Summer Sports - Cricket
Apprentice Ben Stapleton-Denyer marking out, in front of the impressive clubhouse and groundsmens store, with the new Autoroller apparently watching on!
even senior players like Ryan Giggs, don’t remember a time before him. Yet, at the drop of a hat, it’s all change and the club prepares for a new era without the fiery Scot at the helm. Certain organisations are so entwined with a particular figure that it’s hard to imagine life without them. The age-long influence of powerful, devoted individuals within professional sport seems on the wane as managers are no longer allowed the bedding-in time once afforded men like Ferguson.
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At amateur level, this is thankfully not yet the case and many small outfits continue to be kept afloat by the goodwill and generosity of committed members. A quarter of a century seems for ever in sport but, for one Sussex cricket club, twenty-five years is a second in time compared to the life-long devotion of its founding member, who, even in death, leaves a lasting legacy that has ensured the financial security of the club for generations to come. Some of the most impressive views of the South Downs can be enjoyed from Brighton & Hove’s highest point, Devils Dyke, which also offers a picture postcard scene of one of Sussex’s loveliest, and now wealthiest, cricket clubs - Preston
he football world shook in May with the abrupt departure of Sir Alex Ferguson after twenty-six years in charge of Manchester United. Many younger fans, and
Nomads, with its first and third concentrically ringed grounds lying either side of a magnificent flint and brick pavilion, shed and outbuildings. This once unassuming club, tucked away beyond the quaint village of Fulking, nestling at the foot of the Downs characteristic rolling hills, enjoys facilities and a level of professionalism that most amateur clubs can only dream of, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of its founding member and benefactor Spen Cama, who devoted his adult life to the club.
Spen was born in London in 1908 to an Indian father who had come to England a few years previously to establish his carpet import business. His father later become ill with a serious chest complaint so endured spells in and out of hospital. It was during one of his many stays in hospital that he met his wife, a Welsh nurse.
Spen was born shortly after his father died, so was brought up by his mother, who relocated soon after his birth to Brighton, where he went on to study at the grammar school. Before the outbreak of World War II, Spen trained as a barrister and later (1945) turned to purchasing and leasing property, forming his own company, Lyndale. While studying for the Bar, Spen often drove out in the evening to the rural peace of Fulking to study in the Sussex countryside.
On one such visit, he found the area
littered with ‘For sale’ boards. The meadows were being split up and sold off. Spen was a hugely successful businessman throughout his life, so this was an opportunity he wasn’t ready to pass up - he promptly purchased several of the lots, one of which was to become the major part of the club’s present south ground. Spen’s love for cricket began early, playing at Athol House with friends at the tender age of six. He and his gang of cricket-loving friends continued their regular fixtures at the house well into their late teens, when Spen called a meeting on 8 March 1927, at his house in Maldon Road, Brighton, to propose the formation of Preston Nomads Cricket Club - in connection with the Church of the Good Shepherd, in what is now the Preston Park area of the city. The fact that the club had no base was the inspiration for the name, but was a far cry from the picturesque setting they now call home.
The death of Preston Nomads’ charismatic figurehead - and life President - in spring 2001 was a sad one for all who knew him, but Spen ensured his name would live on for friends and strangers alike in the form of a £9m bequest to his beloved club. Spen’s generosity has also had lasting effects on the whole county, thanks to his £12m bequest to Sussex County Cricket,
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