The Primary Club is a charity based in Essex, England which raises money to provide sports and recreational facilities for the visually impaired. [1] It was started in 1955 at Beckenham Cricket Club in Kent by four slightly inebriated young bachelors, depressed by their own performance with the bat. They were Mike Sheeres, Ralph Lilly, and brothers Keith Patterson & Norman Patterson. [2] They vowed to support F R Brown's Fund for Blind Cricketers. Membership was initially limited to those out first ball in matches for or against Beckenham. In its first nine years, the Club raised £45.
Membership of The Primary Club is open to anyone who has been out first ball in any form or level of cricket (a "golden duck"). [3] The joining fee includes a tie which by tradition is worn on the Saturday of a Test match. Female members optionally have a brooch. [1]
The club, whose patron is co-founder Keith Patterson's close friend Derek Underwood MBE, [4] currently has 10,000 members who have donated £1,778,673 to the Club. In 2004, The Primary Club made grants in excess of £180,000 to clubs and schools for the blind throughout the United Kingdom.
In 1973, the BBC's Test Match Special team, in particular the late Brian Johnston, started to talk about the Club on the radio and members were recruited from cricket-playing countries all over the world. [1]
In 1974, the Primary Club of Australia was founded by Australian cricket lovers. They have raised over A$5 million and donated it in the form of sporting and recreational facilities to charities which care for disabled people. The Primary Club of Australia's patron and 12th Man is Mark Taylor AO, while Jim Maxwell is the president. [5]
Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket and still holds considerable global influence.
Test Match Special is a British sports radio programme, originally, as its name implies, dealing exclusively with Test cricket matches, but currently covering any professional cricket. It broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 LW and local MW frequencies, BBC Radio Five Live Sports Extra (digital) and via the internet to the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. TMS provides ball-by-ball coverage of most Test cricket, One Day International, and Twenty20 matches and tournaments involving the England cricket team.
The sport of cricket has a known history beginning in the late 16th century. Having originated in south-east England, it became an established sport in the country in the 18th century and developed globally in the 19th and 20th centuries. International matches have been played since the 19th-century and formal Test cricket matches are considered to date from 1877. Cricket is the world's second most popular spectator sport after association football (soccer).
Old Trafford is a cricket ground in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It opened in 1857 as the home of Manchester Cricket Club and has been the home of Lancashire County Cricket Club since 1864. From 2013 onwards it has been known as Emirates Old Trafford due to a sponsorship deal with the Emirates airline.
Derek Leslie Underwood is an English former international cricketer, and a former President of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).
Matthew James Sutherland Dawson, MBE is an English retired rugby union player who played scrum half for Northampton Saints and then London Wasps. During his international career he toured with the British & Irish Lions three times and was part of England's 2003 Rugby World Cup winning side. He won 77 caps for his country in total, including nine as captain and was England's most capped scrum half until passed by Danny Care.
William Howard Frindall, was an English cricket scorer and statistician, who was familiar to cricket followers as a member of the Test Match Special commentary team on BBC radio. He was nicknamed the Bearded Wonder by Brian Johnston for his ability to research the most obscure cricketing facts in moments, while continuing to keep perfect scorecards and because he had a beard. Angus Fraser described Frindall as "the doyen of cricket scorers" in his obituary in The Independent.
Women's Test cricket is the longest format of women's cricket and is the female equivalent to men's Test cricket. Matches comprise four-innings and are held over a maximum of four days between two of the leading cricketing nations. The rules governing the format differ little from those for the men's game, with differences generally being technicalities surrounding umpiring and field size.
The Riverside Ground, known for sponsorship reasons as the Emirates Riverside until the end of 2021, is a cricket venue in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, England. It is home to Durham County Cricket Club, and has also hosted several international matches.
Blind cricket is a version of the sport of cricket adapted for blind and partially sighted players. It has been governed by the World Blind Cricket Council (WBCC) since 1996. So far, five Blind World Cups have been held: New Delhi, India (1998); Chennai, India (2002); Islamabad, Pakistan (2006), and India (2018). In 2012, the first Blind World Cup T20 was held in Bangalore, India. Blind cricket relies on common use of the 'sweep shot', in order to provide maximum chance of the bat hitting the ball.
