RICHARD RUEGG KERSHAW 1934 – 2014
Life Vice President Nomads CC & President Nomads CC 2003-2006
With great regret the club learned that our recent past President of the club Richard Kershaw had died at home April 28th 2014. Richard had a very successful career as a journalist and broadcaster on TV and Radio but was also a devoted club cricketer playing for Stoics, Pickersgill, Lords Taverners, Lords and Commons, Hurlingham and Nomads.
He was always a most engaging presence in any cricket XI with some amusing eccentricities. He was a tower of strength behind our centenary year celebrations which set in motion a great revival for the Nomads Cricket Club which endures to this day.
Richard was a wicket keeper batsman who often opened the innings. He scored one century for Nomads in 1977 against a strong Old Johnians side at St John’s School Leatherhead probably his debut innings. He scored a 99 the next year for Nomads but once an elected member this impressive start was not emulated.
He was quite the most talkative batsman ever to play for Nomads if not any other club engaging in conversation anyone in reasonable reach, wicket keeper, slips, the bowler, umpires and even on one occassion at Longparish a stationery tractor.
Although a stalwart playing member of some rather ‘grand’ cricket clubs such as Hurlingham, Lords and Commons, Izingari and Lord’s Taverners he was a very keen Nomad and a most diligent President of the club.
John Nagenda Nomads Vice President writes of Richard
I never came to London without ringing Kershaw (as I called him, never Richard) and we would arrange Lunch, at the Beefsteak or Hurlingham, the last time at the Boisdale. Then he was getting weaker, but three bottles still slid down our throats; and the talking! He never stopped.
Once, at Longparish in Hampshire playing cricket he had been sent to long leg. I noticed he was talking to the tractor. I pointed this out at tea. He was highly indignant: “What you didn’t realise was that there was a pigeon there.” He never, ever, had the airs of the well-known (which he very much was because of the TV) and would talk to anybody even after village games, which thrilled his audience. I called him Tony Curtis whom he much resembled; down to the eyelashes! I am sure he liked it. From ’63 when I first met him to this year, I never heard him say a cruel or unkind word to a soul.
And yet he had met the Mighty of the Earth. In April when I came for an operation I never saw him but we talked on the telephone. It was obvious he was terribly sick but he had been for a number of years. We made plans to meet in June or July. I will see Jan Parry instead, and that “girl”, whom he nursed through terrible sickness when she was crushed on her moped by a double-decker bus, and who has done the same back, and I, will talk of many things. Will you talk where you’ve gone Kershaw old friend? I bet !
The funeral was held at Mortlate Crematorium on May 12th Monday 10.40am, 2014.
At the funeral or rather celebration of Richard’s Life Tributes were read by Chris Capron, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, Sue MacGregor while that by Bill Tidy was given by way of Cartoon illustrations.
Daily Telegraph Obituary …0o0.. Scotsman Obituary ..0o0.. Times Obituary
When The Frederick Pickersgill Memorial XI ceased Richard carried on with some of the fixtures one of which was a match at Hungerford CC against a side raised by ace computer scorer ‘Geordie’..from 2003 this became The President’s XI against Geordie’s XI until 2009.
Richard would always meet the Nomads XI at a hostelry outside Hungerford for lunch and then proceed to chatter away for the rest of the day, the course of the match and evening. Kershaw with Bill Frindall, skippers, umpire and scorer
