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11     Graham Carter

 
Right-Hand Bat
M          I        R       NO   HS       AVG        C(WK/out)     Stumpings
387   340   3189   41   100*    10.67          6/100           1

Right-Arm Bowler
W       R         O       M       AVG      
20   718   159.2   17     35.90  

Batting head-gear: Cap

Tours: 50
Most Consecutive Tours: 50 (1977-present)  [That's 100% and you can't get more than 100%]
Most Consecutive Appearances: 76 (July 1979 - May 1985)
Tour Joker: 1986,2000
Tortoiseless Trophy: 2002(joint winner)
Hon. Secretary: 1977-1986
Club Statistician: 1977-1986
Brewers Cup Selector: 1978-1983
Club President: 1988-present
Tour Manager: 1977,1978,1979,1982,1983,1984,1985,1994,1995,1996,2006
Dinners Attended: 29 out of 29 [Again 100% (the maximum achievable percentage)]
Dinner Organiser: 1977,1986,2001


Debut: 21.05.1977  House: Grove  At LP: 1959-1964

Some people say his name is Arthur. Others say his name is Denzil. Depending who you ask, this man could be called Arthur Flat Cap, Denzil Penberthy, Denny, Den, Dirty Den, GWVC, The President, Flatcapper, G-Force, G-Spot, D-Dad (to two people anyway), The Mild Eccentric, The Bloke Who Runs Around And Shouts A Lot, Den By The Riverside, or even Deniel Deckingfield. Apparently some people even know him by the mysterious alias ‘Graham Carter’. All we know is – he’s the club president, and without him the OLCC would never have happened.

Held in the highest esteem and greatest affection by club members, Graham’s passion for the OLCC and the game in general is beyond question. He lives, breathes, eats and drinks cricket, although he sleeps rugby (as a bedside lamp in the Quorn Grange will testify) and only drinks cricket from a glass – never a bottle.

Through his ceaseless enthusiasm and impeccable organisational skills, the club has grown from humble beginnings (a shady meeting of two people in a pub destined to be rebranded as a Harvester) to become a club that can rightfully consider itself to be The Home of Jovial CricketTM, a thriving organisation with 150 members that has organised over 50 tours, visited almost all parts of England (including the North Riding of Yorkshire) and welcomed to its annual dinners such cricketing dignitaries as Bill Frindall, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and some yob called Graveney – all thanks to Graham.
In addition to his administrative capabilities, Denny also provides an apparently never-ending stream of humorous anecdotes, tales of misfortune and long-winded jokes, although the latter are not always perfectly executed, as witnessed by (amongst others) a patient and kindly crowd in Saumur in 2005. Still, given that some of them were ladies of a certain vintage, at least Den kept it clean – unlike the Bushman pretending to be Nick Faldo.
Indeed, Denny’s world possesses such a wealth of stories – from the latest escapades of Robert Stein and his underwear through to scarcely believable (to the extent of quite obviously being made up) yarns about a certain moustachioed, follicularly-challenged gentleman from the Mediterranean – that one tends to forget that Den does actually play a bit of cricket as well. He was, of course, a member of the first side ever to turn out for the club, although his offer to bat at No 11 would cause him no small measure of regret many years later when official club numbers were allocated to each member, based on debut date and then batting position on that date.

His defining moment with the bat came at Staplefield in 1979, when in front of some minor royal or other he compiled a fine unbeaten century. Latterly he has used a combination of cross-batted swipes and a delightfully tardy late cut to great effect in a number of cameo innings, the best of which came at Waltham St Lawrence in 2005 as he and Mickey guided the OLCC to a remarkable 10-wicket win. However, in spite of these highlights, Denny is the runaway leader in ducks for the club, and for a while put his misfortune down to failing eyesight, an affliction that would result in an unfortunate accident with a head-high beamer and a resultant panda-style pair of black eyes at Saumur in 2000.

Perhaps spurred on by the prospect of Fantasy League points but also maybe because it reduces his chances of getting yet another duck, Den has been keen to have a bowl of late, and he has trundled in to claim the odd wicket here and there.
He remains an able and sprightly fielder, albeit one with an uncanny habit of using his kneecap to stop the ball. Yet he has claimed over 100 catches in his OLCC career, although nowadays he only seems to take the improbable ones.
However, as Denny himself will tell you, the batting, bowling and fielding don’t really matter to him that much any more – it’s all about the coveted appearances, for which he always wants ‘one ball to be bowled’ in each fixture. Needless to say he leads the field by a country mile (sorry Den, I mean ‘ry’ mile) in that statistic; his first 100 appearances came out of a possible 104 and he played an astonishing 76 consecutive games for the OLCC between 1979 and 1985, a record that will surely never be broken.
For these efforts and all his achievements listed above, Graham William Vincent Carter is unquestionably an OLCC legend. CCS

desert island discs
1) Down By The Riverside - David Rickards (1962)
2) All My Loving - The Beatles (1963)
3) The House Of The Rising Sun - The Animals (1964)
4) Wonderful Land - The Shadows (1962)
5) 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky
6) Hallelujah Chorus - from Handel's Messiah
7) Whatever You Want - Status Quo
8) Land Of Hope And Glory - Elgar

Book: Full Volume of the Ordnance Survey's Concise Maps of Britain

Luxury Item: A Yorkshire Birth Certificate


Three films
1) The Coronation (1953) - all the way through Twice
2) The Ascent of Everest (1953) - all the way through Twice
3) Genevieve (1955)


Favourite Graham Carter nick-name: Maestro

Cheese or Chocolate: Cheese
Beer or Wine: Beer ( sometimes Lager - different people, different needs )
Tea or Coffee: Tea
Boys or Girls: Girls
Greenland or Ibiza: Greenland
Wet Shave or Dry Shave: Dry Shave


W.G. or Bradman: W.G. (He was English)
Botham or Sobers: Sobers (He wasn't, but behaved better than the other choice)
Pietersen or Boycott: Boycott (Who else !!!!)
Marshall or McGrath: Marshall (the other choice used foul language in Den's hearing in the Lord's Pavilion)
Read or Jones: Read ( but preferred Godfrey Evans)
Warne or Murali: Warne (Great to see ye mate !)
Hair or Bowden: Bowden


For Room 101...
1) The 1974 County Boundary Changes - quite unnecessary
2) The Incorrect date of the current Millennium
3) Guys, Hi, and any other words copied from the USA and bad grammar and speech
4) Lack of free speech
5) Drinking out of Bottles
6) Wearing Caps Indoors - and Baseball Caps in general
7) The nation following like sheep ( eg Two Thousand and Seven, 100% , 0% impossible )
8) Yeah, Yeah, Yeah and other Yobbish language ( eg Gotcha, Know what I mean Yeh ? )
9) The Marylebone Cricket Club allowing Ladies ( and YCCC allowing Foreigners )
10) Lack of decent behaviour and table manners in Britain
11) Motor Cyclists ignoring the speed limit and cyclists riding on the pavement etc.
12) Cars driving too close to car in front and too many cars on the road
13) Stupid Teenagers smoking despite numerous warnings
14) Waiting for computers to warm up and ignoring what Den tells them
15) General decline of Britain and the failure of the 1950's to stay forever......