World Cup Cricket Triumph

Congratulations are in order for our two cricketing victors, Richard Merriman (LGS 1977) and Martyn Gidley (LGS 1987) who have both represented England in their respective age categories. Not only did they play for England, both the Over 50s and Over 60s cricket teams were successful in winning their tournaments. On 10 February, Richard and the Over 60’s won by 70 runs against Australia. On Wednesday 22 March, Martyn and the Over 50s won by seven wickets against Australia. 

As Martyn told us, ‘It’s never too late to represent your country!’  

For both Richard and Martyn, cricket has been a huge part of their lives. In fact, Richard’s late father, Peter Merriman, was Martyn’s first cricket coach at primary school. They both continued playing cricket during their time at Loughborough Grammar School and have continued since leaving, with Martyn even returning to teach cricket at LGS some years after that.  

Richard Merriman (LGS 1977) England Over 60s Champion 

In February, Richard Merriman was off to Barbados to captain the 60+ England Cricket team in the Caribbean World Cup. They had an extremely successful tournament and won all games apart from one. In the end, they were victorious against Australia.  

Richard has always had a passion for cricket. One of his earliest childhood photographs is of him holding a cricket bat. His dad coached him from a young age and cricket has just been a part of his life ever since.  

At Loughborough Grammar School, Richard was captain of the cricket team and said that they had a very talented team during his upper 6th year. Similarly, Richard said captaining the England over 60s team, was easy when they had excellent players. One of his greatest memories of cricket at LGS is a great wicket of Barry Davies (LGS Grounds man). Richard also explained that the coaches at LGS were incredible, and they were so lucky to have staff that supported them in the way they did.  

Although Richard played cricket for both Leicestershire and Derbyshire when he was younger, he never quite reached his goal of playing for England. He explained that being so close to his goal, but not quite reaching it, was what kept his passion for the sport growing. In 2019, Richard was selected for the England team and in 2022, was picked as captain.  

As captain, one part of Richards’ responsibilities is player development. One of the difficulties of captaining is having to select the players for the game and disappointing four players in each game knowing that they won’t play. He said this is particularly difficult as they are all such fantastic players. 

One of the challenges from the Caribbean Cup is that they were playing on different wickets which was something that they had to adjust to. Just coming out of winter, the team had not played and trained as physically hard in a while, so they were match-shy and relatively unfit. Richard explained that they were fortunate enough to play against their weaker opponents at the beginning, so they could build up and get stronger as the tournament progressed.  

Richard says that winning was definitely the highlight of the tournament, but to top this off, he got to meet some of his cricketing legends, including Sir Charlie Griffith, Sir Wes Hall, Sir Gordon Greenidge and Joel Garner.

Martyn Gidley (LGS 1987) England Over 50s Champion 

At the start of March, Martyn Gidley travelled to Cape Town, South Africa to compete in the Over 50s Cricket World Cup. They had an impressive tournament winning all but one of their games and ultimately won the final against Australia by seven wickets. 

Martyn started playing cricket at a young age. His father was involved in cricket at the Loughborough Town club and Martyn went to a primary school with a really supportive cricket coach, which grew his passion for the sport. From a young age, Martyn was selected to play at county level and this spurred him on to do well and perform at higher levels. He was asked to play professionally for Leicestershire, which was a dream come true, although things didn’t go to plan. However, he moved to South Africa where he managed to keep playing cricket. He said that making new friends and travelling to different countries has made it all an exciting adventure.  

One of his fondest memories of playing cricket at LGS was scoring a century and receiving a bat in recognition during assembly. John Weitzel was a particular member of staff who inspired Martyn during his time as a student at LGS. In fact, it was John who taught Martyn to switch to spin bowling, for which he is very grateful for.  

When Martyn finished playing cricket professionally, he was thrilled to be asked to join the Loughborough Grammar School staff to help the next generation! Martyn says that “seeing the development of many boys over the years and still see many of them playing now is particularly satisfying.” His highlights as a teacher have included seeing Harry Gurney (LGS 2005) go on to play for England and Ben Mike (LGS 2016) play for Leicestershire and Yorkshire.  

Making the England team, two seasons ago, was a delightful and proud moment for Martyn, albeit a surprising one as he had only played a handful of games for Leicestershire Over 50s. He had played for an England Schools team back in 1987 whilst he was at LGS, so to be picked for the England team 35 years later has made all his hard work worthwhile.  

Regarding training, Martyn has said that it is more difficult to train together as they all live around the county. They did have a group training day together in January and all trained separately regularly. 

Martyn was very excited to play in South Africa as he had previously lived there for 12 years and was looking forward to going back to Cape Town.  

Before he went out, Martyn told us, “Playing against players from all over the World and hopefully making new friends in the process will be a great experience for me and everybody involved. Hopefully we can have a successful tournament on the cricket field too!!!” Seeing the results, we can certainly say that they did have a successful tournament.