Benson and Hedges Cup -1972-2002
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 9:00 pm
My latest blog post - a brief guide to the programmes issued at Lord's for the finals of the B&H Cup 1972-2002.
For those interested, at the top of the post, I give a potted history of the competition, the 3rd one-day competition to be launched into domestic cricket after the Gillette Cup and the John Player Sunday League, as well as a review of the programmes.
The Benson and Hedges Cup was very much cricket's league cup with a July final date, in contrast to the Gillette Cup which was cricket's end of season 'FA Cup' final in early September.
After that summary, I go through each year providing a summary of the format for the year, the scores in the final (with key player performances and Gold Award winner) and the key features of the programme with a focus on the cover designs which merged together images of cricket with those of the sponsor and their flagship brand at the time, Gold cigarettes.
I comment that albeit in hindsight, cigarette company sponsorships were on borrowed time as the health impacts of smoking became more common knowledge and government restrictions tightened up how companies like B & H could market their products to customers whether directly through general market advertising or indirectly through such sponsorships as with the B&H Cup.
The post does lay out a sort of timeline of domestic cricket between the early 1970's and the early 2000's with the Gold Award winners in the finals reminding us of many top players on the county circuit at the time both the Test players and the ones who didn't make it to international status but who were much loved at their county regardless.
The first Gold Award winner in a final in 1972 was Leicestershire's Chris Balderstone who on one occasion, left a county match not out overnight, drove to play in a League Cup match for Doncaster Rovers in the evening and returned to Grace Road to complete a century the following morning! Balderstone played for England once and after retiring, became a Test Match Umpire. In his football career, he played over 600 games for Carlisle United and Doncaster Rovers. You don't get his like these days.
In football, collecting FA Cup Final programmes has long been a popular aspect of the hobby but with cricket's cup finals, it may well be that the competitions are just not old enough yet as the cricket final programmes are collected but perhaps with not quite as much interest as their football counterparts.
Also, the collecting culture in cricket is still focused on scorecards as opposed to football-style programmes, even though there are more of these around now and not only for England ODI's but at county level too across all the formats
As always, thanks in advance for any views.
Also, comments and questions are always welcome on here, or from beneath the post on the Goals and Wickets Facebook page, the Twitter account, beneath the post on the Goals and Wickets website of through the Contact Us page on the website;
http://www.goalsandwickets.co.uk/cricke ... rogrammes/
For those interested, at the top of the post, I give a potted history of the competition, the 3rd one-day competition to be launched into domestic cricket after the Gillette Cup and the John Player Sunday League, as well as a review of the programmes.
The Benson and Hedges Cup was very much cricket's league cup with a July final date, in contrast to the Gillette Cup which was cricket's end of season 'FA Cup' final in early September.
After that summary, I go through each year providing a summary of the format for the year, the scores in the final (with key player performances and Gold Award winner) and the key features of the programme with a focus on the cover designs which merged together images of cricket with those of the sponsor and their flagship brand at the time, Gold cigarettes.
I comment that albeit in hindsight, cigarette company sponsorships were on borrowed time as the health impacts of smoking became more common knowledge and government restrictions tightened up how companies like B & H could market their products to customers whether directly through general market advertising or indirectly through such sponsorships as with the B&H Cup.
The post does lay out a sort of timeline of domestic cricket between the early 1970's and the early 2000's with the Gold Award winners in the finals reminding us of many top players on the county circuit at the time both the Test players and the ones who didn't make it to international status but who were much loved at their county regardless.
The first Gold Award winner in a final in 1972 was Leicestershire's Chris Balderstone who on one occasion, left a county match not out overnight, drove to play in a League Cup match for Doncaster Rovers in the evening and returned to Grace Road to complete a century the following morning! Balderstone played for England once and after retiring, became a Test Match Umpire. In his football career, he played over 600 games for Carlisle United and Doncaster Rovers. You don't get his like these days.
In football, collecting FA Cup Final programmes has long been a popular aspect of the hobby but with cricket's cup finals, it may well be that the competitions are just not old enough yet as the cricket final programmes are collected but perhaps with not quite as much interest as their football counterparts.
Also, the collecting culture in cricket is still focused on scorecards as opposed to football-style programmes, even though there are more of these around now and not only for England ODI's but at county level too across all the formats
As always, thanks in advance for any views.
Also, comments and questions are always welcome on here, or from beneath the post on the Goals and Wickets Facebook page, the Twitter account, beneath the post on the Goals and Wickets website of through the Contact Us page on the website;
http://www.goalsandwickets.co.uk/cricke ... rogrammes/