2025
2024 Hampshire Cricket Heritage Annual Report – November 2025
Note from the Chair Richard Griffiths
With the season sadly over for six months, I wanted to sum up our year so far. From the outset, I would like to state again that I am extremely proud of being Chair of Hampshire Cricket Heritage. I would also like to acknowledge the fantastic work done for us by all our Officers, Volunteers and Supporters. Our aim is always to Protect and Develop the Hampshire Cricket Archive owned by Hampshire Cricket Heritage. We collect donations from our Supporters as well as buying from auctions/dealers. Such items this year have included John Arlott monographs to supplement our John Arlott Collection. Whichever way you look at it, we only have 4 or 5 monographs left to get in order to complete a very important part of our John Arlott collection. I never thought I would be saying that 2 years ago! This was down to all the efforts of all our Supporters and we had a great reaction to this appeal from our fabulous Supporters; we’re also most grateful to Glen Williams in our Archive Room for driving and curating that project.
We are always humbled by amounts raised by our famous Book Sales and we love meeting our supporters and thanking them for all they do for us. We have numerous Hampshire Handbooks/Wisdens/Hampshire books and it is great to help fellow Hampshire Crickets collectors develop their own Hampshire Cricket Collections, whilst collecting funds to purchase items for the Hampshire Cricket Archive. An item a Supporter donated to us really made me quite emotional. We were donated a range of Membership Cards with the special labels on them. The ones we already had in our collection were in the Book Sale in September. A Supporter couldn’t believe we had them on the stall and even had the one from their first season. The pleasure on their faces as they went back to their seats with it was a joy to behold. A special moment. We are also working with other County Cricket Heritage Groups and have already received items from Somerset, Sussex and Nottinghamshire. We are extremely grateful to them for all these items. Throughout 2025, we have been given many other items from numerous other families. You can read about some of these by clicking on the Archive Room / Updates or Supporters Page / Supporters Donations tabs at the top of this page. We clearly cannot feature all donations on this site, but rest assured every item is gratefully received.
A season's highlight came at the end of June when it was a real honour for HCH to host The Hampshire Former Players’ Reunion Day. Rob Pfeiffer at the club had done a fine job in gathering together a group of 30 Former Players for the event which was truly enjoyed by all. It really is fantastic to see all the heroes of your past. They say you should never meet your heroes but with Hampshire Former Players it couldn’t be further from the truth. We are always in awe of our special heroes from Hampshire Cricket. They have also helped us tremendously with many of our HCH publications which I’m sure you all enjoy. The flavour they add with their own reminisces is immeasurable. Dave Allen had recently retired as Hampshire Historian and he received the Rose and Crown from Rod Bransgrove in honour of all his efforts for Hampshire Cricket over too many years to count! The only previous winner was Tim Tremlett which shows the depth of Dave’s achievements. Trevor Jesty, on behalf of HCH, also presented Dave with various items of Hampshire cricket memorabilia from the 1949 season This was the year of Dave’s birth and included memorabilia from many Portsmouth cricket and football occasions. Well done Dave - well deserved.
In summary then a historic season for the Hampshire Women and Men on the field. Off it, there are some important thanks to record for HCH. Everyone at the club and at the ground has been immensely supportive in all our interactions throughout this summer again. The club itself has donated a number of playing kit items at the end of the season which will feature in our displays in the Archive Room, as we seek to capture and record the recent as well as the more distant past. We trust you will continue to find much of interest with new posts on this website each month over the winter.
Richard Griffiths
HCH Chair
2025 Hampshire Cricket Heritage Archive Room Report – November 2025
Note from Ray Stubbington and Glen Williams
2025 has been a very busy year in the Archive Room as the effort to digitize all our items has intensified. All Team Photographs have been scanned with just 4 years (1900, 1903, 1905,1926) missing from the last 125 years. Our Bats, Stumps and First Day Covers have all been catalogued as have the Framed and Unframed Pictures. Work on the Scorecards has come on immensely with the help of George Robson, whilst Ann and Brian Pollington ensure that the current collection is kept up to date.
The latest donation to our framed pictures collection came from our ex- head groundsman Nigel Gray and included a picture of the ground especially awarded to him for his contribution to the development of the ground when the Hilton was opened in 2015 by Catherine Zeta-Jones and which has been signed by her. We were also grateful to receive Signed Shirts donated by the Players including Tilak Verma (only the 9th Hampshire player to score a 100 on debut), the Australian super-star Ellyse Perry and this years PCA’s County Championship M V P, Kyle Abbott. We should also mention that our own Dave Allen has donated the shirt presented to him by Rod Bransgrove in recognition of his years of service to the Club.
