Horsham Cricket Club - Dr J. A. Dew

Dr J. A. Dew

Dr John Dew, MBE (12 May 1920 – 7 September 2008) became the best known and certainly best loved character in Horsham, West Sussex, where he was born, lived for most of his life and served the community in a manner that is increasingly rare, if not almost extinct in today’s peripatetic society. Beyond his home town he was renowned as a cricketer, especially as a sparkling wicketkeeper who won a wartime Blue for Cambridge and played twice in county championship matches for Sussex in 1947. In his history of Sussex cricket, Home Gordon said of him that “he only needed opportunity to be ranked among the very best and his keenness added to the satisfaction he afforded”.

In a busy life during which nothing seemed to disturb his energy or good cheer, Dew was also a popular family doctor, Deputy Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex and for 50 years a faithful member of the choir at St Mary’s, the parish church beside the cricket ground. He was also a co-founder of the West Sussex Philharmonic Choir and governor of what is now Collyer’s College, the former grammar school.

The inspiration of young cricketers in the town and a pioneer of organised junior cricket in the county, he was captain of Horsham Cricket Club for ten years and its president for 47. His organisation of the colts teams was his lasting legacy. Five members of the current professional staff of Sussex, the recent county champions, are former Horsham cricketers, three of them having played for the club from the age of 7.

Having kept wicket for Tonbridge and captained the rugby team he qualified as a GP at the London Hospital after reading medicine at Cambridge. As a player he would keep up a constant jovial banter behind the stumps, not always an aid to the batsman’s concentration but the product of his natural enthusiasm. A warm and generous personality but also a natural leader, he had a distinctive, throaty voice and a hearty laugh.

He started the junior section in 1959 and ever since the sight of young cricketers playing either informal or formal fixtures on the ground on summer afternoons and evenings, not to mention weekend mornings, has been a feature of the club. He encouraged and respected all of them, girls as well as boys, whatever their ability, age, creed or colour. He not only remembered all their names but those of their parents and siblings too. He not only inspired the young himself but by his energy and persuasive powers got hundreds of adult helpers involved. If children were not lucky enough to enjoy organised cricket at school they could be sure of a welcome at Horsham. The example spread to many other clubs in Sussex.

He was appointed MBE for services to the community.