THE Doghouse, cricket’s answer to the Kennel Club, celebrated its 50th anniversary last Friday with a dinner at the Tall Trees, near Yarm.

Geoff Cook, England man and former Doghouse denizen, was among several speakers and told a very good Kevin Pietersen story. It was the only do he’d been to, added Geoff, where there were more speakers than guests.

Those appropriately on hind legs also included the redoubtable Ken Thwaites – retired headteacher, pop group singer, all-round sportsman, greyhound trainer, racehorse owner and Methodist church organist.

He may, indeed, be the only man to have named a horse after a line in a Charles Wesley hymn – Kindle the Flame; readers will recognise it at once – and also had a dog called Reverend Firefly, though it was banned, irreverent, for fighting at Sunderland.

A Sabbath side, Doghouse CC was formed on Teesside by former Northern Echo reporter Bernard Gent, now 83, and by Dave Glendennen, whose lad was to play for Durham County. Tail between the legs, they were mostly Saturday cricketers who couldn’t get enough of the action or those who couldn’t get any at all.

Sundays were different back in 1962 – people even went to church – the tail-between-the-legs name because the women folk were said not to approve. Only two ladies were present on Friday, but didn’t seem particularly fierce.

“I’m confident of reaching 100,” said Bernard, though whether he meant himself or the club was a little uncertain. Both, it’s to be hoped.

They’re nomads, cricket ground hoppers. “Purists,” said Geoff, Durham’s director of cricket. When the Doghouse was particularly overcrowded they had about 30 games a season, had fielded about 15 Test players, organised overseas tours.

Cyril Knowles kept wicket; future England footballer Gary Pallister was loosely chained to the Doghouse, too.

Now there are only eight or nine fixtures, no foreign fields, precious few young uns.

“When we started there was hardly any Sunday cricket, now you can’t move for it,” said Mike Pinder, fixtures secretary for 28 years. “It used to be a real honour to play for the Doghouse, these days we sometimes struggle to find 11 men.”

Just back from Doncaster races – “one or two winners” – Ken Thwaites agreed. “Like Methodist chapels we’re struggling a little bit, but I’m sure things will buck up.”

He lives in Ugthorpe, near Whitby, was head of Brotton Church of England primary, had the Times Educational Supplement on one side of his desk and the Racing Post on the other. Goodness knows which was better thumbed.

Since he is a man of many interests, his speech also recalled Rod Stewart playing for £15 at the KD Club in Billingham – there are those who suppose Messrs Thwaites and Stewart to be lookalikes then as now – and Jayne Mansfield at the Marimba, in Middlesbrough, for not much more.

Chiefly they talked cricket.

Chewed over old bones. Like cricketers everywhere they already anticipate sunny skies and new season.

Life in the old Doghouse yet.

CANNILY coincidental, we also hear from Iain Garth with memories of Ken Williamson, great all-rounder and – until his death 12 years ago – the Doghouse president.

“Lovely feller. The last cricket match he ever played was for the Doghouse,” recalls club chairman David Lewis.

Ken represented Durham County at football, cricket, squash and rugby, played for Bishop Auckland in the 1951 FA Amateur Cup final, was in Crook Town’s Wembley side three years later and made 13 Football League appearances for Darlington.

He played all of his league cricket for Norton, represented the county 33 times – top score 111, Nelson, against Yorkshire II – is recalled in six-times British squash champion Jonah Barrington’s autobiography.

The British Open was the world’s top tournament. Ken, a county player, beat him.

Iain was the Northants under-19 squash champion when he arrived at Teesside Poly – “before it was posh and became a university” – in1980.

Ken was a mature student and squash coach.

“He was an elderly man by then*, bald head with sweat band on his forehead and glasses below. Troubled by arthritis, he wore athletic supports on both knees and elbows and played in basketball boots to support his ankles.

“I was no mean squash player. You can imagine what I thought when he’d watched me play and said he’d give me a game. I have to say he gave me a complete run around. Everywhere I was the ball wasn’t. He was fantastic.”

When the arthritis wasn’t playing up too much, and before they withdrew the drug Opren, he continued to be victorious.

Ken died, aged 71, in May 2000.

* Back in 1980, he’d have been a bairn of 51.

STILL with former Darlington footballers, earlier columns have been on the transatlantic trail of Peter Carr, who made 147 appearances – one goal – before helping Carlisle United’s remarkable rise from fourth division to first.

Former team mate Ian Larnach, a friend from formative days in Ferryhill Station, has kindly been card marking. “I failed miserably and Biff went on to great things,” he says by way of self-effacing summary.

Biff? “It’s what everyone called him. It was because of his Biffo the Bear ears,” he says.

Born just six weeks apart in 1951, they joined Quakers as trainees under hard nut manager Ray Yeoman.

“We were just kids, but he looked after us very well. I had a great three years,” says Ian.

A career threatening knee injury restricted him to just two first team appearances. Ian insists that he scored in both – “100 per cent record” – though the statisticians reckon that one was a 3-0 defeat.

He now runs a successful construction consultancy business based in Spennymoor. His mate – they were one another’s best man, still regularly visit – was signed for New England Tea Men by former Carlisle manager Alan Ashman, football’s best remembered chicken farmer.

Back home, he played briefly for Motherwell and for Hartlepool but then joined Washington Diplomats.

It was while in Washington that he met his wife Jamie, who became vice-president of Madison Square Garden. “The one who signed all the big cheques,” says Ian.

They bought a motel in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and though semiretired, still live there. Peter still coaches, but also drives one of America’s yellow school buses.

“He’s a real honest John, speaks his mind, but the kids love him,” says Ian. “He tells them all the stories, plays all the jokes. He has his green card. I don’t think he’ll be coming back to Ferryhill now.”