Ramprakash falls foul (From The Northern Echo)

Ramprakash falls foul

10:00am Tuesday 2nd August 2011 in Backtrack By Mike Amos

If not quite hell's Bell's, then all the weekend tintinnabulation from Trent Bridge rather obscured another cricketing oddity: former England man Mark Ramprakash, 41, was given out obstructing the field in Surrey's match against Gloucestershire.

It was only the 23rd time in first class cricket history, and the first in England for 48 years, that law 37 has been invoked.

In local cricket, however, umpires find just cause or impediment rather more frequently - perhaps the most infamous incident involving former Bishop Auckland wicket keeper, polliss and high-profile publican Allan Edgar.

Bishops were playing Kirkburton in the Champion of Champions Cup at Barnsley, when 18-stone Allan was struck on the foot by the ball while trying to complete a second run.

He claimed to have been unsighted. "More like unsightly," recalls the Beardless Wonder, who was scoring. "Allan wasn't the fastest, I've seen milk turn quicker."

Seven of the Echo's nine references to obstructing the field over the past 20-odd years have been in the Backtrack column, though on one occasion it was because the electricity board had stuck a pole in the middle of the delightful village green pitch at Thornton Watlass, near Bedale.

It was 1997. "The pole marked the termination of the underground work, but we didn't realise it was a cricket field," a spokesman pleaded. Fair play, they shifted it again the following week.

The most recent, earlier this season, involved Sunderland II batsman Adam Applegarth - well-remembered former chief executive of Northern Rock - prompting a reader to wonder if obstruction involved trying to a sell a pension plan to the opening bowler.

Then there was John "Kellett" Kirtley, Durham County's wicketkeeper on 84 occasions between 1899-1908. Though described as "beer swilling and belligerent" Kellett was sufficiently able to attract an invitation from the touring South Africans to go back with them.

"Only if I can gan yem every weekend," he said.

He'd been playing for Philadelphia against South Shields when the ball looped off the edge of his bat and was about to be caught by the grateful wicket keeper when Kellett ran back and flat-batted it to the boundary.

The appeal upheld, Kellett stood his ground, finally persuaded to leave by the Rev Cecil Booth, described as a "mild mannered curate", who was also his batting partner.

Finally Kellett walked. "Aa'll gan for thoo," he said but - staring at the umpire - "aa'm gannin' neewhere for that bugger."

There may have been similar tension at the North East Durham League game between North Bitchburn and East Rainton in 2002 when Bitchburn's Keith Pinkney clouted the ball into the deep.

The fielder dropped it, non-striker Ian Tennick shouted "Again" and was given out on appeal, a case of words speaking louder than actions.

East Rainton skipper Ian Kitching recalled a similar incident against Simonside the previous season. "I withdrew the appeal so long as they kept their mouths shut when the ball was in the air," he said.

Since 1988, just two other instances have appeared in the Echo - one involving Cowpen Bewley - more publicity this past week than they may have had in the previous ten years - when Neil Matthewson of Ormesby Hall was given out, obstruction, for 41. The other was Whickham v Blyth in the Tyneside Senior.

Ramprakash, rather curiously, had attempted a second run while carrying his bat straight in front of him at chest height, a bit like a 1950s kid playing Japs and English.

He was given out by umpire George Sharp, West Hartlepool lad and former Seaton Carew stumper, in consultation with colleague Nigel Llong. His response, twice showing dissent, may best be described as Kellett-esque.

Law 37 speaks of "wilfully" obstructing or distracting the opposing side by word or action. The Beardless Wonder believes amendments are imminent. "The ICC will be looking at it this winter," he says. "Especially in 20-over cricket, there's getting to be too much of it about."

Cowpen Bewley's near Billingham, mentioned these last couple of columns after reader Tim Grimshaw spotted a tiger - stuffed, perhaps happily - reclining in front of the score box.

Alan Dickinson now reports that their mascot is known universally as Tippy. "Andy Crake, our wicket keeper, found it last year at the local recycling unit," he explains.

Saturday's column also told the story of the macaw, found on the boundary by Charlie Walker, the Demon Donkey Dropper of Eryholme. It prompts Eric Gendle in Middlesbrough to recall a chap in Kirkby Stephen who has a couple of green macaws which fly freely - "quite disconcerting" - before returning home.

Charlie's has been identified as a military macaw, familiar in the forests of Mexico and South America. It is rather less common, apparently, in the Darlington and District League division C.