The update to the A – Z is almost complete with 738 of the 788 players having either a photo or a signature (in most cases both) added and we are well on the way to creating a similar A – Z for the 139 Women who played for Hampshire from when the Club joined the League in 1997 to 2024. (For inclusion in the web site copy If anyone has any photos of the Teams or Players or any other information about those early years, please contact raystubbington@hotmail.com)
Ray Stubbington
It’s well known that of all the clubs with a sizeable ground we are the only one which does not have a museum. Add the fact our Archive is behind a door which needs security clearance and that means it’s not easy for us to show off our collection to Hampshire and other cricket fans in the way we would like. I’m sure under our new ownership, in due course, and with our help, they will rectify this situation and we will one day be proud of our own museum. In the meantime, we have endeavoured to convert part of the Archive so it is viewable by our HCH supporters and Hampshire members. Working in partnership with the club we conduct a number of ground tours which as a finale end up in the Archive. Due to the fragility of many of the objects on show It’s a viewing tour but I do enjoy gently throwing a signed Shane Warne ball just to see who catches it!
This year has been a great year for donations from our loyal supporters. The number of books including Handbooks and Wisdens has enabled us to run 3 very successful book sales. The sales are very rewarding. Not only do we get to fill gaps in our own supporters collections, we also raise real cash and as mentioned elsewhere in the report this has helped us to purchase some very rare John Arlott Monographs as well as many other John Arlott books. A good example is at our last book sale one of supporters donated a mint signed John Arlott book. What’s the fuss about John Arlott? Well not only, to many of a certain era was he the “Voice of Cricket” he was a
Hampshire man through and through and therefore our aim is to develop as good a collection of John Arlott books as time and funds permit.
Of course, it’s not just books we have donated to us. A Hampshire member contacted us earlier this year and asked us if we would like the original sign from the Phillip Mead stand at Northlands Road. We said yes immediately without knowing what to do with it but it now sits proudly on the wall of the Archive.
We recently received a significant donation of Hampshire items from Somerset Cricket Club. That is the beauty of cricket, no matter who we support we all work together. Thanks to Mike Unwin and his team at Somerset for thinking of us at HCH and making this happen.
The Archive is of course a living thing. Items come in, get catalogued and stored or displayed and some items come in which we are able to sell to help us purchase additional items for the collection. Our cataloguing system is robust and better than anything that has gone before but has stagnated a little and needs an extra effort to ensure that every item in the Archive is catalogued and has a photograph linking to its description…….It’s a work in progress!
Glen Williams
2025 Hampshire Cricket Heritage Treasurer's Report – November 2025
Note from David Ackland
It has been another good year financially for HCH. The generosity of our supporters in donating books for sale, making cash donations and purchasing publications means that we have built up a reasonable reserve, which would stand us in good stead should items suitable for our collection become available at auction or from dealers. In the current year, we were able to buy the Arlott monographs (mentioned above/below )(delete as applicable) at good prices as soon as they appeared on the market, because we had cash at hand.
Our supporters have helped us too by securing scorecards from away games, and by donations of items for the Archive or for sale. Conversations at the book sales and exchanges via email, or stemming from the website or Facebook, have generated further interest and donations, either for the Archive or for sale.
As always, support from Hampshire Sport and Leisure Holdings, the company owning the Utilita Bowl, has been generous and helpful. In addition to providing accommodation in the form of the Archive Room, they have also funded some of our expenses, allowed us to use the Club Shop for book sales, taken money on our behalf through the shop till for book sale donations and sales of publications, and are engaging with us in exploring options for a more cost-effective constitution for HCH. We are grateful for the support, but as much, if not more, for the helpfulness of all those with whom we deal at the Bowl.
David Ackland
2025 Hampshire Cricket Heritage Research and Writing Update – November 2025
Note from Dave Allen
2025 marks almost exactly 30 years since my first formal involvement in Hampshire’s cricket history when I was co-opted onto the Museum Sub-Committee of Hampshire County Cricket Club. Over those years I had a number of ‘titles’ including Archivist, Curator, Chairman of the (original) HCH and latterly Historian which I chose for myself since it seemed to best describe what I was doing – but I was never elected or appointed officially to that latter role.
Despite that I ‘retired’ from (describing myself in) that role at the end of the 2024 season and also from my work as a commentator on BBC. I am now one of the Directors in the ‘new’ HCH and eternally grateful to my friends and colleagues who are working so hard and to great effect in building our work.
Meanwhile, over the past year and into the future I seem to have two main roles:
1. Writing: I started the booklets series some five years ago – and I am delighted to see it flourish. I contributed one more last year, marking ten years since we won the Second Division title and I have since prepared the first draft of a long overdue tribute to our great all-rounders Kennedy & Newman. Most significantly, last summer I had the opportunity to work on a manuscript by the late Dr Tim McCann on 18th Century Hampshire Cricket and I am delighted that HCH was able to publish this in April. It has been well received to date and while somewhat ‘specialist’, it is selling steadily. Recently I have shared with the HCH ‘team’ an invitation to work with ACS on an update of the 1988 booklet on Hampshire Cricket Grounds. The project is not straightforward and somewhat prescriptive but work has started.
