Waltham Cricket Club Formed 25 Years Ago

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28766, 11 December 1958, Page 15

Waltham Cricket Club Formed 25 Years Ago

rpHROUGH the enthusiasm for Sunday cricket of two brothers, Messrs Cyril and Frank Seiwood, the Waltham Cricket Club will this season celebrate its twenty-: fifth jubilee. These two men in 1933 gathered together a team of cricketers from the Waltham district to play in Sunday games, under the name of the Waltham Friendly Cricket Club. So successful was the venture that the: next season the name was changed and the club entered a third grade C team in the Christchurch Suburban Cricket Association’s competitions. In the intervening years, the club has met with mixed success. In that first season the one team won more games than it lost, mainly because of some excellent bowling by B. Clarke, who, at the end of the season, had taken more than 100 wickets at an average of five runs each. Early that season the club's committee decided to invite the most promising cricketers from the Waltham school to play for the club with-

out subscription, and this action paid dividends: Among those who came to the club from the school were F. p. Anderson, who has played for the club ever since and has represented Suburban more than 20 times; W. Newfield, who is still playing senior cricket for the dub and the only club member to have scored a double Century; C. Carson and A. G. Duckmanton, both Plunket Shield players, and Ray Cooke. Unfortunately for the club the scheme fell through, for once the boys entered secondary school they were required for their school teams. Five Teams Club membership grew apace in the next five seasons, allowing five teams to be entered in the 1937-38 season and in 1940-41 the club entered its first senior A team. With all the other clubs, cricket suffered during the Second World War but for the 1945-46 season, with the men returning from overseas, the club was once again able to field five teams and the next year six. It was in the 1946-47 season that Waltham shared the senior A championship with Beckenham for the first time. Much of its success was due to the batting form of G. Gearry, now a wellknown Canterbury Plunket Shield player, who made several centuries, including one of 187. The club’s next season was notable for the fine bowling of H. McClure, who took five wickets with consecutive balls in one game, and for the inauguration of a boys’ team, of which two of Canterbury’s finest young cricketers of today—J. W. D’Arcy and B. A. Bolton—were members. The 1953-54 season saw the start of the club’s most successful period. That season it won the senior A competition for the first time outright and it repeated this record in the next three seasons. Last season, however, poor batting kept the team well down on the ladder, but the club has high hopes that in this, the jubilee year, it will again win the senior A competition.