I find it difficult to talk about Donald

Don Pert (1934 - 2006)

I find it difficult to talk about Donald’s last ten years, but the fairly obvious thing to say is that Donald had the constitution of horse and the heart of a lion and I guess that towards the end he probably wished he had neither. None of us can imagine the pain he was in, none of us can visualise the effect of all this, especially on Mary. But as you'd expect, he soldiered on to the end. That’s why it’s easier for me to talk about the first time I met him, 40 years ago this year – never seen the man before and he thrust his hand out and said, ‘My names Don Pert and I hear you play cricket.’ I may have never met Donald, but I’d read the sports pages of the local papers. He took wickets during the 50’s and early 60’s like no Challow player since, like no other player locally with the exception of Aubrey Haines maybe. Took his wickets over a season at 7 or 8 each – one year he took a stack at less than 4 each and here he was, stood in front of me just as I imagined him, a strikingly handsome man, ramrod straight, with thick wiry hair, a barrel chest and piercing eyes.

It became immediately obvious that here stood a charismatic man and like many others, I soon fell under his spell. This was how to remember him, a cultural throwback in many ways, someone who liked to sit and talk and discuss and argue, a raconteur who told his stories with wit and imagination. I think we can all imagine his frustration in his later years, the young players recently have all seen him closely watching every game. But, understandably so, none of them realised just how good Donald was as a young cricketer, or the charisma that went with the package. We can sympathise and forgive this frustration, he hated to see us lose, a situation that he never experienced much as a player.But things happened, intentionally or otherwise whenever you were in Don's company. Thirty years ago, if a game finished early, we’d play a 15or 20 over match, a beer match. Don hadn’t bowled for a few seasons by now, came off his full 30 yard run up and let a beamer go. Unintentional of course, but the light was poor, in fact walkers going around the outfield were using torches to locate their missing dogs, it was that dark. The shell shocked batsman felt the slipstream of the ball whistle past his nose and the startled man said to me, ‘Well … he’ll do anything to win.’ I thought to myself … if only you knew.

He used to berate me for losing the toss, just the same as he’s done to a succession of captains over the last 30 years, he’d say. ‘How can you – I never lost a toss.’ Not at home anyway when Donald had control of the coin, there’s a bit of an urban myth about this story, but I saw it happen once and Don would claim he did it every time. He’d toss the coin, not only did the said coin go into orbit, but Don threw it away from himself at some 45 degrees. Immediately striding after it leaving a startled opposition captain in his wake, he’d pick the offending coin up and say, ‘Heads – we’ll bat.’ We were all gentlemen back then, the captains shook hands platitudes bouncing back and forwards between them. ‘Have a good game.’ ‘Hope the weather holds.’ What struck me was the look on the opposition captain’s face, like he’d just bought some cutlery of a dodgy looking market trader. Something was wrong and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Don hadn’t been the driving force within the club for a number of years now – but he will always be our spiritual captain. Gazing down on the cricket from above. ‘Why did we pick him?’ Or more likely, ‘Oh no – not this useless pair of umpires again.’ And one thing is for sure, next season, the ears of any visiting Cherwell League official will no longer burn as fiercely as before. It’s a cliché I know, but the mould disappeared when Don was born. Full of contradictions and weaknesses like us all, Donald was a dangerous combination, no matter how outrageous the request or how far fetched some of his fantastically juicy gossip appeared, you did what he asked or believed what he had just told you. We did it because most of us fell under his spell at some time or another; you’d do anything for this confidant and likeable man. That’s the point, we liked him and very often some of us never knew exactly why.

We’ll miss him, but he lives on and not just in our memories, Mary can look at Christine and Robert and they will look at their own children and see that Don’s genes live on. And maybe in ten or twenty or thirty years another one will walk out to play for Challow. Perhaps if we all wish hard enough, the mould will be found again and used one more time. Perhaps one of Donald’s grandchildren or great grandchildren will say to a confused looking opposition captain after yet another successful toss of the coin.

‘Oh bad luck – we’ll have a bat.’

Lets hope!!

