Vicar’s lost cricket ball found after 40 years

A CRICKET ball lost nearly 40 years ago by the Rev Simon Ward, Rector of Great Yarmouth, when he was aged seven has been found.

Mr Ward was playing with his brother in the garden of the house where his father was Rector of Belton, only six miles from his current parish.

“I can remember as a child buying a new ball and being ever so excited. I took it out into the rectory garden one summer’s day to play. Within the space of one over, it had been lost. It was my firstever cricket ball, and I cried my eyes out,” he said.

The ball vanished among plants in an overgrown pond. It was only when parishioners began tidying the garden and tackled the pond with a digger that the elusive ball was discovered.

Mr Ward said: “I have known the current rector, Rosie Bunn, for quite a few years, and so when she became rector, I jokingly said, ‘If you find that lost cricket ball, I’d be grateful’. Then they found it.”

He hopes to use the story in a sermon shortly. “Biblically, we are on quite good ground here as, of course, Christ tells us a number of stories about things being lost and found,” he said.

“So, if we can generate the parable of the lost cricket ball, I am sure there is something there for us.”