About the Gents of Suffolk

The Gentlemen of Suffolk Cricket Club was founded in 1921. A little leaflet was produced to define the early structure of the club, its character and its rules. ‘The colours will be light grey and black with ruby stripe and can be obtained at E.C.Devereux’s, High Street, Eton.  The entrance fee is one guinea, payable on election, but there is no annual subscription for those joining in 1921. The expenses of each match (for umpire, ground, ball etc) are to be divided and paid by the eleven who are playing’.

 

The club has been run by a President and an Hon. Secretary.

Presidents –

 

H.W. Claughton, Esq                      1921-26

Col. H.E. Hambro, CBE                   1927-52

F.S. Beauford, Esq                          1953-59

Capt. R.L.B. Cunliffe, RN                1960-75

Col. N.J. Wilson                               1976-96

T.J.W. Bridge, Esq                           1997-

 

Hon. Secretaries – 

 

Col. H.E.Hambro                            1921-26

F.S. Beauford, Esq                          1927-52

Capt. R.L.B.Cunliffe, RN                1953-59

M.D. Corke, Esq                              1960-83

T.J.W. Bridge, Esq                           1984-96

M.A.T. Rivington, Esq                     1997-02

J.W.P. Richardson, Esq                  2003-07

G. Robins, Esq                                 2008-2021

K. Lecompte, Esq                           2021-2024
T.W. Bunting, Esq                               2024-

 

There were four fixtures in the first season, all two-day games, against the Free Foresters, Authentics, Emeriti and the Gentlemen of Essex. In 1922, the Gentlemen of Norfolk and Magdalene College Ramblers were added. The 1930’s seem to have been prosperous years for Gents cricket. The Gentlemen of Suffolk went on tour for the first time in 1933, playing three two-day matches in six days in August. The first was against the Gentlemen of Worcester at Worcester, the second the Herefordshire Gentlemen in Hereford and the third the Gloucester Gipsies at Oakley Hall.

 

This pattern of tours continued each year through the thirties with only minor changes. In 1934 the Gloucester Gipsies match was played at Badminton House and the Gentlemen of Worcester fixture was replaced by one against the Wiltshire Queries, the game being played at Marlborough College. The tour in 1939 began with the match versus the Hereford Gentlemen and featured a new game against the South Oxford Amateurs at St. John’s College, Oxford on 23-24 August. Then, written at the foot of the page in the scorebook after this game, are the chilling words ‘Rest of tour abandoned – War’.

 

No matches were played during the war, but the club resumed its cricket with a two-day game against the Free Foresters on 9-10 August 1946. The tour was reinstated in 1947 and ran until 1954, by which time it had been reduced to just two matches, against the Herefordshire Gentlemen and the Gloucester Gipsies, which had featured in every tour since 1934.

 

Another wandering club, the Bury and West Suffolk Cricket Club, had been playing matches in Suffolk since 1864 and probably for a few years earlier. By the 1960’s many of the same cricketers were playing for both clubs and the decision was taken to merge the Bury and West Suffolk Cricket Club into the

Gentlemen of Suffolk Cricket Club after the 1968 season.

 

 The make-up of the fixture list began to change from the 1970’s onwards. The only two-day game was played against the Free Foresters over a weekend in August and most of the other matches were on weekdays, starting at 11.30am. We have played many matches against the Cambridge Colleges, principally St John’s, Emmanuel, Gonville & Caius, Selwyn and Queens, but sadly the last ten years has seen a decline in college cricket as the university are not taking in enough undergraduates who have played cricket at school and the colleges can no longer raise teams.

 

We have also traditionally had fixtures against the school 1st X1’s in Suffolk, particularly Culford School, Framlingham College, Woodbridge School and Ipswich School. In these days of league cricket, the chance for schoolboys to play friendly, but competitive, matches against wandering sides such as ourselves is valuable for them and leads to a number of them wanting to play Gents cricket when they leave school. The remainder of our fixture list these days consists of games against club sides in Suffolk and four other wandering sides, the Gentlemen of Essex, West Norfolk, the Stoics and the Buccaneers.

 

The Gentlemen of Suffolk Cricket Club has survived the ravages of the years, changes in society and huge changes in cricket itself, and still aims to play a good standard of cricket, on good quality wickets, in the right spirit of friendly competition.  And if a letter printed in the Daily Telegraph in 1992 may have been written with tongue firmly in cheek, it did nonetheless evoke happy memories of Gentlemen’s cricket in days gone by:

      ‘SIR - Oh for that Golden Age when a cricket team comprised eight toffs, including the vicar; a member of the  doctor or schoolmaster class keeping wicket and two burly, but silent, artisans providing the fast bowling and outfielding’.

 

If it ever did exist, that stereotype has long since disappeared, but that doesn’t mean to say that there isn’t still much fun to be had, and the Gentlemen of Suffolk Cricket Club is no more averse than it has ever been to passing the port round the pavilion table at the end of a good lunch.

  

Tim Bridge

President