CHARACTERS WELL-KNOWN IN BRIGG AREA IN THE COUNTY HALL OF FAME

Brigg Blog is delighted to see that two sporting personalities who are well-known in local cricket have been installed in our county's CricketLincs Hall of Fame.
They are long-serving club official Walt Blackburn, late of South Kelsey, and renowned umpire John Harrison, who officiated in club and Minor Counties matches.
John's very thorough knowledge of the Laws and playing conditions once helped Brigg Town Cricket Club to secure the Humberside Alliance championship in the late 1980s.
Playing our final home game of the season, and needing to win to lift the trophy, we bowled out the visiting team at the Brigg Sugar Factory ground for a fairly low score, but then a torrential downpour flooded the pitch during the tea interval.
John indicated it would be fine to mark out another strip on a less waterlogged part of the square and we went out and secured victory, with skipper Barrie Briggs at the crease.
None of us playing at the time knew that marking out a new strip was an option. And during more than 40 years involvement with local club cricket, this is the only time I've seen it happen.
Walt, who was secretary of South Kelsey, administered a club that included many members who worked in agriculture.
This meant that, to complete his extensive Sunday fixture list, he needed to borrow players from elsewhere.
Come Sunday morning, there was often a phone call from Walt, requesting Brigg men to  help fill the Kelsey ranks.
In line with cricketing etiquette and good manners, he always approached the club for permission to borrow and never rang its players directly.
"Can we have that Gig Smith?" was his usual opener - Gig being our star all-rounder. "Or Dave Foster or one of the Hunt brothers," he would continue.
"And if you can't get anyone decent, you'd better play yer-sen," he used to tell me, the Brigg player/secretary, in his  Lincolnshire dialect.
Walt's team-raising troubles were compounded by Kelsey regulars being called in to work at short notice.
Their tasks, he explained, including 'arvestin, be-ating and pe-a vinin' (with the dipthong sound always employed).
Walt's funeral in 2009 was bitter-sweet. Sad because local sport had lost such a character. But as mourners assembled for the wake at his favoured watering hole in South Kelsey, there was so many wonderful stories shared about him.
We shall not see his like again - or agin, as Walt would have said.
View the full Hall of Fame through this link...

PICTURED: Walt Blackburn, right, receiving an award at a South Kelsey cricket function. It looks like Yorkshire batsman Richard Lumb doing the honours. Walt organised annual dinners at the village hall, over many years, always with a notable guest speaker.