HE has operated in many of the world’s trouble spots, was appointed OBE in 1998 for leading aid relief among starving children in war-torn Bosnia, was the only overseas worker initially allowed into Burma after the cyclone.

Still globe trotting, 73-year old former Co Durham police officer Gordon Bacon now finds himself in rather calmer waters – he’s a tour manager for the current one-day international series in the West Indies.

“You can imagine the reaction of friends and family. My middle name is Lucky,” says Gordon.

“The hardest part of this job is getting them to bed at a reasonable hour so that they can be bright and sparkling next morning and not getting too much sucked into the revelry yourself.”

He was also hoping to meet Sir Garfield Sobers on the trip – and for a good reason to which we shall return.

Always a cricket enthusiast, Gordon played for Bishop Auckland, Langley Park and Lanchester before his career was ended by a collision on the boundary at Chester-le-Street after two fielders went for the same ball. “Basically the medics had to rearrange my face,” he says.

A police inspector in Newton Aycliffe, he also spent seven years working with the anti-corruption squad in Hong Kong – which is where he met the great Sobers, who once smote six sixes in an over.

Shortly afterwards, playing for Hong Kong against Kowloon, he himself hit a maximum 36. “Something must have rubbed off. I’d love to tell him about it,” he says.

In Bosnia he’d been sustained by English beer – “I don’t know who invented the widget but if she’s a woman I want to marry her” he once, memorably, told the column – in Burma he expected to stay for three weeks and was there 18 months.

“The emergency relief team got to Bangkok airport and I was literally the only person in the world with a visa. They were frightened we were trying to overthrow the regime.”

Tsunami relief followed in Sri Lanka before finally he returned home to Ushaw Moor, near Durham. “I was bored stiff,” he admits.

He got a tour manager’s job with York-based Great Railway Journeys and had already led a cricket tour to South Africa before this fortnight’s fiesta.

“I’ve been to a lot of places all over the world but never to the Caribbean, so this is just a joy – cricket, sunshine, cold beer, good friends and paid for it.”

We’ve also spoken to one of the tour party, a former police colleague. “If ever a man deserves a job like this,” he says, “it has to be Gordon Bacon.”

THOSE rather more remotely following the second ODI may have been surprised to read the scorecard in Monday’s paper, seemingly and somewhat inexplicably adding to the ten one-day internationals – the last in 2010 – played by former Durham wicketkeeper/batsman Phil Mustard, who starts this season with Gloucestershire. Hot stuff puns earnestly eschewed, others believe the batsman to have been Jason Roy.

THE death last week of former Yorkshire and England opener John Hampshire stirred memories for Chris West of a great batsman and a lovely guy.

These days Chris is chairman of the Yorkshire Cricket Board and president of the NYSD. In the 1960s he was a Stokesley schoolboy, Hampshire and his team mates distant deities.

Most years, however, the likes of Hampshire, Close and Trueman would pitch up for a championship match at Acklam Park, Middlesbrough.

“They’d finish a day’s play then depart for what might now be described as a T20 game against a local club; certainly the ball flew to all parts of the ground.

“They made a couple of trips to Stokesley, leaving most star-struck and married to the game of cricket for life.”

Hampshire also attended Stokesley’s presentation evening in 1982, reminiscing about his test bow, against the West Indies in 1969 – his 107 the first century by an English debutant at Lord’s.

“God it was awful, I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” Hampshire had on another occasion self-effacingly recalled. “I played and missed all the time, it was a bloody nightmare.”

Early this century, Stokesley invited him to another presentation evening, agreeing a small fee – “barely enough to cover his travelling expenses.” On the night he waived it, urging the club to put it towards junior development instead.

He and Chris West last met at a Yorkshire match last year. Though clearly unwell, Hampshire – by then county president – clearly remembered his two trips to Stokesley. “He was as gracious and as humble as ever, a fitting figurehead for a great county.”