Why I love cricket
Leicester and England full-back Dusty Hare scored a world-record 7,337 first-class points, but left school at 16 to play cricket for Nottinghamshire
Dusty Hare
Interview by Adam Hathaway
My father played at a local club called Collingham in Newark, so I was down there as a boy and when I went to Magnus Grammar School, also in Newark, I was very lucky. We had a cricket master called Chris Grant, who has just passed away [see page 118], but he was a very good club cricketer and had had a couple of games for Nottinghamshire’s first team. I played for the age-group county sides for Nottinghamshire and through Chris got some games for Notts 2nd XI when I was about 16.
When I was 17 I was playing against Leicestershire seconds and I managed to get 60-odd. I was a back-foot player, and the former Test player Reg Simpson, who was a director of Gunn & Moore and a back-foot player in his day, took me under his wing. He always made sure I had a good bat and I was bit of a favourite of his. From that game they asked me if I would join the staff at Notts. I left school a year early to be a professional cricketer and joined on the same day as Derek Randall and Bill Taylor.