Former players from a Cheltenham cricket club who revelled in wearing an Australian-style baggy green cap will enjoy a reunion next week.

About 25 people who were part of Cheltenham King George back in the day will gather at the Cheltenham Cricket Festival on Tuesday 29^th July, the first day of the county championship game between Gloucestershire and Middlesex.

Andy White, who has organised the reunion, still has his baggy green cap from all those years ago and he said: “Our heroes back then were Ian and Greg Chappell.”

The players also wore green ties off the field with Mike Edwards, one of the club’s founders, saying: “Everybody liked it, it was something different.”

White first played for Cheltenham King George as a junior some 50 years ago, with Edwards explaining: “We started a junior team in the 1970s, we took them all the way through from under-11s.

“Players like Andy White, his twin brother Chris, and Peter Jubb. I was team manager, the first player I recruited was Alan Biggs.”

They played their home games at King George V playing fields and Andy White remembered: “It really was grassroots/council park cricket, it was wonderful.”

The Whites and Jubb were among a number of players recruited from the grammar school, while Biggs was one of several who came from All Saints School.

The team had plenty of success too, as the under-15s were crowned county champions in 1978, beating Cheltenham along the way.

“That was a great win, that was a major, major shock,” said Edwards.

The club were already very well established on the Cheltenham cricket circuit by then having first come into existence in the late 1960s.

Mick and Pete Williams and Dave Jackson were the club’s co-founders alongside Edwards, although in those early days they were known as Hillfield.

“Hillfield Cricket Club started in 1969 and finished in late 1970,” recalled Edwards, who is now 79. “They were revived as Newhill Cricket Club in 1971 – that name came about because it was a new start - and finished in 1973 when Cheltenham King George started.

“Mick and Pete used to live in a road called Hillfield in St Mark’s. We used to play cricket in the street or sometimes illegally on the grammar school field.

“I was about 17 at the time and a few of the other kids in the area used to play, we took it seriously.”

And they were certainly primed and ready when they played their first game.

“It was away to Windrush,” Edwards continued. “They beat us but we played well, Mick Williams took five wickets.”

The club didn’t have a ground of their own in those early days when they were Hillfield and Newhill so they played all their games away.

That all changed when they managed to secure one of the pitches at King George V, something that wasn’t as easy as it may sound.

“In those days there were six matches played at the playing fields every weekend,” said Edwards.

“We had to apply to play at King George V but once we moved there it made sense to change our name to Cheltenham King George.”

Those early days were certainly fun but they were tough too.

“We were all council estate kids,” said Edwards. “We had a Provident cheque to pay for the kit which we then carried around in a sack, we didn’t have any money.

“I was fixture secretary and I remember we had a good rapport with Keith Finch, the King George V groundsman.”

They also built up a good rapport with some of the students at the College of St Paul and St Mary.

The students used to drink in the St George’s Vaults in the heart of Cheltenham, which was also popular with Cheltenham King George’s players and their shared enjoyment of a beer soon extended to the cricket field.

“Quite a few of them came and played for us, they raised the quality,” said Edwards.

Among them was former Gloucestershire and England opening batsman Chris Broad with Edwards adding: “I think he only played once, he didn’t score anything notable, I think it was a match at the Folly in the evening league. Chris was very young then.”

Someone who enjoyed a much longer association with the club was Tim Lowe, who went on become headmaster at both Wells Cathedral Junior School and Hereford Cathedral Junior School.

Lowe was instrumental in introducing a good number of students to the club, a club that at one stage was running three men’s teams.

“We ran two teams weekly in the Gloucester League and in the 1970s won the sponsored Hofmeister Championship,” said Edwards.

“We were helped when a works team in Cheltenham – Hebron and Medlock architectural firm - joined up with us, we were always competitive.”

And while they were always competitive, they had a lot of fun too.

“We used to go on tour every year,” said Edwards. “We went to Lancashire quite a few times, we used to stay in Clitheroe, we played all the clubs round there.

“We also went to Blackpool, I remember going to a nightclub in Blackpool, it was owned by the former heavyweight boxer Brian London, he was quite a nice bloke.

“We also went on tour to Devon, Cornwall and Leicestershire.”

They also moved away from King George V playing fields in 1982 and started playing their home games at Whittington.

“We used to have an old Citroen to pull the outfield mower,” laughed Edwards.

When they moved to Whittington, they changed their name to Whittington Cricket Club, playing there for six years.

The club’s 3^rd XI broke away and founded a social team called Old Jacksonians in 1986, a team that ran for three years and Edwards, who went on to captain Cheltenham’s 3^rd XI, retains incredibly fond memories of those days.

“We came from nothing, we had no money,” he said. “All we wanted to do was play cricket. It was one of those idealistic things, it was a dream.

“But we created something that lasted for about 20 years, we were very proud of it.

“Socially, we did a good thing with the kids. A lot of the kids have done well in life.

“We were like a brotherhood, we still meet, we still talk.”

And Edwards will certainly have plenty to talk about when he goes to the reunion, a reunion which is being held in the Old Patesians marquee at the Cheltenham College ground.

And it’s not just ex-players who will be there, supporters who were part of the adventure all those years ago, including Jill Pritchard and Helen Webb, will also be there.

And it was certainly an adventure.

Edwards was always prominent, of course, and Andy White, who was once voted Midlands Club Cricket Federation Under-17 Cricketer of the Year, says: “A lot of people owe an awful lot to Mike Edwards.”