OLD LEIGHTONIANS CRICKET CLUB
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Established 1977

When Bryan Stone became the seventh man to be granted Honorary membership of the Old Leightonians Cricket Club in July 2010, it was fitting recognition for a gentleman who has assimilated himself with the club’s ethos with almost worrying ease since making his debut on the Saumur tour of 2007.

Bryan arrived on the OLCC scene armed with a devastating ability to attract nicknames, built up over many years’ service with his home club of Durham City. This instantly became a concern to OLCC president Graham Carter, whose own proudly cherished smorgasbord of epithets had hitherto been unparalleled amongst club members.
However, this soon became the least of the president’s worries as the new recruit from the north-east quickly established himself as a genuinely credible rival to John Acland-Hood for the post of Tormentor-in-Chief to the Club President. Considering the existing trend of simply misappropriating the president’s belongings to be insufficiently Machiavellian, Bryan embarked on a truly epic heist involving the supposed adventures of the president’s green water bottle, told through a series of epistles apparently sent by the drinking vessel back to its owner (“Uncle Denzil”). The correspondence and the subsequent vexation suffered by the president provided OLCC members with a source of great mirth.

Bryan is an unmistakable presence on the cricket field – and not just because he is said to bear a distinct resemblance to the winner of the 1985 Mercantile Credit Classic, or to an operatic tenor who works infuriatingly tirelessly to advertise a price comparison website. With bat in hand, he briskly sets his target – anywhere on the leg-side boundary between deep backward square and long-on – and sets about the business of clubbing the crimson orb into the next county (or indeed département when on tour en France). He’s equally difficult to miss when asked to propel said orb in the direction of opposition batsmen: his distinctive ambling approach to the crease leaves many an opponent bemused to the extent that they fail to notice the ball swinging past them slightly sooner than they expected.
Off the field, Bryan has been a most welcome addition to OLCC life. He has seen the members kitted out in stylish polo shirts (the Norfolk tour version of which comes in a delightful cranberry colour – not pink); managed the club’s inaugural tour to Durham (during which he delivered a superb character assassination of each member of the touring party via the pages of Durham City’s official matchday programme); and most of all he has become a virtually indispensable member of our touring parties, a fact that was acknowledged in 2010 when he was named Tour Joker.

However, chief among all these valued contributions must be acquainting OLCC members with the venerable Durham watering hole ‘The Dun Cow’, and in particular the most palatable beverage ‘Castle Eden’, purveyed by said establishment. The honorary membership bestowed upon him just didn’t seem to be thanks enough, but being immortalised in song by the Hooray Henrys soon corrected that.

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CCS