Seventy Five Years of the SOA

David Money & Tony Lurcock

(Available from admin@soacc.co.uk £6.50)

One of the small joys of English cricket is that enthusiasts not only play and love the game, but have such a regard for their club that they take the time and trouble to put it into book form. So it is with the South Oxfordshire Amateurs, long-time midweek opponents of The Cricket Society XI, a fixture that has sadly fallen away due to the increasingly difficulty of getting teams out in midweek. One other link can be found with the 1999 President of the club who was the Society’s XI’s own Andrew Moss, not just an elegant batsman but an admirably whole-hearted and unselfish cricketer.

This whimsical little book is a nice memory of a sociable side who play a high grade of cricket. Profusely illustrated with selected match report extracts, this is not a dry history but an embodiment of a living club. I did like the tale of the pre-war player on an SOA tour who ran up a wine bill of £30 in two days, this at a time when vintage port was six shillings (30 pence) a bottle. You feel the original Hambledon men at The Bat And Ball would have approved. Also in the match against Keble College in 1984, “Gorton’s vociferous appeal for a catch was turned down but secured a decision on the St. Edwards’s ground next door”.

Good fun and I am relieved personally to see that the legend of St John’s College that featured the reviewers finest hour (not) has escaped the authors.

Reproduced by kind permission of The Cricket Society,

PO Box 6024, Leighton Buzzard, LU7 2ZS. http://www.cricketsociety.com/