Dr Peter Davies - widely known as Dr Cricket - will be chief guest speaker at the joint annual dinner of the Lincolnshire County Cricket League (sponsored by Readers) and the John Pettitt Grimsby and District Cricket League.It will be on Thursday, March 18 in Grimsby Town FC's function suite (7pm for 7.30pm).
Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield, Dr Peter was awarded £43,400 of Lottery money to launch a special investigation into the nature of village cricket in West Yorkshire. Sat in a deckchair studying cricket?! A hard life and someone’s got to do it!
His research took him on a journey through 100 local league cricket clubs in the vicinity of Halifax, Huddersfield and Dewsbury. It was an amazing and fascinating experience, and along the way he met:
Flirtacious tea ladies
Grumpy groundsmen
Eccentric umpires
And a whole host of cricket celebrities, including Joe Sayers, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Dickie Bird!
And the historical items he dug up – bats, balls, photographs, and the occasional jock-strap – are now on display in local pavilions, libraries and at www.ckcricketheritage.org.uk
Peter and his team also put on 100+ cricket heritage exhibitions in local pubs, libraries, post offices, garden centres and supermarkets. The aim was to get local people interested in their local cricket clubs. Even if you were arrested by the local constabulary you couldn’t avoid the exhibitions…because one display was staged in a police station!
This unique Cricket Heritage Project has attracted widespread media interest. It has been featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC Look North, BBC Radio Leeds and Sunrise Radio, and special features have also appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Yorkshire Post and The Wisden Cricketer.
Peter has written several cricket books and made appearances on both radio and TV. In 2009 he established the University of Huddersfield Cricket Research Centre – the only such centre in the UK - at http://www2.hud.ac.uk/mhm/history/research/cricket
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