DYCHE EYES BURNLEY EXIT
Angus Fraser has spent lockdown painting the pavilion at the club where it all began
SEAN DYCHE is considering leaving Burnley at the end of the season due to the deterioration in his relationship with chairman Mike Garlick — which other senior figures at the club fear is fractured beyond repair. The Burnley boss (right) has been frustrated by the club’s failure to agree contract extensions for several senior players this summer, as revealed by
Sportsmail last month, and has become further disillusioned in recent days after being told there will be little money for new signings when the
The pose evokes memories of his distinguished playing career — hunched and looking exhausted — except that the seam bowler’s scowl has been replaced by a smile and the shirt is dappled in paint rather than sweat.
hugely industrious during 46 Test appearances that propelled him into england’s top 10 wickettakers, plus hundreds of other matches for his beloved Middlesex, Angus Fraser has continued the hard graft theme during cricket’s coronavirus curtailment.
Three months of inactivity has provided the chance to repay his childhood club Stanmore by decorating the 167- year- old club’s pavilion.
Fraser, 54, reflects: ‘ I wasn’t recognised in Middlesex’s agegroup sides, so Stanmore provided me with my way into cricket.
‘They turned me into a cricketer by giving me opportunities as a kid and then it was my performances getting into the first team that got further recognition. My reputation was gained playing for Stanmore and that is how Don Bennett, the Middlesex coach, became aware of me.
‘My family has always been a part of the club. My dad was captain of the second XI, captain of the thirds, social secretary. Stanmore played a huge part in our lives. Along with my brother Alastair, I would play every Saturday, Sunday, midweek games. I spent so much time there as a teenager.
‘ It has allowed me to achieve what I have achieved in the game and the least I can do now is support it, give something back and help it thrive.’
The restoration project has been a real family affair, too. Fraser’s wife Denise has been in charge of colour design and daughter Bethan and son Alex doubled the workforce. ‘Denise took over one area, round one window, which was looking pretty ordinary. The Polyfilla came out and I was told we needed to wallpaper it separately. It was at that point I discovered I am rubbish at prepping, apparently. But I am not useless. I used to watch my dad as a kid and so I have some idea of how to put things together.’ Fraser’s efforts have not come without consequences — at 6ft 6in, he does not possess the ideal painter/decorator’s frame and developed a bad back as a result — although he will clearly consider the cause to be worth the aches and pains.
A desire to be hands-on stemmed from a pledge to honour the legacy of his predecessor as chair of the club.
When Ross Chiese passed away two years ago, he left Stanmore some money in his will. Around £15,000 was invested in doing up the pavilion verandah and installing a new shutter system.
Club funds have paid for some additional aspects of the overhaul and Fraser, Middlesex’s managing director of cricket for the past 11 years, has thrown in some of his own money. Among the improvements is a new honours board.
‘Ross was a legendary character of Stanmore and Middlesex league cricket, someone I was very fond of,’ says Fraser. ‘One of my motivations when I took over as chairman in place of him was to do something in his memory and to make sure that whatever we did was done properly. Which meant the rest of the clubhouse being improved as well.
‘We wanted to get the verandah completed for early April, for the start of the season, but although the windows had all been put in there were some finishing touches that the workmen needed to complete so they have been back in the past couple of weeks.’
Recollections of ‘packing up’ after matches in his youth will be familiar to the thousands of club cricketers up and down the land currently hanging on word from the Government as to when recreational action can resume.
‘The old shutters that we used to put across the windows were a bloody nightmare, full of screws and bolts,’ chuckles Fraser.
‘You would be trying to sneak home on a Saturday evening after a game when you would hear a shout behind you of “shutters”.
‘If you didn’t get away with it, it was another 20 minutes putting them all up. So the fact that we have now got ones that go up and down electronically is certainly a good thing.’
Mark Ramprakash, another former england player, is also a member at Stanmore, ‘ a lovely club on the common’ that Fraser says ‘ embodies cricket within the county’.
‘It’s a very diverse club,’ he says. ‘One of the issues we have at Middlesex is that the professional staff should have more non-white faces than it does. It’s something we are very aware of,’ he says.
‘Certainly Stanmore as a club is very representative of the recreational cricket that’s played in the area now. It’s gone from being like a lot of clubs in the 70s and 80s — largely white with a few West Indian players — to one now with a very high proportion of members from an Asian background.’
As for Middlesex, the plan is for players — some of whom have been volunteering for NhS delivery services and working for charities over the past three months — to return on part-time furlough from July 1 in anticipation of the county game restarting in some form exactly a month later.
The club’s preference is for an abridged four- day competition plus a Twenty20.
‘At Middlesex we want to play. We want to see international cricket played, county cricket played, our club sides to play, our youth sides to play and we will do whatever we can to make that happen,’ says Fraser.
‘Yes, finances are important and some counties have been worried about the cost of staging four-day games. But the cost of not playing is greater still. For cricket not to be out there in front of people as a sport that can be watched or played this summer is potentially a bigger issue down the line.
‘The game should be doing all it can to be getting in as much cricket as possible this year.’
‘At Middlesex our staff should have more nonwhite faces’