Donald in his prime - 1956&57

1956 and 57 and Donald was in his glorious pomp, best demonstrated by the table below, in consecutive seasons in total he bowled 405 overs and took one hundred and seventy six wickets, that's no mistake either ...176 wickets. He ripped through sides, marauding his way through the opposition, and at the same time going for less then 1.5 runs per over. An avenging angel, an irresistible force in a game that often became entrenched, attritional encounters. Low scoring matches where runs were a premium and slow wickets and slower outfields often meant close, fraught encounters. A bowler's game then, not the pampered batting paradises that abound now. Tough, uncompromising cricket and Challow became the best team locally
1956 - 57					and this at a time when a lot of the fixtures were played against the next
Overs	Mdns	Runs	Wkts	Avge	village. Forever reinforcing pecking orders was always Don's priority. He taught me the value of enjoying your opponents company, not before or even during the game, but in the bar afterwards and then only after
405	164	610	176	3.46
you'd won of course. His years of local encounters against men that he had to work and drink with meant playing hard, always to win and forever coming out as the top dog. Best illustrated by the game with the two games with Denchworth. In the first Challow were dismissed for 54 scored in thirty eight overs. Tea must have been the highlight for spectator and umpire alike as over after over went for just the occasional single. Don would have been exasperated, only 54 runs to defend and opposition with surnames like Hart and Terry and New and one Bill Clarke as his opposing captain. Lose? Never countenanced as Don bowled thirteen overs for seven runs and six wickets, bowling the boys from the next Parish out for 40. The following year and of course lightening struck the same place again, Challow bowled out for 32. Denchworth were then bowled out for 30 and I'm guessing Donald would have sat in the Fox at Denchworth after each of these games and enjoyed his spell in the sun. Savoured the moment with a drink and a fag, to paraphrase General Douglas MacArthur, in cricket there is no substitute for victory, Donald's philosophy in a nutshell.

The wandering years, 1965 - 1973

When Donald asked me to play cricket I was obviously flattered, the thought of easy victories and easier money for a mercenary is such an irresistible attraction. And likewise for me, winning games of cricket was equal to anything, a persuasive line of argument. What Donald never told me was the fact that Challow had lost their ground the year before. It was six or seven weekends of away games before the penny dropped and I asked Don a reasonable question, when do we have a home game? He said 1974 if your lucky. This was probably the period when Donald did more than anyone else to keep the club going, nine seasons of away games, getting home late, tired and emotional after another long Sunday night journey home with Don. Always the obligatory courtesy stops, always at pubs of course. It couldn't happen now, priorities change and away games weekend after weekend, year after year just wouldn't be sustainable. He somehow kept it going with an optimism that bemused me.

But Donald and a couple of steadfast lieutenants achieved this heroic feat. And it was nothing less than heroic, four or five good cricketers and the rest a rag bag of the old and past it, assorted schoolboys and the occasional drinking partner Donald managed to prise out of the pub for the afternoon. On the occasions when we were rained off, guess who always knew where we could get a pint? In the restricted licensing hours of the time, no matter where we were, or whatever the time was Donald, found us a pub prepared to serve. Rained off playing against Wroughton in deepest, darkest Wiltshire - Don had mastered the black art once again and found us a watering hole. We stood and waited to be served when this small, as it turned out, Irishman fell backwards off his stool and split the back of his head wide open. No one seemed to take any notice, a regular occurrence I supposed and then the landlord asked Donald what he wanted. Don looked down at the bleeding Irishman and said we'll have four pints of whatever he's drinking.

We kept going, or more likely Don kept us going, when suddenly as if by magic, as far as I was concerned anyway - we had a new ground. Not just any old ground, but a cricketing paradise and we even had our own bar - and guess who would look after it for the next thirty three years?

Answers on a postcard please.

The after hours drinking club

Thirty three years and when did the after work ritual begin? Quite early on I would guess, I remember the infamous mid-week afternoon streak. Nigel Cassidy and one Phil Blacker and Donald. An unholy trinity of a professional footballer, a professional jockey and a decorator. A Wednesday afternoons drinking, when dare was followed by counter dare and eventually one of the trio emerged from the clubhouse and proceeded to do an inebriated streak, a tortuous circuit. Consequences never intrude when alcohol is in any equation and anyway, who would have thought anything could go wrong? Well events conspired in an unlikely way in the form of the streaker's black Labrador, who drew the obvious conclusion to seeing his naked master in full flight. The dog must have thought what a good game and he bounded off after his owner. The dog cut him off at the pass as it were, tripping him up and then pining him down. Even this was no disaster in itself, but another unfortunate coincidence. The school bus from The Elms (we still had grammar schools back then) pulled up to drop a couple of pupils off. If it had been a mixed school, the consequences might not have been so awful. But nearly fifty girls aged between eleven and eighteen ended up less than a dozen yards from a naked man apparently being rogered by a large black dog. There were few witnesses to the event I'm afraid, but I did hear that a St. Trinian type mob hysteria enveloped the coach, screams from the younger ones and hoots of derision from the older ones.

