One of Gloucestershire’s top players from yesteryear was at the Cheltenham Cricket Festival yesterday.

Andy Stovold, who played almost 650 games for the county in all forms of the game from 1973 to 1990, was one of a host of star names at the College for the second day of the county championship game against Sussex.

He was in the Professional Cricketers Association’s marquee, the annual event that is so well organised by ex-Gloucestershire wicketkeeper Andy Brassington.

The now 65-year-old Stovold has become a regular at the PCA’s day out in Cheltenham and he very much enjoys it.

“The first time I came was four or five years ago,” said Stovold, who post playing established himself as a top coach in the county. “You talk to other former cricketers and you find that they all seem to come back after 20 or 25 years after they finished playing.

“There are some younger ones but it seems to me you finish playing and then do other things – family, work – and then come back 25 years later and start all over again.”

And there were certainly some stellar names from yesteryear in the marquee swapping stories about their playing days including Mike Procter, John Snow, David Graveney, Bob Taylor and Geoff Miller.

And while the likes of Snow, Taylor and Miller would have enjoyed seeing the Cheltenham College ground at its finest, coming back to Cheltenham means just that little bit more to someone like Stovold, who played there so many times in the 70s and 80s.

“It hasn’t changed, it’s brilliant,” he said. “Cheltenham itself hasn’t changed that much.

“I’m one of those who when he sees a Jack Russell painting of Cheltenham and you see the black clouds… I can never remember black clouds!

“You turned up on the odd occasion when a sightscreen was blown over or a marquee had blown down but Cheltenham was always sunny, the cricket was all sunshine. Everybody seemed to enjoy it however well you’d played.

“The wickets have changed over the years but the atmosphere is still very, very good.”

Stovold was a good cricketer, good enough to score 20 first-class centuries.

He also scored 97 half-centuries but he’s clearly not a stats man because when asked if one of his hundreds was scored at Cheltenham, he answered: “Very good question, I wouldn’t know that, I wouldn’t have a clue!”

But then on a moment’s reflection he added: “Yes I did, it was against Derbyshire.”

And like so many good cricketers reflecting on one of their better career moments, there is a story behind the story.

“I was 97 not out overnight, now it’s coming back to me,” he chuckled. “It would have been quite early in my career, maybe my second or third season and we had to attend an official function that night at Pittville when I was on 97.

“I remember going back to Bristol, I got back home at 1am and we were back on the road at 7.30 the following morning. I think I got to 106.

“Derby were one of those counties I think I got five 100s against. I’m not sure but I think the innings may have started with me hitting Alan Ward out of the ground. He turned round and said if that fat little bloke can hit me out of the ground it’s time to retire, and he did at the end of that season!”

Stovold was an aggressive right-hand bat and averaged just under 30 in first-class cricket and more than 28 in one-day cricket.

And one-day cricket provided him with two of his finest moments, because he was part of the Gillette Cup final winning team in 1973 and the Benson and Hedges Cup final victorious side in 1977.

“I enjoyed my career,” said Stovold. “The Gloucestershire side at the time I started was second to none. Alright we may have been late winning a trophy in ’73 but for individual players – Mike Procter, Zaheer, Sadiq, Tony Brown the captain – we welded. It was a weld that did very well, even though for the people we had we should have probably done a little bit better.

“But it clicked in ’73 and ’77 and for a while one-day competitions were ours in the 1990s and early 2000s.”

Stovold has particularly fond memories of the Benson and Hedges Cup final in 1977 because he opened the batting and made 71 against a Kent attack of Kevin Jarvis, Bernard Julien, John Shepherd, Bob Woolmer and Derek Underwood, laying the platform for his side’s 64-run win.

“I got the man of the match,” added Stovold, who these days coaches at the Bristol Cricket Club and the University of Bristol. “It’s quite nice telling boys when I coach them, especially when they tell me this is how you hit it.

“I’ve never told them I got man of the match but I’ve told them I’ve played in a couple of finals. It’s nice to be able to turn round and say run rate is no different at any time you play because I always scored quite quickly.”

He certainly did and was particularly strong through the offside.

“I used to have a lot of mates who if they turned up at five past 11 I was gone,” he chuckled, “but if I hung around until 11.30 it didn’t go too slowly!

“It was the style of cricket I played and I was fortunate enough to be able to keep that style of cricket together for a nice long time.

“Sometimes you see people having to change their style because they’re not successful. Okay, maybe if I’d changed mine I could have been a bit more successful but it worked for me.”

And you get the impression that if T20 had been around in his day he’d have been pretty good at it too.

“I’d have enjoyed it, I don’t know how good at it I’d have been,” he said, “but I’d have thoroughly enjoyed it. To me it just seems like a licence to kill.”

And while it’s a form of the game that he surely would have excelled at, Stovold is not a fan of today’s ‘specialist cricketer’ who is deemed suitable for only a particular format of the game.

“When people ask you about the different formats, I don’t see why you need so many players playing the game,” he said. “They’re put in little boxes. You didn’t have a 20/20 cricketer, a 50/50 cricketer and a three/four day cricketer when I played. You played cricket and you were picked because you played cricket.

“These days they get pigeon-holed for so long. Then they get taken out of a pigeon-hole and put in another one because something else has happened. In our day you were picked because you were cricketers and you were expected to perform.”

And Stovold certainly did perform, and apart from Procter, Zaheer and Sadiq he also got to play with the likes of Courtney Walsh, Syd Lawrence and Jack Russell as they came through in the second half of his career.

Stovold was certainly central to much of Gloucestershire’s success during his time at the club because he was also the regular wicketkeeper for a good while as well.

“I kept wicket for six years in one-day cricket and the championship and I enjoyed it,” he added. “I didn’t find it too difficult, maybe that was because we had good bowlers.

“It was a shame Jack Russell came along when he did because it meant I then had to do more running around!”

Whether keeping, fielding or batting, Stovold clearly loved every minute of his career.