Life of Brian is rewarded

Such things are usually given to long-serving and often highly-paid players.

Brian, a man to whom there’s no such thing as a non-vital statistic, supposes that only once before – when Lancashire’s Mac Taylor had a benefit in 1965 – has a scorer been the recipient.

Mr Taylor made £1,100.

Brian, than whom none on earth is more deserving, is likely to find 2009 rather more lucrative.

The score on Brian Hunt, formerly a county council joiner from Bishop Auckland, is that he has worked for Durham for 33 seasons, has never missed a ball in firstclass cricket except when on England duty and spends endless additional hours researching potted biographies of all 2,000 or so players – firsts and seconds, colts and “Gentlemen” – to have appeared beneath the county’s aegis.

Still he spends at least one long day a week entombed in the county archive office, still haunts the public libraries.

He has scored in every Championship and every minor county, seen Lara hit his 501, Gibson take his ten wickets, Durham win the Friends Provident Cup and – ultimately, unforgettably – the County Championship itself.

He may indeed have been the only person on the team bus returning from that glorious Saturday in Kent not to have had a drop or two to mark the occasion.

“I didn’t need alcohol, I was absolutely full without it,” he recalls. “Who would have thought that all these things could have happened to a lad like me.”

For much of those 33 years he has also been a good friend of the Backtrack column, known hereabouts as the Beardless (formerly Bearded) Wonder.

A formidable memory man, except when trying to recall the date of his marriage – “1973 or 1974” – he is as meticulous and as dedicated as a worker ant, and every bit as humble.

“He has become probably the best scorer in English cricket, a man everybody looks up to,” says Tom Moffatt, chairman of the testimonial committee.

“No-one knows the time and money that Brian devotes to the job away from the actual games. His legacy to Durham County Cricket Club will be absolutely phenomenal.”

Players are known equally to be appreciative of his expertise and endeavours, though I T Botham’s nickname for him couldn’t possibly be repeated – and much less explained – hereabouts.

Brian, or whatever it is Sir Ian calls him, has also become known for his calmness under pressure, though it deserted him after a day’s play at Worcester.

“Let’s just say it was at the time when I took a drink. I went back to the hotel, crashed out on the bed and woke up surrounded by men’s and women’s clothing that wasn’t mine.

“I dashed out into the corridor to put my clothes back on, then realised it wasn’t just the wrong room but the wrong hotel – the one we’d stayed in two weeks earlier.”

There was also the occasion when, after a Durham game in Harare, he was approached by a very large and very persistent lady of the Zimbabwean night. After heading headlong for the hotel, he found himself stuck for 50 minutes in the lift.

“There was no air conditioning and I was already a bit panicky fleeing from this woman. Hansie Cronje eventually broke his bat to force the door open. I always said I had some good friends in cricket.”

HE WAS born in 1947 in Eldon Lane, near Bishop Auckland, famously won the Eldon Lane Co-operative Society bonny baby competition – his claim to be a Duke of Edinburgh lookalike may be viewed as something akin to high treason, however – and also wrote and researched the Northern Football League’s centenary and millennium histories.

After the first, the league gave Brian and his wife Ann (circa 1973) a package holiday that included two Test matches in the West Indies. It was at Kingston, Jamaica, that the usually super-efficient Brian realised he’d left his tickets at the hotel.

All he had in his wallet was his Northern League “all grounds” pass. “Ah,” said the gateman – it may have been a Whicker gate – “that’ll do nicely.”

Though a lifelong cricket enthusiast, he supposed he had neither the eyesight nor the physical attributes to be a good player, nor the inclination to be an umpire.

Shortly after their wedding, whenever it was, he’d taken Ann to her first cricket match – Durham v Northumberland at Chesterle- Street – and was scoring for his own enjoyment when Bishop Auckland captain Neil Riddell approached.

“I think he must have been looking over my shoulder,”

recalls Brian. “He complimented me on my neatness and good writing and asked if I’d like to score a couple of games for Bishop.”

Two or three years later – “hot day, June” – he made his debut for Durham, a friendly against Scotland at Stenhousmuir. The ground’s called The Tryst – “pronounced Troyst,” he says, lest anyone misrecord it.

“Being asked to score for the county came totally out of the blue, probably I just thought I was good enough,”

says Brian, who at first shared the part-time job with schoolteacher Alan Reed while continuing to work as a joiner.

Durham’s elevation to the County Championship in 1992 changed everything.

“I’d a lot of trepidation but everyone was very good to me.

“The last few years in Minor Counties hadn’t been particularly enjoyable anyway because Durham were so good that no-one would give us a game. They just came looking for a draw, it made for some very boring cricket.”

The opening game as a first-class county was against Oxford University at The Parks, the opening ball – forever to be remembered – bowled by Michael Jeh (“a Sri Lankan Australian”) to Paul Parker.

“I think Paul just dead batted the first one,” he says – and you’d stake your pension on it being true – “then hit the second for four.”

The year after that inaugural summer, county cricket scoring was computerised – not least for the benefit of rolling news services. “I’d never touched a computer button in my life, I was a joiner, but I had to learn,” he recalls.

Some of the scorers, many quite elderly, couldn’t do the program and retired. Some counties still have both a scorer and a computer operator.

Belt and braces, Brian keeps a pen and paper record of every ball – “you have to, in case the computer crashes” – but has no less mastered technology.

The only problem’s Twenty20. “We’re always at least three balls behind on the computer. It’s just 75 minutes of bedlam, eyes down and concentrate, the only time I won’t let anyone in to where I’m working.”

