Martin Chandler |
The world of cricket, and Gloucestershire’s cricket in particular is a poorer place after the death last week of Roger Gibbons at the age of 80. The president of the county club between 2019 and 2022, Roger’s biggest heritage, I have no doubt, I do not know how to be the continuous success of Gloucestershire CCC Heritage Trust.
The trust is a charitable organization dedicated to the preservation of the history of the county and was created in 2014. There, and later when the museum and the learning center were opened at the headquarters of the county of Nevil Road in Bristol , Roger was one of the administrators.
It was for this reason that I came across Roger a few years ago, and in various email exchanges, he kept me up to date with the occasional publications of the museum. Roger himself was the author of the best of them and, although there is no complete book in my collection which bears his name, his monographs have been among the most welcome additions in recent years.
He must, I suppose, be possible and even likely that Roger had some help in the design and to get out of the booklets, but in their hearts, there was the fascinating content. In each case, the monographs have covered examples of aspects with diligence and less known to the Gloucestershire cricket, there is better by the fact that in addition to acquiring an in -depth understanding of his subjects, Roger was also an excellent words.
He started 2015 with In Memoriam, a tribute to the Gloucestershire cricket players who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in the Great War. This was reprinted in 2019 with three others. The monograph which remains my personal favorite concerned the barely credible history of a proposed tour of India by a team from Gloucestershire in 1936/37, the tour that has never been.
The other two titles of 2019 were delayed in the transit, a report of the training and the record of western England XI, a team that played during the summer in wartime of 1944 and 1945, and Relations with a dead man. This last title that I am confident would never have seen daylight if it had not been to Roger. It is the story of his discovery that, for many years, historians, archivists and statisticians of the game had poorly identified a man who made three anonymous performances for the Gloucestershire in the Victorian era.
And that was, for three years until 2022, when four other titles appeared from the Roger’s chalet industry. Regarding CB Grace was the first, a memory of the legendary WG son, Charles Butler Grace, who appeared four times in the first class match. George Pepall: The cricket player and Countryman, was, like relations with a dead man, a look at a man who occasionally played for the Gloucestershire at the turn of the 20th century who had an interesting story.
The other two titles of 2022 are fascinating overviews of social history and cricket. Holidays at Home: Gloucester Cricket Week 1943 examined vacation entertainment available for the population of Gloucestershire in wartime, and the competition of the Bristol Cricket Challenge Cup 1885-1892 rebuilt the story of something that the Victorian club game was not quite ready, cup.
In the circumstances that I had rather hoped that, three more years later, we would have seen another quartet of Roger publications but, unfortunately, his death seems to have ended this idea unless there are any titles during preparation. If there is, I sincerely hope that they are well advanced enough to allow his colleagues from the Heritage Trust to finish the projects and put them in print.
In addition to a historian Roger was also a collector, but I am told that, unlike certain cricket tragic, he was interested in much more than cricket. An accountant by profession, it was clearly, full tributes that have appeared in recent days, an excellent company and a good storytelling. I met him once, so recently last November at an event organized by Stephen Chalke at the Lansdowne Cricket Club. For me, it was an extremely pleasant event, meeting many people with whom I had never corresponded by e-mail. At one point, Roger came to me, apologized for having interrupted but said he wanted to introduce himself and said that we could probably speak later. Unfortunately, we have never done it, and now I will not do it anymore, but even in this brief meetings, he has released bonhomie, good humor and knowledge. The photograph that accompanies him to sign him some of his monographs Boundary books’ exhibition hall,, Capture that very well.
