1982 passed uneventfully, but mention should be made of Mr. Harry Coupe's elevation to the Chairmanship of the cricket committee, a body he had served for 23 years, and Mike Hardcastle's scoring of 823 runs, a staggering total even by his own standards. Brian Cole notched another first for Bradshaw, when his half-century at Horwich meant he had scored a first team 50 on every ground in the Bolton League, and Brian Senior's last stumping of the season enabled him to pass Ken Holding's haul of 67. The last match coincided with the diamond jubilee of the war memorial ceremony, and Andrew Kershaw, reporting for a local newspaper, wrote as follows:

"KEEN rivals they may be, but, for two minutes on the last Saturday of the season, the members and officials of Bradshaw and Kearsley cricket clubs joined together in a moving ceremony they have shared for the last 60 years.

For two minutes in the lovely late-summer sunshine, the only sound to be heard at Bradshaw's picturesque ground off Turton Road was the rippling of trout-filled Bradshaw Brook as it meandered through meadows behind the scoreboard.

And as the spectators stood quietly by, the players faced each other, heads bowed, and observed two minutes' silence in front of the club's stone Cenotaph bearing the inscription 'Their names liveth forever'.

Afterwards, the captains each solemnly laid wreaths at the base of the memorial before the officials left the field and battle was once again joined by the men in white.

It has been that way each year since 1922 whenever Kearsley have visited Bradshaw's ground to play in the Bolton League. For on April 29th that year Bradshaw's Cenotaph was unveiled, bearing the names of 23 members killed in the Great War.

SILENCE

Kearsley happened to be the visitors that day and after the religious service of dedication they too joined in the two minutes' silence of the wreath-laying ceremony. The following year, when Kearsley visited Bradshaw again they once more brought a wreath and the teams both paid their respects with two minutes' silence after the tea interval.

Since then, that same simple but very moving ceremony has been repeated each time the teams have met at Bradshaw. Said Kearsley captain Brian Quigley: 'It's marvellous this ceremony has continued spontaneously for so long. All the players feel deeply about it, and these days every little bit of respect surely helps'

For 80-year-old Arthur Hindle of Birtenshaw Crescent, Bromley Cross, the ceremony held special meaning. Though Arthur was playing at Kearsley with Bradshaw's 2nd XI that day in 1922, he remembers well the 22 players present who are all dead now.

STRENGTHENED

THE captain was H. D. 'Donny' Davies, he recalls. 'He was a fine man and a fine cricketer. But as a sports writer for 'The Guardian' he was later to die in the Munich Air Disaster.

This is a special occasion for me, and although I haven't been to any other matches this season because my legs are no longer so good, I wouldn't have wanted to miss this ceremony'.

As Bradshaw chairman Harry Coupe commented afterwards:

'There's something special and very nice about this tradition. It's a thing the players always remember, and something that has also greatly strengthened the friendly rivalry between the clubs'.

And the rivalry was the name of the game after the tea interval. For when Kearsley went out to bat chasing Bradshaw's total of 194 .. Bradshaw went out determined to skittle them as quickly as possible.

Kearsley needed two points from the match to win the Bolton League Championship ... which they did! But as Bradshaw captain Mike Hardcastle said with a sporting wink following his own innings of 94 vital runs:

'It's a great tradition, but perhaps when Brian Quigley was laying his wreath he wondered too whether he was laying down his last hopes of the title for this year'."

The labours of the President and his hard working band bore fruit when, with the arrival of 1983, the club-house, now extended, sported a new games/committee room, built onto the kitchen, whilst at the other end a beer-store was incorporated joining the building with the dressing-rooms. So, with the addition of a porch, the whole exterior had taken on a more attractive appearance. Inside, the decor to the new interior expanded to embrace the old, the outcome being a clubhouse of which Bradshaw could be proud. The project had cost upwards of £17,000, the original building fund having been augmented with the proceeds of many social functions, a now-annual Autumn Fair and loans from members.

Unfortunately the club's hundredth season of cricket was disasterous. The season closed with the fewest number of wins it had ever registered in any Bolton League season: three only, which strangely included two victories over Westhoughton.

John Hemstalk played his last match for the club, having taken more catches (46) than any other Bradshaw Bolton League professional.

Cole and Hardcastle's century partnership in the Tonge home fixture, leaves Westhoughton as the only club in the League against whome they have not had this honour, although next year this claim will no longer be valid, for then the twelve clubs who formed the League 54 years ago (with the exception of Horwich, a replacement for Radcliffe in 1937) will be joined by Farnworth Social Circle and Greenmount in the sponsored "Vaux" Bolton League.

So when the stumps were drawn at the end of Bradshaw's one hundredth season, the up-to-date statistics of matches played in the Bolton League read:

Won 455, Lost 368, Drawn 368, Tied 7. Only Farnworth and Tonge can claim more wins.

Hamer Cup results are Won 58, Lost 48, Tied 1.