing against youth teams from much larger clubs, and one or two victories a season was as much as was ever achieved competitively. Playing against Bletchley Town, Buckingham Town and Wolverton Town, not to mention Stony Stratford and Olney, was always a struggle, but the results were to be seen in the progression of younger players moving into the weekend sides to fill the places of those who had retired or left the village.
Jon Funnell had already joined a few of the earlier generation of youth players in the senior teams, and, as first Alan Brown and later Paul Meachem moved on, he was joined by Ross Coles, son of Robin, as the Coles dynasty continued to feed the club with good players. Trevor McLean continued as captain and fixture secretary until 1990, when he passed on the captaincy to Paul Meachem. The Saturday team had been relegated again at the end of the 1990 season and some of the fixtures in the lower division were beginning to rankle with members who remembered games in the past in villages similar to Hanslope. There seemed to be fewer than ever in the Milton Keynes league. It now seemed to have polarised into strong aspiring clubs in the higher two divisions and various works sides, 3rd XIs, and park teams in the lower divisions. Very few of the teams could be described as village teams any more. The fixture list below shows the change in the type of Saturday fixtures.
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