2. Responding to queries from Hampshire Cricket on aspects of our history, usually in the context of displays around the ground. In the past, to a large extent, HCH initiated, controlled and where appropriate funded displays in the pavilions, such as the Arthur Holt Pavilion, the Arlott Atrium, the Robin Smith Suite etc. and we collaborated with the (former?) designer on the displays of purchased memorabilia in the Shackleton Bar. In the years since ‘Lockdown’, displays have become far more the province of the office and permanent staff, so our role is almost wholly advisory or informative but we no longer take any initiatives or fund displays.
Dave Allen
2024
2024 Hampshire Cricket Heritage Annual Report – November 2024
This has been a busy and rewarding year for the small team of volunteers helping to run Hampshire Cricket Heritage, under the Chairmanship of Richard Griffiths. We have doubled the number of HCH supporters this year: we now have more than eighty people receiving our monthly email bulletin from David Ackland, our membership secretary, during the season. They have all donated to our cause in some way or another. That number now also includes a few former players, after we helped with the organisation of an extremely enjoyable Former Players Reunion Lunch at the Utilita Bowl at the end of June. Details on how to join HCH are on our new website, using this link:
https://www.hampshirecountycricketheritage.co.uk/Hampshire-Cricket-Heritage/how-to-join-hch
The driving force behind so much that is great at HCH for more years than he cares to admit, Dave Allen, has been busier than ever with his research and writing. Dave is working jointly, for example, with Ray Stubbington on updating the Hampshire Cricketers A-Z. Ray’s role has been to link a photograph of each player to Dave’s text. HCH has published three more booklets this year, which are all priced £5, and they have each sold well. Stephen Saunders’ Ordained Hampshire Cricketers was followed by John Winter’s A Glorious Week - Hampshire v Warwickshire and Hampshire v Worcestershire in August 1974. The third booklet, published in August and written by Dave Allen, celebrated the 10th Anniversary of Hampshire winning the Second Division Title and is called - Going up! Dave is currently deep in research about 18th Century Hampshire Cricket for an exciting new publication due out in 2025. For more details on all our publications and how to obtain them, use this link:
https://www.hampshirecountycricketheritage.co.uk/Hampshire-Cricket-Heritage/hch-publications
Glen Williams and Ray Stubbington have been hard at work re-organising and cataloguing many of our collections in the Archive Room in the Shane Warne Stand at the Utilita Bowl, as we seek to make the winter Hampshire Members’ Tours ever more interesting. They have also taken receipt of some wonderful Hampshire cricket related donations this year, including a screen which has some of the oldest cricket scorecards ever produced. This famous screen, which has been in the possession of the Butler family of Hambledon for seven generations is covered with the original scores of the matches of the Hambledon Club from the year 1777 down to the break-up of the Club in 1788, (when it was absorbed into the Hampshire County). Having previously been housed at Lord’s, it is now on permanent loan with HCH. To learn more, just click here:
Two Second Hand Cricket Book Sales, held in May and August - overseen by Glen and run by the whole team - at The Club Shop again proved a valuable source of income for us to be able to make some more important purchases for our growing collection. These include limited edition signed monographs about former Hampshire players, written by John Arlott.
Finally, we have been pleased with the reception for the new Hampshire Cricket Heritage Website. I have posted new material every week on a wide range of themes relating to the heritage and history of Hampshire Cricket. I have also kept a weekly diary running through the season documenting the Club’s eventual second place finish in the County Championship:
https://www.hampshirecountycricketheritage.co.uk/memories/johns-journal-of-the-2024-season
One of the new weekly features for the close season is a section entitled My Favourite Game - 75 Not out! It is a celebration of Dave Allen reaching 75 this October and the plan is for 75 current players, former players or cricket supporters to pick and write about their favourite ever Hampshire game where they were there on the ground. Andrew Murtagh and John Rice have set the ball rolling for the former players and you can read more at:
https://www.hampshirecountycricketheritage.co.uk/memories/my-favourite-game
Next year, we are already planning more publications and more ways to share our growing collection with cricket supporters via the website. Any visitor to the recently named Utilita Bowl will be able to see so many of the displays created by Dave Allen already, and it is that tradition we will also seek to build upon. Our eventual dream and stated aim, of course, is a Club Museum at the ground, but in the meantime, we will endeavour to make the existing Archive Room a better resource centre and small display space for our HCH supporters.
John Winter
HCH Website Creator and Editor