Lymington CC history.blogspot.com

As the long winter nights start to draw in and the 2023 cricket season is just a distant memory, our thoughts have turned to more important matters, such as beards. Historically beards have been the domain of tramps, pirates, Open University professors and Operation Yewtree suspects. However, Covid changed all that and now virtually every male has dabbled with growing a beard at some point or other. Even though our current Test captain Ben Stokes sports one, there seems to have been dearth of decent facial hair in English cricket over the years. Perhaps WG Grace set such a high standard that it was impossible to follow. Botham's beard famously won the Ashes in 1981, but until Moeen came along fairly recently properly hirsute cricketers have been few and far between. As far as Lymington Cricket Club is concerned we have not been blessed with the greatest selection of beards either in our long and illustrious history. The womens' section even less so. However, we have trawled ...

Norman Gannaway – a Spectator for all seasons If anyone deserved the title of a true 'Lymingtonian' it would arguably be Norman Gannaway. The Lymington Cricket Club life member and former club historian passed away shortly before Christmas at the age of 92, leaving a huge legacy with both the cricket club and the town as a whole. Norman had been born in Lymington in 1930 and, apart from a spell in the RAF and a few years living in Ringwood, spent virtually his entire life in the town. His association with the cricket club spanned more than eight decades, beginning as a scorer at the age of 11 way back in 1942. He went on to serve the club as an umpire, secretary and president. In 1982 he wrote a comprehensive history of the club and followed that up four years later with another book celebrating 150 years of cricket at the Sports Ground. Between 1985 and 2000 Norman wrote articles for the club's matchday programmes. Under the pseudonym 'Spectator' his columns were a...

  Twenty years ago today! A good quiz question might be: who were the first team to win a trophy at the Ageas Bowl? Well that honour belongs to Lymington Cricket Club.  August 1st 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of Lymington’s victory at the Ageas Bowl in the final of the Southern League evening knockout competition, the SEC Cup (formerly the Echo Trophy and nowadays better known as the T20). The cup win was significant for a number of reasons, not least the fact that it came in the first final to be played at Hampshire’s brand new West End arena following the county’s move from Northlands Road. But more than anything it marked the end of a frustrating 25 year wait for success in a competition that, despite all their big stars over the years, Lymington had fared pretty poorly in. It also exorcised the ghosts of Lymo’s previous final appearance in 1997 when the club was thrashed by 10 wickets by Havant. Lymington possessed a pretty potent First XI in 2001. A batting line up alr...

Lymington Cricket Club was founded way back in 1807, but it wasn't until the late 1980s that our players first donned what might be classed as 'proper' team shirts. Up until then, for the vast majority of cricket history, players would simply wear whatever was the fashion of the day, and it wasn't necessarily white. In the earliest years of the club, during the Georgian period, shirts were big and frilly and cricketers wore colourful stocks (ties) around their necks. On their heads they would wear powdered wigs under low top hats. By the time Lymington moved their home matches from Pennington Common to the Sports Ground in 1836 players were rather more conservatively dressed. They would take to the field in waistcoats or jackets over plain white shirts and bow ties. By the 1850s, however, the posher cricket teams would start to wear colourful shirts with spots, stripes or even cheques on a white background. Between 1880 and 1895 the coloured shirts disappeared and wh...