ABOUT RDVK

In many ways I have had a charmed life.  I was born after World War II and was too young for conscription; had a supportive mother and father; was educated at a top school, having passed the 11+, and university and grew up in a large school house with thirty boarders, a competitive younger sister and a very big garden as well as having Dulwich College’s playing fields and facilities close by.  Later, two headmasters were prepared to allow me to teach for two terms each year and three county cricket clubs employed me for the other five months; a wife and two children stood by me through the two time-consuming careers in education and professional sport; and, most fortunately of all, I retained good health.

At first, I was shy and unconfident.  Few would have predicted what was to come.  At Dulwich College Preparatory School, I was able to cope academically and compete on the sporting field, but the move to Dulwich College at eleven placed me in a vast school with many more competitors and able pupils.  I never struggled to get into sports teams, but I never felt that I was one of the dominant personalities.  I was often made form captain, probably because I was more compliant than the stronger characters and kept to the rules.  With a father teaching in the school, I didn’t want to step out of line.  I was aware of boundaries at an early age.  This desire to conform has always remained.  Perhaps becoming a schoolmaster, a county cricket captain and a Secretary of MCC contributed to the necessity of wanting to wear the right clothes, say the right things and make the right impression.  

It did help that I was born in September, right at the start of the academic year and therefore I was always one of the oldest in the year group.  It also helped my confidence that I was tall and fit, blessed with good hand-eye coordination.  It was success in sport that helped my self-confidence to grow.  After A Levels I did stay at the College for a seventh term, to attempt a scholarship to Cambridge.  I never thought that I had a chance, but I did gain a place and then decided to stay on for two more terms at Dulwich to retake and improve my German A Level grade.  By this time I was nineteen and still a schoolboy, so rugby and cricket produced more success.

Going up to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, I soon realised that there were other modern linguists in my year who had read more, spent more time in the foreign countries and were much more able to speak the languages we were studying than I.  Again, it was sport, initially rugby in the first term and then cricket in the summer, which boosted my confidence.  It also made me realise how much fun team sports were.  They encourage banter amongst teammates, a sense of perspective and the need to accept the ups and downs as a group of winning and losing.  I had learned at Dulwich College that wit and humour were essential to keep a balance in life.  Quick-witted South Londoners always had a ready response to lighten the mood.  I think and hope that this part of my character has developed and remained a constant part of me.  It may not always have been apparent to others, because I chose throughout the two careers to take my responsibilities seriously.  However, I knew, as I became more confident, that I could enjoy the lighter side of situations, even though I did so often without showing it to those around me.

Standing in front of a class gave me confidence to speak publicly.  Finding success in sport gave me more topics about which I felt able to speak and hold my own in conversations.  Running a boarding house, an HMC independent school, a professional cricket team and a private members’ club taught me about management and defined how I, personally, would lead other people and organisations.

Whether we want to or not, everyone is always moving on.  When it happens, do we want to hang on to the past longingly or do we move on and embrace any future challenges?  I have tended not to look back, but to be ready and willing to welcome new opportunities which have arisen.  From cricket combined with teaching to teaching fulltime, from teaching to cricket administration, from employment to retirement, my wife, Chris, and I have moved on and always looked forward to the next challenge.  Of course we have looked back but, as we have been determined not to regret the major decisions we have made, it has been easier to react positively to the new situations.

One of the best pieces of advice given to me by John Edrich when I was a young batsman starting out in first-class cricket was not to worry about the last ball you faced.  As he said, if you’re still at the crease, even if you’ve been beaten all ends up, it is the next ball that matters, because that’s the one that can get you out.  As on the cricket pitch, so in life.  There is an appropriate time to learn from past mistakes, but the immediate future has to be embraced and demands concentration.  We have to move on and clear our mind so that we can think positively and operate efficiently.

Through it all, I have always realised and appreciated how fortunate I have been.  I am grateful to so many people, who have stood by me, advised and guided me, led me, become colleagues and friends or have been prepared to follow and support me as a leader.  Above all, though, I am grateful to my close family, who have supported me as a husband, father and grandfather, putting up with my humour and competitive spirit.  They are the people who know me best.  

All individuals are inevitably influenced in some way by the background into which they are born and in which they grow up.  I was encouraged at home and at school to be part of a team but to remain my own person.  Perhaps that is what drew me into cricket, which requires individual skills and decision-making within a team framework.  It also taught me to respect other people, whether in authority and leading, part of a peer group or those expecting to be led.

My life has been a journey through schools and through sports, especially cricket and rugby.  From 1971, when I left Cambridge after four enlightening years bringing greater maturity and independence, I was a schoolmaster who played cricket in the summers.  For the first fourteen of the twenty-four years that I taught in independent schools, I spent only two terms a year at the schools.  In the summer I played professional cricket and, for the first five years, that entailed two separate existences, living in Eastbourne for the winter and in Bristol during the summer.  When I was invited back by Surrey CCC in 1978, the emphasis changed and I became a county captain who taught in the winters.  The years from 1984 until 1993 were the time when I saw myself as a proper, full-time schoolmaster, as a housemaster at Cranleigh and then, subsequently, as headmaster of Worksop College.  New opportunities arose in the years ahead and, from 1994 our family life changed completely as we moved down to London for me to work as MCC Secretary.