My lifetime's journey to the Isle of Wight, from Middlesex and Lords, via Sussex and Hove.
On my 10th birthday in June 1956, my Dad took me to Lords to see Denis Compton's return to cricket after a well publicised operation on the knee that he'd damaged playing football for Arsenal. Compton and Bill Edrich were in the Middlesex XI, although I only saw them bowling and fielding. Wisden reported 17,000 in the crowd that Saturday for day 1 of a 3-day match against a Lancashire team which included Brian Statham and Cyril Washbrook
I supported and watched Middlesex until I moved to Sussex as an adult, where in 2006 I finally finished my working life as CEO of the County Club. What a privilege to have played a small part in a decade which included the Club's first ever County Championship in 2003. It had been a golden era which had been led by 1st XI Coaches Peter Moores and Mark Robinson, along with Chris Adams as Captain.
I moved to the Isle of Wight in 2008 and met Brian Gardener who had created a superb cricket ground at Newclose. Brian dreamed of seeing Hampshire return to the island to play county championship cricket, as they had done in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Sadly Brian passed away in 2015, but I couldn't let the dream die with him.
Our group of volunteers continued the mission and after a 57-year gap, county cricket returned to the Isle of Wight on 20 May 2019. With Hampshire batsmen including Ajinkya Rahane and Sam Northeast facing a strong Nottinghamshire attack led by Stuart Broad and Jake Ball, four days of cricket followed in fine weather with crowds of 2,000 each day enjoying the spectacle, and Hampshire won the match.
Writer Paul Edwards, with photographs by Dave Reynolds, described Newclose as 'Outground Heaven' in The Cricketer magazine.
Memory added on January 16, 2021
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