Congratulations John!

Posted by Tony Hutton

Delighted to be able to congratulate my fellow blogger John Winn on his tremendous achievement of having now seen every first class county play every other county. To complete the set of 153 possible matches has taken considerable effort, not least in this most difficult of all seasons. News soon circulates amongst the cricketing fraternity and John was able to make the news not only on the BBC live streaming, but on the Somerset facebook page where his tribute to the warm welcome at Taunton was much appreciated.

John Winn (right) returns from a pitch inspection at Riverside 2015.

He of course did set me off with a search of my own exhaustive records of cricket watching over an even longer period. I knew from the beginning there was no chance of getting anywhere near, as I had never lived in the south of England, and that there would be considerable gaps in the grid I prepared. In the end I arrived at a figure of 118 matches, including a full set for all the counties I have been a member of over the years i.e. Derbyshire, Durham, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire and Yorkshire.

Moving on it was also a delight to see that John managed a day visiting club grounds in the footsteps of both the admirable Nico Craven, who I met several times both at Cheltenham and Keswick, and myself. I visited Dumbleton as long ago as 2005 and vividly recall my visit to Sheepscombe four years later, when my late wife could not believe that I drove up the steep rough track to the ground. Like John I was inspired by the books produced by Nico Craven and thought of him only the other day while watching Gloucestershire's live streaming from the Cheltenham festival. For those of you wishing to delve deeper find my blog dated 6th July 2009. Here are just a few pictures to remind you of the grounds and the great man himself.

Dumbleton, Gloucestershire 2005.

Sheepscombe, Gloucestershire 2009.

Nico Craven (in the white jacket) with media friends at Cheltenham.