Summer Sports - Cricket
Four Elms Cricket Club has a history that includes a cabbage patch, a hop field, Vauxhall cars, Chris Tavare ... and a nurses’ cottage! Assistant Groundsman, Clive Croft, details the work he and the team carry out throughout the year to keep the club an active part of village life
Four Elms CC
A committed committee
T
Clive Croft - the smile denotes a personal best 143 not out
78 I PC APRIL/MAY 2015
he picturesque village ground of Four Elms nestles beneath the North Downs, one and a half miles from two of the most historic visitor attractions in England; Sir Winston
Churchill’s house, Chartwell and Henry VIII’s wife, Anne Boleyn’s home, Hever Castle. The club currently run two sides on a
Saturday (playing in the Kent County Village League), one on a Sunday, an occasional midweek XI and a flourishing junior section. The earliest records available indicate that the club was formed in 1868 and the original ground was on Lord Bramwell’s fields in Holmwood, adjoining the cabbage field. It moved, via Four Elms Farm “near the nurses cottage”, to its present site in about 1890. The club has produced a number of
outstanding local cricketers, the best remembered being the Cartwright brothers, Doddy and Frank, who graced the ground for over forty years. However, perhaps the greatest talent, although some have said,
with respect, that Frank Cartwright was better, was a man who went on to become Kent County Cricket Club’s captain and a Test player for England; Chris Tavare. Both his brothers also played for the club. Four Elms has featured as the backdrop for
advertising campaigns, one for Vauxhall cars, and also for a television series on the history of Great Britain. It is in this quintessentially quaint corner of England that Clive Croft and his colleagues go about their groundcare duties.
When asked what his job title was, he
replied; “Bar chairman, assistant treasurer, ground advisor, 2nd Team Captain 2014 (now retired) and assistant groundsman - and, as of the end of March, Grounds Chairman.” So, nothing out of the ordinary for a village cricket club then? Clive has been with the club for twenty
nine years, “with time off for good behaviour”, with the last four years in his current role(s).
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