In cricket, a duck is a batsman's dismissal with a score of zero.
James Edward Maxwell AM is a sports commentator with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation best known for covering cricket.
Christopher John Llewellyn Rogers is a former Australian cricketer who played for the Australian national team. Rogers is a left-handed opening batsman. He spent ten years playing for Western Australia, before moving to play for Victoria in 2008. He played county cricket in England for ten years representing five first-class teams: Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Middlesex and Somerset. Rogers holds the record for most half centuries in consecutive innings.
The County Ground, Beckenham is a cricket ground in Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley. The ground is owned by Leander Sports and Leisure and is used as an outground by Kent County Cricket Club for First XI fixtures, as well as for other matches. As of 2019 the Kent Women cricket team played the majority of their matches at the ground.
Shane Keith Warne is an Australian cricket commentator and former international cricketer who captained the Australian national team in One Day Internationals (ODI). Widely considered one of the greatest bowlers in cricket history, Warne was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in the 1994 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. He was the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World in 1997. He was banned from the sport in 2003 for testing positive for a prohibited substance. Following the ban, he was named Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World for the year 2004 in the 2005 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. In 2000, he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler selected in the quintet, and the only one still playing at the time. He officially retired from all formats of cricket in July 2013.
Foxgrove Road, Beckenham is a sports ground in Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley. The ground is home to Beckenham Cricket Club, a multi-sports club, and has been used as a first-class cricket venue and hosted the Kent Championships, a tennis tournament held annually in the run-up to the Wimbledon Championships. It was also the ground used for the University Hockey Match between Oxford and Cambridge universities. The ground remains in use for cricket and tennis as well as for football, netball and squash and acting as a base for road running.
Day/night cricket, also known as floodlit cricket, is a cricket match that is played either totally or partially under floodlights in the evening. The first regular cricket to be played under floodlights occurred during World Series Cricket, unsanctioned by the International Cricket Council (ICC), attracting large crowds to see some of the world's best players compete in Australia and the West Indies. In 1979, when the ICC and World Series Cricket came to an understanding, the first floodlit One Day International was played, also in Australia. Floodlit cricket has since been played around the world, although England was slow to take it up due to their climate. Floodlit first-class cricket was first played in 1994, when the concept was tried during the Sheffield Shield. Day/night cricket is now commonplace in one-day cricket and Twenty20 cricket. For instance, all 27 matches in the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 were day/night matches, as were most matches in the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players each on a field at the centre of which is a 22-yard (20-metre) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the bowler, "bowls" (propels) the ball from one end of the pitch towards the wicket at the other end, with an "over" being completed once they have legally done so six times. The batting side has one player at each end of the pitch, with the player at the opposite end of the pitch from the bowler aiming to strike the ball with a bat. The batting side scores runs either when the ball reaches the boundary of the field, or when the two batters swap ends of the pitch, which results in one run. The fielding side's aim is to prevent run-scoring and dismiss each batter. Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the bowled ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side either catching a hit ball before it touches the ground, or hitting a wicket with the ball before a batter can cross the crease line in front of the wicket to complete a run. When ten batters have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches.
The Primary Club of Australia Inc. is a registered charity founded in 1974 by a group of cricket lovers whose fundamental aim was to give those with disabilities the opportunity to engage in physical activity. A similar charity, "The Primary Club" was established over fifty years ago in England, where a "primary" is a first ball dismissal in cricket. In Australia a primary is called a "golden duck", as depicted on their logo.
The 2020 Bob Willis Trophy was a first-class cricket tournament held in the 2020 English cricket season, and the inaugural edition of the Bob Willis Trophy. It was separate from the County Championship, which was not held in 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The eighteen county cricket teams were split into three regional groups of six, with the two group winners with the most points advancing to a final held at Lord's. The maximum number of overs bowled in a day was reduced from 96 to 90, and the team's first innings could be no longer than 120 overs.
