The foreign invasion

Dave Lovell - The best of the best?

He arrived in Birmingham the other day, not so much fresh faced but flustered after a dramatic flight involving a sick child, lost baggage and serious delays.

It would have been bearable had the flight been a short one from Spain but after travelling all the way from Perth, Western Australia, you could be forgiven for arriving on British soil slightly annoyed before making your way down to Lamphey to prepare for the forthcoming cricket season.

He may well be in his forties now but Dave Lovell is still good enough to dominate every attack in division one let alone division three as he seeks to help the Stags out from what seems like a terminal decline.

If you’re a bowler in Pembrokeshire beware, the prodigal son is back.

Lovell first arrived in the county back in 1996 although I’d inadvertently stumbled across him some four years earlier when I was called to field as 12^th man for Glamorgan seconds in a match between the Welsh county and Derbyshire after going to watch my friend play in the game. For some reason Glamorgan were a player down in the field so I arrived, was given some whites and told to parade the fine leg boundary before coming into the ring as the afternoon wore on.

Opening the bowling that day was Vasbert Drakes, then the overseas professional for Lamphey.

Lovell scored a ton in his first dig at the crease and the Glamorgan players were impressed. I may be wrong but in the second innings (the innings that I was asked to field) he was out first ball. He had a duck at least.

It shows how cricket moves in mysterious ways and in a twist of fate, whilst I was pottering around a house in Haverfordwest in that summer of ’96 in walks a short, stocky Australian greeting me with the traditional G’day.

We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, before he engaged in more familiar conversation with my housemate, another Australian in the shape of Geoff Cullen.

The moment he walked through that door Lovell had become Lamphey’s fourth overseas player.

The first was Drakes, a ferocious fast bowler that toppled all before him. The second was Brett Johnson a magnificent batsman who broke a league record playing up in Swindon the previous year.

Then came Cullen, a fresh faced 19-year-old whose earliest forays into batsmanship in Pembrokeshire produced few runs (and endless mickey taking by Andrew Skeels) until he came to the fore with a brilliant hundred against Stackpole and followed it up with a brutal 196 against Llechryd that resulted in a back page headline in the Carmarthen Journal entitled ‘The Cullen fields’. 

Lovell joined around the end of May I believe after a period on trial with Warwickshire. Their loss was our gain as he began to enthral, frustrate, antagonise and entertain.

He scored runs at will and would goad bowlers even before he faced them. During one night out in Haverfordwest, he told Tim Hagger, then the county’s premier fast bowler that he would smash him for 20 odd runs in the first over of the match when we were due to play Cresselly and prophesised that he’d hit the first ball for six. He did too, a flat one over cow corner that skimmed over the scorebox.

After making the point, he battened down the hatches to ground out the next 140 runs of a sensational performance only cutting loose again in the final throws of the innings.

During one season, he finished with a batting average of 199, the highest in the country by a league player across the UK.

His joining led a chorus of outcry from those not even involved in the game. Lamphey had two Aussies and both were very good, superior to anything in the county at the time. It was deemed an unfair advantage. ‘You’re spoiling local cricket’, ‘you’re ruining the game for others’ was the general consensus, with one colleague at the Western Telegraph particularly vociferous in her outrage towards us and the only connection she had to the game was inputting the scores on to the page!

Once, against Cresselly, when their batsmen started to get on top, a group of ladies sitting in cars watching from the grassy bank close to where the cows graze started waving wads of money in our direction and hollering abuse. I’ve no idea why they did this as Cresselly always seemed to enjoy testing themselves against the imports and looking back it was quite amusing but at the time the level of antagonism could be severe.

That said Lovell was not averse to dishing it out calling one all-rounder at the time a ‘skinny little prick’ after he failed to walk when a catch behind wasn’t given off his left arm spin although it was Cullen who seemed to get the brunt of the send offs.

Against Narberth he was escorted back to the pavilion by Ian Hughes while Martin Inward did the same at Llangwm, both no doubt wishing him well for the remainder of his time in the shire and commenting on yet another fine innings. Cullen would just trudge off, head bowed, not muttering a word.

As good as Cullen, Johnson, Drakes and all the other foreign stars were It was Lovell that produced the fireworks, the batting brilliance that captivated local players and made them play better in return. He wasn’t one to dish out praise but if he did, you knew that you had played well.

Some players wilted but others raised their game. Keith James of Hook was one who often did well against us and Lovell admired him for that.

Pembroke’s Nigel Phillips was another who would refuse to bow down against the foreign invaders. The season before, when Johnson played a friend of his called Joe Piromali guested for us in a cup game against them. Johnson and Piromali both scored hundreds to help us post over 300. We won with ease but not before Phillips scored a brilliant hundred in reply.

It was by far the best’ F**k You’ hundred scored against us and James had that same intensity about him when he took guard.

They remain the best cricketing days of my life.

And then it all fell apart. In 2001 as Lovell was batting against Kilgetty, playing with their bowlers as though they were toys, a confrontation occurred. Lovell was reported, subsequently banned and then sued the county cricket club as he deemed the judgement unfair. It turned out to be an unholy mess that kept cricket in the news for all the wrong reasons.

On his return to the field after a two month ban, we played at Llangwm in front of TV cameras and radio microphones and promptly got bowled out for 24.

How the haters laughed.

Soon after, Lovell, now married to a school teacher from Milford Haven left to set up a life back In Perth leaving Lamphey for good. Others left too and Lamphey dropped down the divisions away from the headlines and cricket returned to normality again.

Lovell isn’t playing for Lamphey this year, that was my feeble attempt at an April Fools joke, although he is back in the country for a flying visit to family and friends.

Lamphey won’t host any other overseas players for that matter as overseas players are banned and neither do we have the funds to accommodate one even if they weren’t.

Overseas players were not the ruination of local cricket as some doomsayers think, they were in fact the making of it. Public interest grew when they played and players now talk of pride how they snaffled the wickets of Johnson, Cullen, Lovell , Nash et al and withstood a barrage of bouncers by Drakes. They made cricket electrifying and passionate and showed us just how good you have to be to make it in the game.

Lovell is regarded as the best of the bunch, supremely gifted and good enough to have played first class but for whatever reason he didn’t. Some say he’s the best Pembrokeshire has ever seen although Barry Wood and Peter Hall in their pomp would surely run him close.

With the current ban in place, we may never see their like again.

Perhaps the ban could do with a rethink.

 

Dave Lovell with son Joe after their record breaking last man stand during a club game in Australia