Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner this year of the Brooke-Lambert Trophy is a journalist and broadcaster. Now that’s unusual in itself – you don’t tend to find the likes of Nasser Hussain or even Mike Atherton getting very excited about the statistical side of the game, or about the more obscure corners of its history. But there are exceptions of course, and although our winner does indeed make his living in journalism and broadcasting, it is for his wide-ranging contributions to the record of our game that we make the award this year to the doyen of Northamptonshire cricket, Andrew Radd.
Andrew is Northampton born and bred, and cricket is in his blood: one of his grandfathers was born and lived in Wantage Road. Cricket, and its history, began to take over a large part of his life while he was still in primary school, and before long he was buying scoresheets from our only previous broadcaster-winner, Bill Frindall. In his early 20s, at about the time he joined the ACS, he embarked on a career in journalism, and became a full-time employee of the BBC – which, it may not be generally realised, he still is. Very much a radio man, Andrew’s work over some 40 years includes not just covering cricket for BBC Radio Northampton, but also working on that station’s newsdesk and on various other projects and programmes – including coverage of local and national elections since 1987.
But his continuing devotion to cricket – even if only officially as a hobby – is shown by the many ways in which he has demonstrated his commitment to his home county. Perhaps these can be listed as an ABC…
A is for archivist. Andrew is one of that dedicated and highly-valued group of those who are determined to keep their county’s cricket history and heritage alive, and to present it to the cricket-loving public in an interesting and accessible way. He has been Northamptonshire’s official archivist since 2017, though he was involved in this area well before that date. In this field, among other things he has been the deviser of the county’s player-numbers, and has been instrumental in launching the Hall of Fame and the Captains’ Wall at Wantage Road.
B is for broadcaster. Andrew is a long-serving commentator and reporter on matches at Wantage Road for BBC Radio Northampton, keeping listeners up to date with all the goings-on on and off the pitch.
C is for compiler. For many years Andrew first compiled, and later edited, the Northamptonshire Yearbook, in succession to one of his mentors, the late Laurie Newell. He has also long been the go-to person at the club for details of the county’s records and statistics.
But we must go back to A for the role in which he is perhaps most familiar to ACS members: as an Author. He co-wrote the Northamptonshire history for the Helm series, and also co-wrote the biography of cult hero of the mid-1970s David Steele. He wrote the Northamptonshire book in the ‘100 Greats’ series, and has produced two recent books for the ACS: a biography of George Thompson (the county’s first Test cricketer), and the long-awaited book on Northamptonshire Grounds. Last year, Pitch published his well-received book Faces on a Wall, about the 40-odd cricketers who have captained Northants over the years (some of them odder than others: the subtitle of the book rightly refers to them as a ‘curious collection’); by no means all of them are household names, but their character and doings form an important part of their county’s history, and keeping their memory alive is such an important contribution to presenting the county’s heritage in an interesting and accessible – and very well-written – way.
So Andrew is not just a cricket-writer. He is a family man too, and – like many other winners of this trophy – a lover of classical music, as well as being, perhaps unsurprisingly, a local historian.
But it is very much for his activities in the field of cricket that we are pleased to make this award to Andrew today. I’ll leave the last word to an adopted son of Northampton, Allan Lamb, who ends his Foreword to Faces on a Wall with these words, which sum up the contribution and the wisdom of our winner: ‘As a journalist he has always told it as he sees it, good or bad; and if I ever need to know anything about the county there is only one person to go to’. Ladies and gentlemen, that ‘one person’ is the deserved winner to whom I am very pleased to virtually present this year’s Brooke-Lambert Trophy – Andrew Radd.
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