Old Maldonians Cricket Club-1969 & 1970 Seasons

On Geoff Newman’s sad passing last year, Mike Newman has passed on two old scorebooks from the 1969 and 1970 for Old Maldonians.

Cricket in Maldon was very different from today. There were two clubs in Maldon; The Old Maldonians and Maldon Strollers. The Old Maldonians were made up of ex-pupils of the town’s grammar school, which is now the site of the Upper Plume. Both clubs played on the Prom, with each club having half of the square after Old Maldonians were made to leave the Fambridge Road site in the early 1960’s.

There was no league cricket in Maldon in 1970, meaning that clubs had to organise their own fixtures. All the games played were friendlies, with nearly all games only being won if you had to bowl the opposition out. For this reason, many games ended as draws. The fixture list comprised of matches against local teams in and around the Chelmsford, Maldon and Braintree areas. Games in this era started at 2.30pm in the afternoon to allow for wicket preparation and those members who had to work on Saturday morning. Teams that batted first generally declared on scores of between 130 and 150 before declaring, in order to leave them enough time to bowl the opposition out.

The scorebook starts with a narrow defeat by Little Baddow in the last week of July 1969, despite the best efforts of Rick Cooper (4-25) and Pete Manning (4-55). However, Old Maldonians lost by sixteen runs due to Savory’s (4-5) for Little Baddow. The following week Old Maldonians hosted Burnham and were restricted by the visitors to 133. Old Maldonians made light work of the Burnham batting, dismissing them for just 16! Rick Cooper returned figures of 5 wickets for 3 runs off 9.1 overs.

In September the club went on tour to Suffolk and Norfolk with Maldon playing at Aldborough, Eye and Sprowston. In the game at Eye, Old Maldonians amassed 58 all out in 49.4 overs; in reply Eye reached 48-8 in 33.4 overs before the game was declared a draw.

The season finished in mid-September with Derby Day against Maldon Strollers whose side contained Dave Gozzett, Brian Strudwick and Keith Bannister. The match was won by the Old Maldonians, despite Keith Bannister top scoring for the Strollers.

During the 1970 season the ball held sway over the bat, with very few games being played where the team batting first scored more than 150. One of the few exceptions to that was at Little Baddow, where Old Maldonians recovered from 8-4 to 184 all out with Terry Moss scoring 117. The next highest scorer was Colin Philpott with 24. In reply, Little Baddow chased down the target for one wicket. The only other century was scored by Nigel Patten, who made 109 not out against Rayne. Rick Cooper was the summer leading wicket taker with 41 wickets in 1970 including 5-12 against Burnham.

The final game in 1970 was again against Maldon Strollers. Old Maldonians batted first and were dismissed for 80 through Cutmore’s 5-33 and Baker’s 4-18. In reply, Maldon Strollers were dismissed for 76 despite Stabler top scoring with 33. Pete Manning taking the bowling honours with 4-17.

However, changes were beginning to happen in Maldon society. 1970 saw the merger of Maldon Grammar School and Maldon County School which was based in Mill Road to come together into the current Plume School. Soon afterwards the two cricket clubs would merge too, making the current club that we know today.