From Mark Baldwin, Cricket Writers’ Club
The Cricket Writers’ Club has lost some major figures in recent times and, sadly, that is a continuing trend with the news today of the passing of David Green, at the age of 76.
“Greeny”, who wrote on cricket and rugby for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph for 27 years until 2009, had been in hospital for the past two weeks near his Devon home, and had been suffering from respiratory problems.
David Green played first-class cricket from 1959 to 1970, for Oxford University, Lancashire and Gloucestershire, and rugby union for Sale and Bristol. He also represented MCC on a number of occasions, was close to an England Test cap twice during a cricket career which featured forthright top-order strokeplay and useful medium pace, and in 1965 he scored more than 2,000 first-class runs in a season without once reaching three figures (his highest score was 85) – a unique occurrence.
His entertaining account of that 1965 campaign, for Lancashire and MCC, provided the subject of his second book, Summer of ’65, published last year. His first book, A Handful of Confetti, published in 2013 and covering both his cricket and rugby lives, was part-autobiographical, part-anecdotal and always irreverent.
Those of us who had the huge pleasure of sharing cricket and rugby press boxes with Greeny across the best part of three decades – besides more than the odd pint in the nation’s public houses – will always remember a natural and hilarious raconteur, the best of colleagues and a great man.
Details of funeral arrangements will be circulated to all CWC members in due course.
- Click here for David Hopps’ appreciation of David Green’s life
- Read the Telegraph‘s obituary for David Green here
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