Cricketing Memories Part 4 - Rich Mintoft

Evening all, this week's look back comes from Rich , former first team captain who joined the club at the same time as me through Brian Hemstalk's junior teams. Rich has played 203 games for the club according to Play Cricket, although it will be a few more than that in reality with hopefully a few more to come. He has 5 centuries and 13 fifties for the club including a high score of 156 not out. Rich will also tell you that he used to be a rapid bowler in his day, and although that's up for debate, he certainly has a safe pair of hands with 117 catches to his name. So let's hear from him:

Earliest cricketing memory

Feel like I’ve always played cricket for as long as I can remember! I think the picture attached shows me aged 7-8 and Si aged 4-5! First CACC cricketing memory was a visit to Dronfield Junior School by Brian Hemstalk looking for players for a new junior side.

Favourite ground

Favourite ground will always be Stonelow. Favourite away ground has to be one of the tour venues because I’ve managed to score a few runs at most of them, I’ll go with Wellington.

Best teammate 

Locky. Probably the person I spent most time batting with and had the biggest influence on me with the mental side of batting and concentrating in the field.

Best opponent 

Wasn’t the best at the time of playing against them but 2 test match captains in Faf Du Plessis and Joe Root take some beating. Played rep cricket with Michael Simpson at Collegiate and he always scored bag fulls against us from about under 13s right through to the first team games. Hit the ball miles as well.

Best cricketing memory

A couple here. My first senior 50 batting with my Dad at Chesterfield Barbarians as a junior carrying my bat for 85* and my first ton batting with my brother Si at Whitley Hall were both special.

Captaining the CACC first team to promotion to the Premier league in 2011. We had a brilliant side around that time, loved every minute of it.

Worst cricketing moment 

Being rolled out for 35 on Stonelow was embarrassing. Highlight of the day was managing to get them 4 wickets down in response including Si catching one in the grill of his helmet at silly mid off and the umpire giving the batsman out!

Golden duck opening the batting away at Kexborough, bowled top of off stump trying to clip one to leg, and the golden duck on my ‘return’ a couple of seasons ago having watched us get 300 odd in the baking sunshine all afternoon.

Funniest moment 

I was fortunate enough to attend a large number of tours to Shropshire from the age of 16 and each one seemed to be better by the previous for funniest moment.

I have a couple non-tour related mooments that spring to mind however, the first was in our final junior match at u17s for CACC when I was batting near the end of the innings with Matt ‘chunky lover’ Johnson. One of us hit a 4 and as we passed at an extremely leisurely pace to return back to our creases, Matt managed to stumble over absolutely nothing and with a little squark ended up sprawled across the wicket.

The other was more of a random moment looking back rather than being particularly funny. Batting at a well known SY League ground I was out in the middle where we were on course to a 9 wicket victory. As I put my head down to prepare myself for the next ball the wicket keeper said words along the lines of “oh for gods sake not again” I looked up and saw an interesting, topless character wandering towards the wicket. The keeper then said rather more quietly “don’t say anything.”

For the next couple of minutes the whole ground stood in silence as the invader stumbled his way across the middle of the pitch, and headed towards the boundary before scaling a perimeter wall.

The umpire threw the ball back to the bowler and as play was just about to recommence I made a little enquiry to the keeper as to what had just happened to which he replied “he did same other week and someone called him a **** so he came back with a gun.”

We didn’t hang around for a drink after that one.

Thanks to Rich for the memories, I'll leave you with a few pics until we are back at the weekend.