OLD LEIGHTONIANS CRICKET CLUB
Official Website 
Established 1977

Batting head-gear

OLCC decent quality cap ( non baseball ) 

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Fielding head-gear

Wide brimmed hat with OLCC crest (if possible)

 

Favourite Graham Carter nick-name

Dynamic Denman

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Favourite OLCC Brothers

Ted and Roy

 

What are your three favourite films?

1  - Genevieve

2  - Monsieur Hulot's Holiday

3 - Doctor Zhivago

 

What is your desert island book?

The Ups and Downs of an English Way of Life

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What is your desert island luxury item?

Complete set of Ordnance Survey Maps

 

Please provide your eight desert island discs:

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1 - Down By The Riverside  by David Headley Ernest Harold Rickards

2 - The 1812 Overture by Rachmaninoff

3 - Lady in Red by Chris De Burgh 

4 - All My Loving  by The Beatles

5 - Thank You For The Music by Abba

6 - Alleluia  Chorus - Handel's  Messiah

7 - My Sweet Lord by George Harrison

8 - J. J  J Joker A by The Hooray Henrys 

 

Beer or Wine: Beer
Tea or Coffee: Tea
Wet Shave or Dry Shave: Dry

Morning or Night: Morning
City or Countryside: 'ryside

Messi or Ronaldo: Messi
Pietersen or Boycott: Boycott 

West Indies 80’s or Australia 90’s: West Indies 80's

Warne or Murali: Warne

WG Grace or Bradman: WG Grace

Favourite ever umpire: Dickie Bird

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And what are your three things to go into Room 101?

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1 - The new 1974 County Boundaries 

2 - The incorrect date of the start of the Third Millennium

3 - Britain's Filthy Road Signs

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.

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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.

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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 re branded as a Harvester) to become a club that can rightfully consider itself to be The Home of Jovial Cricket™, a thriving organisation with 200 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 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.

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For these efforts and all his achievements listed above, Graham William Vincent Carter is unquestionably an OLCC legend

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CCS