| A NOTTINGHAMSHIRE cleric who was banned from the Kimberley Institute Cricket Club Ground in 1938 for jeering at a player, was welcomed back by the club on his 84th birthday.
The cleric, the Revd Dennis Hibbert, who retired in 1989 as Rector of Nuthall, used to frequent the ground to watch Kimberley play in the Notts & Derbys Border League. “There’d be a gang of us fooling around a bit. A member of the committee would come out and tell us to be quiet. We’d probably see the first hour and then clear off,” said Mr Hibbert on Monday.
In reliving the incident, he had managed to locate the exact spot in the ground where it had occurred. “There’s a bit of a slope; so the ball’s slowing up as it goes to the boundary.
. . . This man was fielding, and the ball was going quite slow, but it went through his legs. I said something uncomplimentary like ‘Oh, you fat fool!’, which, as a lad of 14, you think is wonderful. We had a good laugh. “But ten seconds later, a committee member came round and said: ‘Hibbert, get up and get out of this ground. You’re banned. We never want to see you again.’ ”
Mr Hibbert reflected with some pride that “There are very few people in England who’ve been banned for 70 years from anything. But now I’ve been purged from my sins and admitted back.”
He owes his reinstatement to a funeral tea which he attended in the cricket pavilion last November. Not even being able to remember who was with him at the time of the incident — “They could very likely all be dead by now” — he was surprised to be confronted by a man, who asked him: “What are you doing here, Dennis? You were banned.”
“He remembered it from 70 years ago,” said Mr Hibbert. “I said: ‘No, I was only banned from cricket matches. I wasn’t banned from funeral teas.’ ”
When the club secretary (who knew Mr Hibbert, but was unaware of the ban) discovered what had happened, he brought the matter to the committee. It decided to rescind the ban and welcome him back, and did so on his birthday earlier this month. “Fancy that — a few words uttered in anger 70 years ago have now bounced back at me,” said Mr Hibbert. “You’re not going to quote me in the Church Times, are you? It’ll certainly spoil my chances of preferment.” |
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