feature Mike’s epic survey is not just cricket They said he was mad, but when it comes to sporting stats and historical detective work you can count on Mike Davage to confound expectations, as Steve Snelling discovered when he met the man behind a Norfolk sporting tour de force. ike Davage’s brain into a relentless quest that now spans is working overtime. more than 35 years and shows no sign of Straying from the letting up. boundaries of his latest In that time the 65-year-old retired grand sporting obsession assistant vice-president of an American he indulges in a spot insurance company from Old Catton has Mof mind games as a cricketing odyssey produced, in the award-winning Canary takes a googly-like detour into party trick Citizens and Glorious Canaries, two of the territory. most important and influential sporting “Give me a number,” he prompts, in the reference works ever published as well as manner of a conjurer about to perform a providing numberless ‘assists’ to myriad piece of magic. Momentarily stumped by football club historians the length and this unexpected request, I spit out “25”. breadth of the country. “No, too easy,” he groans. So, I try again, Now, some 16 years after his last my befuddled brain clunking to keep pace. monumental study, he has followed up as I do I thought why not produce a deluxe compiling cricket records as opposed to “How about 37?” And suddenly he’s off. with another ground-breaking work that book covering the history of the county football records is an absolute nightmare Multiplying and dividing quicker than completes a rare and possibly unique club in as much detail as possible and get of checking and cross-checking. What I you can say pocket calculator and with an hat-trick of sporting histories and sees it out there.” like to do is put flesh on to the bare bones unerring accuracy that would do credit to him switching from football to cricket to He makes no bones about wanting to of a player’s name and statistics. That is the smartest computer. deliver what promises to be the definitive I wanted write a biographical history that would always the challenge and the most exciting His awesome display of mental ‘Who’s Who’ of Norfolk County Cricket “outclass” anything that had gone before part of something like this.” arithmetic over, he barely draws breath Club over the past 135 years. the book to and was likely to come in the future. It was The book’s quirky title - a typical Davage- before explaining: “It’s what I do. I don’t Why the change of direction? Well, in a characteristically ambitious objective style reference to the distinguished and even have to think. I’m not as sharp as part it reflects a growing disenchantment be far more which has been triumphantly fulfilled. distinguishing character of so many I used to be. But I can just do it. Figures with modern football but, as I soon The magnificent result of 2½ years of of the county’s players down the years aren’t a strain on the brain.” discover, cricket has always been an than the hard slog, of 10-hour days spent surfing - underscores a determinedly personal Even when he’s not trying the numbers abiding passion for Norwich City’s internet sites, trawling through dusty focus on the men behind the stats based, keep coming, like a mathematical tick that greatest historian. facts and archives, yellowing newspapers and well- as ever, on painstaking research. refuses to go away. “My wife knows all “Cricket’s my first love,” says Mike. thumbed scorebooks, Knights in Whites, It was a gargantuan task made harder about it,” he says. “We’ll be sitting there “Baseball comes second with rugby third Major Men and Preachers and Teachers by his choice of historical starting point. watching the Trooping of the Colour and and Norwich City fourth. Football just figures. is a cricketing chronicle that defies “Everyone thought I was mad,” says Mike, she’ll suddenly say how many horses isn’t the same these days.” convention in style and content. with the kind of deadpan expression are there? She knows that without As a boy growing up on the south Almost as much a social history as it is a that suggests such comments are not thinking I’ve been mentally counting coast, he supported Hampshire and, sporting record, the book is, in many ways, uncommon. “I could have taken 1895 as along the line, counting how many when work took him to London, he a reflection of its idiosyncratic compiler the beginning which was when Norfolk rows and multiplying them. progressed to playing for Southend and his fascination for the eccentric and began playing Minor Counties cricket, “Or if we’re watching a western in the Essex Senior League. “That the extraordinary, the whimsical and the but I felt the correct place to start was on TV she’ll say, ‘how many was the highest level I reached,” downright wacky. 1876 because since that date the club has Indians have died?’ and I can he says. “Wasn’t good enough for “I didn’t want to go down the traditional enjoyed a continuous history even if all tell her straight away. It’s not a county. But I was lucky enough route,” explains Mike. “I wanted to present the matches played in the first 19 years case of having to concentrate. to come up against your Doug the statistics differently, to take account were friendlies.” My brain just registers that Insoles and your Trevor Baileys of such things as the number of balls Aided and abetted by a few like-minded way .” at the end of their careers. bowled - Norfolk were involved in four, souls, a ledger which had been compiled Welcome to the weird and They were then in their 50s five, six and eight-ball over games - and to by the late Bryan Stevens, a former EDP wonderful world of Mike and 60s and were still brilliant. add more details. Normally, averages list cricket correspondent and county player, Davage, historian and I remember Trevor Bailey highest score and best bowling without and the wonder of the worldwide web, he statistician par excellence playing for Westcliff and if he telling you who they were achieved duly embarked on his epic quest. and a walking, talking didn’t want to get out, he didn’t against. I wanted to put that right. And Of the 784 players who have appeared encyclopaedia of sporting get out. You couldn’t budge him then, there’s the problem that in olden for Norfolk since 1876, Mike succeeded in anecdote and analytical trivia. from the crease.” times there wasn’t proper analysis. tracking down the families of around 750, “It’s a kind of madness, I Research, coupled with a rare Maiden overs didn’t count, so I needed to sometimes in the strangest of locations. suppose,” he says, “what I fascination for sporting stats, differentiate between those figures where Mark Walton was a case in point. The call an insatiable madness for proved a seamless progression I had been able to find out the full stats former Norwich City goalkeeper features facts and figures.” Mad or not, when his playing days ended. But and those where I hadn’t. among a wonderfully eclectic mix of it’s certainly symptomatic of why the focus on Norfolk? “But more than anything, and I know substitute fielders who make entertaining an incurable fixation on the “Well, I moved up here in 1972 this will sound strange coming from me, I appearances in a ‘Curio Corner’. minutiae of sporting history that and have lived here ever since. It’s wanted the book to be about far more than “He came on for Carl Amos in 1993 has been successfully channelled a fabulous place and loving cricket facts and figures. Scorecards bore me and during a match against Buckinghamshire 6 EDP Weekend n December 31, 2011 Norfolk CCC 1912: a pre-first world war line-up features some familiar county names – Gervase Birkbeck (sixth from left, back row), Robert Pilch (far right, front row) and future MP and county cricketing legend Michael Falcon (centre, front row). Birkbeck and another member of the team, Ralph Thurgar (fourth from left, back row) were killed in action on the same day while serving with the Norfolk Regiment at Gaza five years later. Cricketing Canaries: Sandy Kennon (above left) and Terry Allcock are among a number of footballers who swapped shorts for whites in the summer season. Below: The former Norfolk crickt headquarters at Lakenham. and held a superb boundary catch,” says Five times married, he was a decorated Tour de force: Mike. “But I wanted to check one or two bomber pilot with a reputation for hell- Sporting all- things, so I eventually got hold of him by raising that was entirely justified. rounder: Mike phoning the Mexican restaurant he runs “Anyone playing their first game would Davage, the in Aberdare!” be invited to the bar after a day’s play,” number-crunching The Welshman was merely one among says Mike. “It’d be drinks all round and at historian who has a long list of players who have enjoyed two or three in the morning when they’d charted the story craving, empire-building Cecil, who made neglected to tell of this fact, preferring parallel careers as Norwich City stagger to their beds. The difference being of Norwich City his Norfolk debut in 1876.