Cricket Development Trust Scotland

Patrons Jonathan Agnew, Mike Gatting, Vic Marks and Derek Pringle »

We are delighted to announce that Jonathan Agnew, Mike Gatting,Vic Marks and Derek Pringle have become patrons of the Cricket Development Trust Scotland.

All three ex-England cricketers already have a strong connection with the Trust having been guest speakers at recent fund raising dinners.These popular annual dinners have raised valuable funds towards the development of grass roots cricket in Scotland.

We are very much looking forward to working with our new patrons as we endeavour to raise the Trust's profile within Scottish Cricket and beyond.

Jonathan Agnew has been involved in the professional game for 43 years and has now been BBC cricket correspondent for over 30 years. ‘Aggers’ first came to note as a seam bowler of genuine pace. In a first class career spent entirely with Leicestershire, Jonathan took more than 650 first class wickets, with a best of 9 for 70 and represented England in three Tests and a further three one-day internationals. After retiring from playing in 1990 aged just 30 he began to pursue a career in broadcasting and joined the TMS team in 1991.

Mike Gatting is an English former cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex (1975–1998; captain 1983–1997) and for England from 1977 to 1995, captaining the national side in twenty-three Test matches between 1986 and 1988. He toured South Africa as captain of the rebel tour party in 1990. He replaced John Buchanan as the county coach, serving during 1999 and 2000.

He is currently an elected member of the Middlesex C.C.C. Executive Board and the M.C.C. Committee. He has previously served as the ECB managing director of Cricket Partnerships and President of Marylebone Cricket Club His highest Test score of 207 was scored in Madras.Gatting later captained England to an Ashes series victory in Australia in 1986/87.

Vic Marks is a sport journalist and former professional cricketer. An off spin bowler, Marks played in six Test matches and thirty four One Day Internationals for England. His entire county cricket career was spent with Somerset, spanning the period between 1975 and 1989.

As a cricketer he was popular and well-liked; Wisden editor, Matthew Engel, labelled him "a mild, nervy, self-deprecating farm boy with an Oxford degree and no enemies". This was an unusual distinction in the Somerset side of the 1980s, where three explosive personalities, Viv Richards, Joel Garner and Ian Botham, had a dispute with captain Peter Roebuck, which resulted in Somerset (under the influence from Roebuck and new club Secretary Tony Brown) opting not to renew Richards' and Garner's contracts in 1986, and Botham leaving the club in protest.

Derek Pringle

Derek is a former Test and One Day International cricketer and is now a cricket journalist. He went on to play 30 Tests, the last of which was in 1992, scoring 695 runs and taking 70 wickets. He also played in 44 One-Day Internationals between 1982 and 1993. He appeared in two World Cups and was a member of England's 1992 World Cup Final team.

He eventually became a cult figure late in his career. His always popular warm-up routine before coming on to bowl involved him lying on his back and apparently wrestling with an invisible octopus. He once damaged his back when his chair collapsed, forcing him to withdraw from a Test match, although the story usually (but wrongly) told is that he sustained the injury whilst writing a letter.

After his playing days he became a cricket correspondent, firstly with The Independent and then The Daily Telegraph. In 2004 Pringle was threatened with deportation by the Mugabe administration in Zimbabwe during an England cricket tour of the country.