Shop talk, a note arrives from a Newton Aycliffe newsagent. A customer, he says, has been talking about George Bennett from Kirk Merrington riding in the Tour de France.

I misread it, fire a search engine, discover that George Bennett is, indeed, a hugely promising cyclist on the French circuit.

This one, however, is a 20-year-old New Zealander. George Bennett, retired Co Durham fireplace manufacturer, is turned 70, though himself a former world champion. He still rides with Ferryhill Wheelers.

He and the coincidental Kiwi appear not to be related.

The elder George was King of the Mountains in the 1961 Tour of Britain, runner-up in the National Road Racing championships the same year and represented Great Britain in the Tour de l'Avenir, the junior Tour de France.

Eleven years ago, after almost 40 years in retirement, he won the International Cycling Federation's top road race for over 60s.

Though George hasn't been around to talk about it, his photograph still hangs in the Cycleways shop in Newton Aycliffe where owner Colin Bell is happy to confirm that there's no connection between the two Bennetts.

"George is a brilliant guy," he says, "but I think one of him's enough."

Steve Davies, that other ageless Ferryhill Wheeler, has just become eligible for the 60-64 age group - though still just a boy of 59 - and won all five age-group disciplines in the British championships. "There wasn't really anyone to push me," he says, modestly.

Steve, Darlington's Citizen of the year, expects sterner competition in the European championships next week and at the world event in October. Like age, it'll still be hard to catch him.

IAN REID, WEMBLEY WINNER

Wembley winner Ian Reid, whose death we reported on Saturday, had been offered professional terms from Chelsea while still at Bede College in Durham and by QPR after moving south.

The first was declined, the second sidestepped. "He asked QPR for a signing on fee of £10,000, knowing he wouldn't get it," says Jean, Ian's wife.

"He preferred to be a big fish in a small pool and to see the world with Middlesex Wanderers and the England amateur side."

Being down south also meant that Ian, South Shields lad, had more chance of adding to the two caps he won with Crook - another 26 with Enfield.

"It was me that wanted to leave Shields but he knew he'd have to move south to gain proper recognition, that's what was behind it all," says Jean.

The theme's echoed by Jimmy Goodfellow, a lifelong friend since they met in the Crook Town side that went on to lift the 1964 Amateur Cup.

"The furthest the FA selectors usually came was Watford Gap," says Jim, who went on to make 500 Football League appearances. "The story was that England amateur manager Charles Hughes once watched Tow Law, got half-frozen to death and never came north again."

Jim, at 67 still scouting and playing five-a-side more than 30 years after the last of his 500 Football League appearances, also recalls happy days when the two of them and their future wives - Jean and Sylvia - would travel to games in his left-hand drive bubble car. "You can imagine the laughs we had," he says.

Previously he'd been at Bishop Auckland, very much the pin-up boy. "I used to quite jealous," says Jean. "The local girls used to leave love letters beneath the windscreen wipers and since most of them didn't even have a telephone number to ring, there wasn't much left to the imagination."

Ian excelled at all sports, a schoolboy champion at trampoline and high diving and a coveted footballer. Jean remembers a riding holiday before which neither of them had been on a horse.

"On the second day Ian was galloping and jumping fences. I was on this former police horse the size of a mountain and still scared stiff."

Jimmy Goodfellow, as passionate a Sunderland fan as his mate was passionately Newcastle, remembers an overlapping full back before the term was even invented. "Other full back would kick, tackle and thump. Ian was everywhere. I never once saw anyone get the better of him on the football field."

He kept a record of every game, a virtual journal of the 1964 FA Amateur Cup final. Jean and her son plan to publish a biography in his memory.

"It will be his legacy," says Jean. "He never talked about what he'd done, just got on with life, but he was a fabulous footballer."

She also recalls that's Ian's father Jack, usually known as Podger, also played at Wembley. Since he died when his son was two, it can't have been in an Amateur Cup final. Further information would much be welcomed.

Ian died, aged 67, after a long illness. His funeral, heavily black-and-white themed, will be at Milton Keynes on Friday.

AND FINALLY...

the first Englishman to captain a double winning football team in the twentieth century (Backtrack, July 30) was Steve Bruce, of Manchester United, in 1994. Victoria Montgomerie was again first up with the answer. Since we've been talking cricket oddities, readers are invited to identify the only England captain to have been no-balled for throwing.

Unobstructed, it's to be hoped, the column returns on Saturday.