John Simkins

The century-old bench at John Simkins’s Surrey home bears testimony to his passion for cricket. He salvaged it from Lord’s when the ground’s previous Mound stand was dismantled in 1987, disregarding the fact that, as a low bench originally designed for a terrace, it is totally unsuitable for a level garden. Although he has ‘talked’ cricket to himself for as long as he can remember, the best he could achieve on the field was to captain his university college’s ‘coarse cricket’ team and to play for a north Yorkshire village 2nd X1, shrugging off the disadvantage of being London-born. After a career in journalism, John took early retirement from a national newspaper in 2006 and is now a freelance editor. He is a member of the MCC.