Identification can also be difficult. “At some of the bigger grounds the players are just tiny figures. You learn to recognise the way they walk, or the way they carry themselves, but I’ve still had a few wrong people taking catches.”

Much is being planned for his testimonial year, an occasion upon which he can count on the fullest support from Backtrack. “The chief executive rang me about it about ten days after we’d won the championship,” he says.

“I remember telling him that I was overwhelmed and I still am. If someone had told me I’d score just one County Championship game I’d never have believed them – a lad like me, Eldon Lane lad. I’m still simply overwhelmed.”

■ Donations may be sent to the Brian Hunt Testimonial Fund, 11 Windermere Avenue, Chester-le-Street, Co Durham DH2 3DU. Cheques made payable to the Brian Hunt Testimonial Fund.

Can anyone fill in the gaps?

THOUGH passing the testimonial, Brian Hunt still daily searches for information on past players. He’d much welcome dates of birth or death – or in some cases, whereabouts – of five more who represented either “Colts” or “Durham XI” sides.

Keith Foster. A Colts fast bowler in 1962, believed to be from the Darlington area and to have played for Darlington Rolling Mills.

George Charlton. A Darlington RA batsman of the 1930s who also appeared in Shildon’s successful football team of the time. Brian would particularly welcome date and place of death.

Ivan Aspey. Left arm fastmedium bowler who played in 1956. Played for Mainsforth, Durham City, Blackhall and Sacriston and came from Ferryhill Station.

George M Hutchinson.

Played in 1938, a batsman with Billingham Synthonia and Blackhall.

R Allen. Played club cricket for Billingham Synthonia and for one of the Durham sides in 1936.

The Beardless Wonder is on 01388 661783.

Marske hit seven to lay team of round bogey

CURSE and tell, the websites have been awash with theories that this year’s FA Vase “team of the round” award is jinxed.

Every team to win it has fallen at the next hurdle, including Guisborough Town – beaten 10-1 by skilltraining Northern League colleagues Ryton.

Both fog and curse lifted at Marske on Wednesday evening, however, when the Northern League second division side – national winners in the previous round for their victory at Consett – murdered highflying Pickering Town 7-0 on a paddy field of a pitch.

The game was missed, however, by United chairman Billy Park, who had to be at the works Christmas party but made it back to the postmatch, post-diluvian pub.

Its being Christmas, and its being the Northern League, his first gesture was to stand a round for the unlucky-forsome opposition.

LAST Friday’s note on the new book of 100 years of Hartlepool United players reminded the redoubtable Ron Hails of the man reckoned the oldest survivor.

Jackie Price was a Shotton lad, on the books of Portsmouth and Wolves before returning to the North-East coast.

Though he saw wartime service as a Commando, he remains the only man to appear in league games for Hartlepool before, during and after the war – and it’s a post-war match which Hails of Hartlepool particularly remembers.

Pools entertained Rochdale, first game of 1948- 49. Kicking off towards the Town End, Fred Richardson tapped the ball to Price, who passed a long ball to winger Laurie Nevins. Nevins crossed from near the corner flag for Jackie gleefully to volley home – the fastest goal of the season.

Fred Richardson’s a bit bairn of 83 and still in Coxhoe. Jackie Price is 90, lives in Horden, until recently could be seen getting on his bike for a daily dander down the bookie’s. “Dunno about his bike,” reports his neighbour Fred Rippon, “but he was in the bookie’s only yesterday.”

Colin Foster’s book reckons the goal was 12 seconds, Ron Hails puts it at ten – “and I can still see it like it was yesterday.”

TUESDAY’S column reckoned that former Sunderland player Phil Gray was nicknamed Tippy because he drank so much tea. Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland offers a simpler explanation – “It’s because his initials were PG.”

THE Northern League magazine, bless it, carries a note for all those with misty-eyed memories of Christmas Day derbies – Bishops v Shildon, Spennymoor v Ferryhill – roads said to be black with folk making their way to the match.

On Christmas Day 1929, the magazine notes, the league in its seasonal wisdom sent Whitby United carolling to Cockfield for a 2pm kick-off.

Even more playing the silly humbugger, on Christmas Day 1951 they sent Heaton Stannington – then the only club north of the Tyne – on the epic journey to Whitby Town.

Less festive yet, the Christmas visitors not only left empty-handed but with an 8-1 thrashing, three of them scored by the perhaps inappropriately named Dennis Merryweather.

And in 1951, they couldn’t even blame the computer.

SPEAKING of Shildon, which almost we were, talk at the dominoes on Monday night turned to the club’s luck, or lack of it, in the FA Vase. Should they win at Spennymoor Town in the delayed tie, the fourth round game at Coalville will be the 11th successive away draw – odds, the B-team boffins reckon, of 2,047-1. If the boys reach Wembley, they’ll certainly have done it the cobbled way.

HOSTED by former Tyne Tees Television head of sport Roger Tames, a nostalgic and ticket-only do at Crook Town FC tomorrow night will launch Michael Manuel’s DVD and CD “Our Town, Our Football Club.”

A medley of memories of the club and other aspects of Crook history, it’s clearly going to be a great Christmas present for Crook folk past and present.

If the snow stays off, the column will be there, too.

Fuller details on Tuesday.

AND FINALLY

THE only county in which three different venues have hosted the British Open golf championship (Backtrack, December 9) is Ayrshire – Royal Troon, Turnberry and Prestwick. Alan Macnab in Sedgefield was first up with that one, but since he’s an Ayrshire bairn may be considered to have had an advantage.

An easy one for Christmas, Terry Wells invites readers to name the only club of the English 92 whose name begins with five consonants.

Consonant endeavour, the column returns on Tuesday.