Dawson set for an emotional farewell

GLEN DAWSON

CROMPTON captain Glenn Dawson will tomorrow night hang up his cricketing boots.

At the age of 47 and with stacks of runs behind him, the batsman has decided the time is right to retire.

“I decided before the season began that this would be my last year,” said Dawson. “My body was telling me it was time to retire.

“It had been taking until Friday for the aches to disappear from the previous weekend and then you go and do it all over again!”

Dawson will have one last hurrah tomorrow when he captains Crompton in a poignant Twenty20 fixture against Shaw, for whom he started out as a seven-year-old.

The Shaw Cup game will be sponsored by Shaw Parish Council and starts at 6pm.

Dawson’s interest in cricket stemmed from his father John’s involvement at Shaw CC.

Dawson jnr played for the club’s under-16s until leaving for Crompton at the age of 15.

He subsequently joined Heyside for whom he made over 10,000 runs in the Saddleworth League.

During one season, Dawson passed the 1,000 runs mark and he was a member of the team which won the title in 1993, ’94 and ’95, the first of those seasons yielding a league and Tanner Cup double.

During a long and successful cricketing career, Dawson also had spells at Werneth in the CLL and Marsden in the Huddersfield League.

He played with many top professionals, including West Indian legends Joel Garner (1977) and Rohan Kanhai (1979). Both were paid men during his first spell at Crompton.

Dawson also spoke in glowing terms of another Crompton professional, Saeed Anwar, and he nominated Pakistan’s Mudassar Nazar as the best player he has ever faced.

There have been disappointments along the way and Crompton’s Wood Cup semi-final exit at the hands of Rochdale this season was a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

“It was made worse by the fact that I missed out on two previous finals,” said Dawson. “I played for Werneth and Crompton on the way to finals, but was 12th man on both occasions.”

A brighter note at Crompton was the club’s appearance in the 2005 Lancashire Inter-League Trophy final against Haslingden.

Although Crompton were beaten by the Lancashire League side, the atmosphere at Glebe Street was terrific.

Dawson would have been available for Crompton’s final two CLL games on his return from holiday next month, but he is taking a football coaching course which will clearly benefit the team he runs, Manchester North End under-16s.

His son, Scott plays for this team, and the 15-year-old is also destined to ensure that the Dawson cricketing tradition continues.

Scott, a left-hand batsman and medium pace bowler, is a member of Crompton second team.

n SIMON Wright will skipper Crompton’s first team for the rest of their CLL campaign.