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A very cursory bursary.....

A touching letter from Ted Bates appeared in how's that? No.283 for October 2002, asking that the magazine continue to be printed rather than just put on the website, as was then being discussed. He said he was 74, retired from umpiring for 6 years, but needed to keep up with news because he was still involved with a local charity Cup competition. He neither had a computer nor would he get one, "as I have to live and sleep in my back room downstairs and there is no room for any more stuff in there."

Not long after this he passed away, leaving the Association £25,750 which Stuart-King and the then Treasurer pounced on gratefully. It arrived just in time to go into the October 2003 Accounts as income, so reducing the deficit of £32,000 to the sort of figure they could explain away at the AGM as being due to timing differences, or some similar vague bromide to silence the curious or the meddlesome. At the following year's AGM, on 19th March 2005, Training Board chairman Peter Smith announced the "official launch" of the Ted Bates Bursary, with the legacy being "ring-fenced and devoted in perpetuity to a purpose Ted would have supported."

Ring-fenced? Stuart-King-fenced would be more like it. Sadly, dispensed is the word that actually applies. The 31st October 2006 Accounts just published reveal the melancholy facts, which the Report is careful not to mention. In the Balance Sheet, under Current Assets, we read that whereas the item "Treasury Deposit - Bates' Bursary" showed £23,100 last year, by the end of this financial year it was - zilch. Plus, ACU&S has made a loss, for the fourth consecutive year, this time of £20,484. Worse, its assets are not just non-existent but negative, to the tune of another £6,104. No wonder Geoff Lowden has been so nervous about ECB's offer of a free audit.

How depressing that perpetuity proved so short-lived and that this should be the outcome of the Ted Bates legacy. For this was not the pie-in-the-sky money that Stuart-King talks about. This was not cheap money, not money Ted Bates came by easily. This was real money, hard earned and sweated for, every penny of it. There had been no hand-outs, no free loading along the way. Ted Bates was the kind of person whose efforts and sacrifice helped to make the Association what it once was, a man who wanted to carry on making a contribution to cricket, and it was right that his name was to have been perpetuated. No effort should have been spared - and, in fairness to the new treasurer, perhaps it was not - to ensure that the Ted Bates' bequest remained undisturbed. Even so, although it has been spent in desperation to preserve the Association, members of General Council bear a responsibility in this matter.

In saying that, though, let us not forget the real culprits. Until Barrie Stuart-King took charge, both the Club Cricket Conference and the Association had been financially sound. It took barely four years for both organisations to be bought to the very edge of disaster. Even a Stuart-King needs help to do that and at ACU&S he found it in the obsequious and unquestioning compliance of Brandon, Rawson, Farnfield, Smith, Bennett, Freeman, Say, Bastable, Fielden and other self-important nonentities most of whom still pretend, whilst offering membership forms to join ICUS, merely to be preparing a 'fallback' alternative. (Nor can the current deputy treasurer, Martin Reed, scrupulously copied with all relevant papers and e-mails, plead innocence. Whatever the reason for his apparent amusement as he presented last year's accounts in the cowardly absence of Freeman - surprise, mirth, or possibly nervousness - surely he must now see the truth and, at last, do the honourable thing.) All these, and Stuart-King, are the people who threw away the fruits of Ted Bates' hard work, casually sabotaging the bursary that was to have carried his name. In perpetuity.