John M Brown – A Tribute

Derbyshire County Cricket Club is deeply saddened by the news of the death of John M Brown, the county club scorer since 2000.

Heritage Officer, David Griffin, looks back at John’s 23-year career in charge of the club scorebooks.

John Martin Brown was born in Barry, Glamorgan, Wales in 1937 and became interested in cricket at an early age, attending Don Bradman’s final Test match for Australia against England at The Oval in 1948.

He would later recall that although he went to Bradman’s final Test, he never actually saw the great man bat, the Australian having been dismissed for nought a day earlier.

A teacher by profession, he played, umpired and scored cricket and became the Derbyshire scorer at the start of the 2000 season following Stan Tacey’s retirement after seventeen years in the post.

Beginning with a Benson and Hedges Cup game against Yorkshire at Derby, John scored in almost 500 Derbyshire matches across all formats as well as for MCC and in 2011, a Women’s ODI between England and New Zealand at Derby.

In 2022, he acted as scorer for India in their Test match against England at Edgbaston and by the time his scoring career drew to a close he had performed official scoring duties for 25 different cricket teams including Nottinghamshire who called upon his services in a non-first class game against Barbados in Bridgetown in 2012.

He added the role of public address announcer to his repertoire in the second half of his tenure as scorer and thus became the public voice of the county at the majority of home fixtures.

When he stepped down from the role of scorer at the end of 2022 he was awarded an Honorary Life Membership by the club.

In 2018, as part of the Derbyshire Cricket Foundation project “An Oral History of Cricket in Derbyshire” John agreed to be interviewed and there are four splendid short films totalling a combined 80 minutes of John talking to this writer about his long life, inside and outside of cricket and they are available by clicking on these links which are in chronological order of recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbamJC7mDhM&t=14s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A0ZUyCwOpI&t=14s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdW6KisuSas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNyrXlUn5P8

John scored Derbyshire cricket matches for 23 seasons, a tally only bettered by Walter Piper’s 24 years at the beginning of the 20^th century and following his retirement, he became a regular attendee at home matches and was a popular and recognisable figure around the boundary.

Everyone connected with Derbyshire County Cricket Club would like to extend their condolences to John’s family and friends.