Association of Cricket Officials Issue 29 | Page 17

ACO’S Jules Farnham Takes Centre Stage I was a little taken aback when I received the email from The Cricketer magazine to say that I had been nominated for the work I do around cricket. Mike Sutliff (Dinton CC) had kindly put me forward, as I had run some scoring courses at his club and through that he became aware of the other work I had done to get more scorers into the game, both in the UK and overseas. Reading through the biographies of the other people who had been nominated, it made me appreciate the fantastic people involved in the game; people who volunteer their time to help it grow. It was pretty humbling to then find out I had won the award, and then I got pretty excited as I would be following in the footsteps of my hero Kumar Sangakarra to be ringing the bell at Lord’s! It did allow for reflection on what I have learnt through being involved in the game. Although you would think as a scorer tutor you are there to educate others, I always come away learning something from every course I run. The scoring course that stands out for me is the first scoring course I ran on behalf of the charity, Cricket Without Boundaries, which uses cricket as a way to deliver social and health development messages to young people across the world. The course was held at the Kicukiro College of Technology, Kigali, Rwanda; 18 years beforehand it was the site of one of the most horrific massacres during the genocide, where over 2000 people lost their lives. I remember seeing the evidence of what had happened, with bullet holes in the walls and in the football goalposts at the college, as I walked to the classroom to set-up for the course. Yet with the events that had gone on since to build peace and positive relations, I had 15 young Rwandans from all backgrounds, who had volunteered their Saturday morning to learn how to score a game of cricket. Just shows how cricket can be used as one of many ways to bring people together. I have also been taught the Cameroonian/Maasai box-scoring method (both parties are laying claim to its invention – I am not getting involved), marking wickets, runs and overs in the ground using a stick, as there is not always access to pens and paper – it’s proof that you can pretty much play, umpire and now score a game of cricket anywhere! As officials of the game of cricket (I’m assuming this, as you are reading the ECB ACO magazine) we all share the prize of being involved in the wonderful game of cricket and what it brings us both on and off the field. A big part of that is everyone can engage with cricket, and when something is so accessible that a variety of people can be involved and share their experiences of the game and beyond, you inevitably learn more. Jules Farnham In the Slips Many thanks to Christopher Coxhead, who pointed out that the first LBW victim (Harry Jupp) was from 1877, not 1876. He has done extensive research on this tour and hopes to write a factual account about this first all-professional team to tour Australia. We read with interest your article about the 10,000th LBW victim, and the first. We would like to apologise for misprinting the title of Les Clemenson’s tales of umpiring the VI World Cup in India, meaning that his first paragraph did not make sense. email us at [email protected] contact us on 0121 446 2710 17