The retirement last week of one of England’s finest ever batsman brought back some special memories for someone who was heavily involved in youth cricket back in the day.

Mike Edwards remembers seeing Marcus Trescothick bat for the first time in the mid-1980s when he was aged just 10 and he was scoring runs just as freely back then as he did throughout much of his stellar 25-year career in the first class game.

Edwards, who lives in Guiting Power, was running the Gloucestershire Schools Under-11 team alongside Ian Rushin, who was headmaster at Temple Guiting Junior School, when he first came across Trescothick.

“We went down to Bristol and I remember this one lad – he was an under-10 – kept telling us he was quite a good wicketkeeper,” Edwards recalled.

That youngster was Marcus Trescothick, of course, and as it happened Edwards knew the family because Marcus’ dad Martyn played cricket for Keynsham.

“His dad was a very good cricketer,” said Edwards, a former Cheltenham cricketer, “he always seemed to get runs against us when we played Keynsham.”

And what of Marcus?

“We didn’t think he was anything special as a wicketkeeper, certainly not county standard, but we thought he was a good batsman,” Edwards said.

The young Trescothick was at primary school in Gloucestershire back then which meant he was eligible to play for Gloucestershire Schools and even though he was an under-10, such was his obvious potential that he got chosen to play for the under-11s.

That was in 1985 and Edwards said: “We had a game against Somerset at Taunton School. There was always a bit of rivalry between the two counties and I remember Marcus went in at four and made 146 not out.”

Unfortunately for Gloucestershire, when Trescothick left primary school he went to senior school in Somerset which meant that he went on to play for Somerset Schools.

“He was the one that got away,” said Edwards.

But while Trescothick may have played his cricket elsewhere, two cricketers who did come through the Gloucestershire Schools ranks were Jack Russell and David Lawrence, both of whom went on to have outstanding careers.

Michael Cawdron and Dominic Hewson also came through the system, as did Steve James, who went on to play for Glamorgan, and, like Russell and Lawrence, also played for England.

Trescothick, who will be 44 on Christmas Day, went on to play 199 games for England – 76 Tests and 123 one-day internationals.

He scored more than 5,800 Test runs at just under 44 and more than 4,300 runs in one-day internationals at 37.47. He ended his first class career with more than 26,000 runs to his name at a shade over 41.