Yes, I think that the afternoon institution began here and what a comfortable hour or so it became. Don opened around 4.0 - 4.30 and always got back in time for dinner - Mary had it ready and expected his appearance at the table by 5.45 at the latest. This is the thing, was Don's fear of the lovely Mary justified, or just another good story line from Donald? He played that line for as long as I knew him. Funnily enough one hit wonder John Rowles had a hit single out in the midsummer of 1968 called 'Hush not a word to Mary.' We forever sang that line to Don whenever he'd gone past his curfew time, we seemed to sing it an awful lot once we'd got our own bar. The other thing with the after work club, it took on the customs of a gentlemen's club. If the phone went and it turned out to be another customer's infuriated wife trying to locate her errant spouse, Don would always trot out his well rehearsed line, 'Hang on and I'll have a look and see if he's here.' Knowing full well the answer, but always giving the recalcitrant time to wave his hands and shake his head, drink his beer and beat a hasty retreat as Don's dulcet tones smoothed their way back down the phone, 'He left a few minutes ago.' And Don had been known to get somewhat irate if another gentleman member answered the phone and never offered Don the same courtesy. After all we were all in the same boat, sink or swim together another of Don's tenets.

And what now? I suppose, or I'd like to think it will go on, albeit without their spiritual leader. I don't know if there's any credence to Don's oft trotted line that they took more money in that couple of hours than some normal club opening nights, but if he wanted to believe that, then that's okay with the rest of us.

Don – An approximate chronology

Don was born into farming stock, his two brothers kept that tradition going while Don forged his own very individual career. Up to his neck in the Malayan jungle, defending Queen and Empire from the communist horde, if anyone ever wanted a lively debate just throw in what a waste of time Empire had been and then stand well back. He played plenty of cricket whilst in the RAF and also represented the Combined Services in the Far East. Married to Mary by now he had a few fledging career attempts before settling down into the painting and decorating business.

What should have been, for most people anyway, a pretty average – mundane even, way of making a living. Apparently not for Donald, stories about people called Stopcock Arthur and Harry the hod abounded. What was really strange and a question Donald refused to answer (to me anyway) how did a gang of painter and decorators from Challow ever get a contract in Nigeria? How bizarre is that? Months and months of work doing God knows what and more stories to regale us with when he eventually got home. Nigerian lager for instance – it took me years to realise that Donald called draught Guinness Nigerian lager.

I only ever knew him as a captain and a useful lower middle order batsman, I missed his fast bowling pomp. He was never a tactically astute captain either and that's not meant as a criticism. The point was he kept us together, kept the club together with his simple win the toss and bat first philosophy. Win the toss and win the game at almost any cost philosophy, we always won back then, or it seemed like it anyway. We all thought that with his sound knowledge of the game he'd make a half decent umpire. He lasted one game, at Brougton and North Newington, resigned from umpiring after giving a batsman out LBW on what was a hat-trick taking ball. It was plumb out - even the batsman acknowledged that, that's not why Donald decided umpiring wasn't for him. He joined in the appeal himself before giving the batsman out, that's why he called it a day after one game. Later that evening he kept saying, I couldn't help myself - he was so out.

In between watching, for half a dozen years or so, he got us involved in an over 40 competition. We managed three finals in those years and won it once. Should have been three he always said to me as he fixed me with that piercing stare. If you only knew how to toss the coin properly!

Umpiring didn't suit him and I don't believe he was really cut out to watch either. But such was his devotion to the club, a passion, a fixation, an obsession - call it what you like, but he watched. Watched every game, rarely missed home or away. A chance to talk, this was the thing with Don's generation, you talked and gossiped and even hung people out to dry occasionally. Always in an amusing way of course and he carried on and watched right up until the end.

The club president, he held virtually every office at Challow during his time, including chairman, treasurer, secretary and club captain. Don, seen by us all as Mr Challow & Childrey was a well travelled man, visiting 49 countries - some many times - and he followed the fortunes of Reading and Charlton football clubs. Although, he suffered serious health issues in his later years, he maintained his great obsession and I think it kept him going when most of us mere mortals would have thrown the towel in. A fighter until the end - he raged and raged against the dying of the light and now he's sat upstairs and even better, probably sat alongside another stalwart.

If we wait for a full moon and a windless night, If we're all very quiet and listen closely, you'll hear Don Pert and Les Carter arguing in the sky.