ON Wednesday July 21 1954, 21-year-old Keith Hopper, in his first season with Bishop Auckland Cricket Club, strode to the wicket at Grangefield Cricket Ground in Stockton to join his skipper, Bill Proud, at the crease against Middlesbrough in the final of the Kerridge Cup.

Bishop were 68-3 and as Keith recalled it got worse. “If I remember rightly we suffered a collapse while I was out there, but myself and Johnny Wright rescued the situation with some late runs.”

That is exactly what happened, Bishop slumped to 117-7 and then to 134-9 before Keith and Johnny Wright added 22 valuable runs for the last wicket to take the score to a respectable 156-9 in 40 overs.

Keith added, “There were some good footballers, as well as cricketers, on the field that day. Middlesbrough wing half Harry Bell opened the Middlesbrough innings with David Ellis, and if you split them before they had put on 100 you had done well.

“Another Middlesbrough footballer Lindy Delapenha opened their bowling, he was nippy and could move it about. Our own Bobby Hardisty played but he didn’t score.

That would not have worried Bob, after a bad score he would simply say ‘Well you know’.

Bishop dismissed Middlesbrough for 97 with their professional Norman Owen taking 5-28. “Norman was an off spinner but he didn’t give the ball a lot of air, he liked to fizz them through, and the wicket suited him that day,” said Keith.

After that first season with Bishop Auckland CC, ‘Young Hopper’ as Bill Proud called him, blazed a trail across the sports grounds and arenas of County Durham. If he wasn’t hitting runs, he was scoring goals, creating records, or winning trophies and representative honours.

By 1976 he had scored 7,392 runs for the 1st X1 at Bishop, only bettered at the time by Wheldon Curry with 7,874 runs and Neil Riddell with 7,583 runs.

As Wheldon died in 1958 and Neil moved to Darlington CC shortly after it’s a fair bet that no-one has scored more runs for the1st X1 at Kingsway than Keith as he played for at least another 15-20 years at 1st team level.

As far as I know he is also the only professional at Crook Town Cricket Club (1980-81) who has been the top goalscorer at Crook Town Football Club (25 goals in 1956-57). On top of that he is a member of a very elite and unique sporting club by way of representing County Durham at both football and cricket.

Keith would say that his greatest achievement was being selected for Middlesex Wanderers touring team, but in the 1961-62 season he very nearly joined another elite group of sportsmen who have played 1st X1 cricket at Kingsway and also played in an Amateur Cup final. Keith was centre forward for West Auckland against Crook Town in the FA Amateur Cup semi-final at Ayresome Park, but goals from Don Sparks and Arnold Coates for Crook shattered Keith’s Wembley dream.

At 81 years of age Keith is still devoted to Bishop Auckland Cricket Club, helping out whenever he can.

The question is “Will anybody ever again match his achievements?”