A magnificent innings: Yorkshire CCC stalwart Sid Fielden was a great man

Sid was delighted that Bill should have regarded him so highly, but not as delighted as I was after making Sid’s acquaintance.

For Sid, who died on December 15, aged 88, and whose funeral will be held tomorrow at Snaith Methodist Church at 11.30am, was a great man, a great champion of the Yorkshire CCC members – whose interests he represented on various club committees – and one of the prominent figures during the Geoffrey Boycott ‘wars’ of the Seventies and Eighties.

A leading member of the Yorkshire Reform Group, Sid played a prominent role in the battle to keep Boycott at the club before falling out with him over the so-called dual role when Boycott was simultaneously player and committee member.

It prompted one of the most memorable comments of the whole saga when Sid declared: “He (Boycott) is a great batsman. I wish I had never met him.”

Many on the other side of the debate – with whom he became friends – warmed to the conversion.

Leaving aside the politics of those days, and dealing only as I found, what I particularly liked about Sid – in addition to his friendly nature and caring disposition – was his independence of mind.

He was a Methodist lay preacher in his spare time and would often judge the success of his sermons by the number of people who walked out in protest, challenged by his interpretation of the texts.

“Five walked out in Conisbrough on Sunday,” he might remark, a little chuckle in his soft, low voice. His sermons were thoughtfully compiled and also very well written. He was a highly-skilled orator and a powerful debater.

Sid’s faith was ‘radical’ as opposed to ‘regular’; he did not believe in certain miracles, for example, but rather the underlying message. He was a deep thinker, a man with fascinating views on a variety of subjects, a man who loved talking to people most of all – not least at cricket clubs all around the county.

If you telephoned Sid, there was at least a 75 per cent chance that he was already on the phone (unless his wonderful widow, Maureen, had somehow claimed it for herself), or, if he was not already on the phone, then you would have to factor in at least a good hour for the resulting chinwag.

He was a particular help to me not only in terms of increasing my knowledge of Yorkshire cricket in my early days with this newspaper but also in terms of writing a couple of books – a biography of Fred Trueman, with whom he often used to talk, and also one about Hedley Verity’s 10 for 10 in 1932, the record bowling figures in first-class cricket.

It was with Sid’s help that I tracked down Trueman’s birthplace at Scotch Springs in South Yorkshire, a now long-forgotten and long-gone row of miners’ cottages right on the edge of the old Maltby pityard.

I remember that we climbed up a small, grassy hill one winter’s afternoon and looked out across a slurry pit near to where those cottages once stood, cottages that were some way away from Maltby itself and also Stainton village, almost cut-off from the rest of the world amid godforsaken countryside.

It was then, gazing out at that bleak and barren landscape and the proximity of the pit, that I appreciated just what an extraordinary rise Trueman had made in going from such humble circumstances to worldwide celebrity.

Sid and I also spent several happy afternoons in Maltby talking to Fred’s sister, Flo, another wonderful woman who always spoke so affectionately of her brother and of their family upbringing.

When it came to Hedley Verity, Sid just happened to be best friends with Douglas Verity, the cricketer’s son, and I just happened to have interviewed, in a previous job, the last survivor of the 10 for 10 match, the Nottinghamshire batsman Frank Shipston.

Good old serendipity...

Douglas would often quip that Sid thought more about his father than he did, a poignant comment given that Douglas doted on the father that he lost so young, a father who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War Two.

Sid thought a lot about Verity, especially, but also many ex-Yorkshire players.

The likes of Bob Platt, Ellis Robinson and Bob Appleyard, for example, men he respected and admired.

Most of all, perhaps, Sid thought a lot about the Yorkshire members, those whose interests he championed at every opportunity during innumerable committee meetings.

There was irony, in fact, in Sid becoming a committeeman because he had a rebellious streak and a questioning mind – not necessarily pre-requisites for the job.

Not for Sid – later appointed a club vice-president – idle hours spent quaffing gin-and-tonic while watching the cricket; he preferred to be out and about talking to members and finding out their thoughts.

A policeman by trade, the sort who possessed the priceless commodity of commonsense and was not afraid to use it in conjunction with compassion, Detective Sergeant Fielden served in the West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire police divisions in a variety of capacities between 1957 and 1988; he also spent just under three years as an RAF police officer in Iraq.

On one occasion, the cricket and the police work got comically mixed up. Sid was preparing to give evidence during an important trial when he suddenly realised that he had brought along his cricket notebook instead of his police notebook. The two books looked similar, he protested.

Consequently, he had plenty of info concerning the lack of soap in the Headingley toilets but rather less gen on the defendant who had just killed her husband in a fit of rage, or whatever the crime was. By all accounts, Sid “winged it” – and no one was the wiser.

Born in Chapel Haddlesey, near Selby, and raised in Hensall, near Goole, Sid lived for many years near Doncaster and was Yorkshire through and through.

Now his magnificent innings is over and, as the applause dies down in the celestial pavilion, I am reminded of what he himself said after Bob Appleyard’s death in 2015.

“Bob used to say to me, ‘You and me have a lot to look forward to, Sidney,’ meaning that Bob believed in a life with God after death.” In that spirit, then, and with a tear in the eye, let us hope that they are both relishing the next world as much as they relished this one.

Farewell, Sid, and thanks for everything.