Devon Cricket Board - Olympic fever breaks out at Paignton

Olympic fever breaks out at Paignton

OLYMPIC fever has broken out at Paignton Cricket Club – even though the game hasn’t been part of the Games for more than 100 years!
For the club is hosting a re-run of the 1900 Olypmic cricket final in Paris between Great Britain and France at its Queens Park home on Sunday, August 19.
Players will dress in Victorian cricket gear and play to rules in force at the time.
The Great Britain team was the Devon County Ramblers, who played the Stadium Athletic and Albion Cricket Club at a velodrome in Paris over two days.
Devon County Ramblers were mostly public school boys from Blundell’s, with a few Somerset lads thrown in. Alf Powlesland from Newton Abbot was among the 12-man party that visited Paris for the match.
France will be represented by the current the Stadium Athletic and Albion Cricket Club, then as now largely made up of ex-pat cricket lovers living and working in France.
Two other countries were supposed to be taking part – Belgium and Holland – but they failed to turn up.
England won the original game by 158 runs with five minutes to spare – no such thing as limited-overs or Twenty20 games in those days.
One of the main movers getting the game on is cricket devotee and memorabilia collector Roger Mann from Torquay.
Mann, who played for numerous clubs including Wellswood, Narracotts, Chelston, Paignton and Galmpton during his own career, is fascinated by sport in the late Victorian era.
During the late 1970s he helped start a soccer team called the Torbay Gentlemen, who played in Victorian kit and travelled to games in an antique bus!
Mann, perhaps better known as chairman of Torbay Sports Council, isn’t a member of the Paignton club these days but is using his expertise to get the game on.
“It isn’t a re-enactment, but the chance for the French to get their revenge on the same day the original match was played,” said Mann.
“The players will dress up – boaters, blazers, that sort of thing – and play to the laws of the time, which were different to then.
“There was no front-foot law for no-balls – that didn’t come in until much later – the lbw law was different, the stumps were smaller and there was no boundary rope as the technology didn’t exist to make one long enough to go round the pitch.
“To score a six you really had to hit the ball out of the ground!
“Obviously the equipment has changed, but within reason we will be trying to recreate the atmosphere of a Victorian cricket match.”
The 1900 Olympics were a far cry from the modern event which gets under way in London tomorrow. For a start, they weren’t widely called the Olympics.
“Certainly the Devon County Ramblers would not have recognised the term Olympics,” said Mann.
“They had toured Holland in 1898 and had such a good time they decided to go to Paris two years later during the Exposition Universelle trade fair taking place at the time.
“The team left Exeter St David’s for London, where they caught the boat-train to Paris, played their game then came back.”
The 1900 Olympics were spread out over seven months during the trade fair at 16 different venues. There were no gold medals, although members of the team did get them retrospectively.
“The players were all given a memento of the trade fair – models of the Eiffel Tower,” said Mann.
“Medals didn’t come in until the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm and I understand members of the Great Britain cricket team were given some then.”
Match day at Paignton starts at 10am when gates open. The match starts at 2pm and peripheral entertainment includes pig racing, pétanque music, a dance display and, of course, the ubiquitous bouncy castle.

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