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2010-2019
Five Titles in Seven Years
Relegation, Rebuilding and a Golden Era
The Twenty-Tens, 2010-2019
The decade began with the club falling out of the Birmingham League altogether, and ended with two of its own juniors playing first-class and international cricket. In between came the finest season Sutton Coldfield has ever played.
Relegated from the Birmingham & District Premier Cricket League in 2011, the club answered not with panic but with patience. Steve Perryman, the former Warwickshire and Worcestershire player and coach, was appointed head coach and new ECB-funded practice nets were opened; Dan Childs arrived from Boland to bowl fast and mow the square; and a Saturday side largely under the age of twenty-two learned to win together. By 2013 they were unbeaten champions with five trophies in a single summer, and promotion followed in 2014 and again in 2015. The years that followed brought a tour trophy from Spain, a club record score of 411 for 2, a moving Great War centenary that reconnected Rectory Park with its own lost generation, and the deaths of two much-loved clubmen whose memory the club still carries.
Warwickshire County Champions 2010 — the junior generation that would go on to power the senior sides through the decade
Relegation and the Long Rebuild (2010–2012)
The decade opened in difficulty. Already relegated into Division 3 of the Birmingham & District Premier Cricket League, the 1st XI of 2010 would have dropped out of the Birmingham League altogether had Madeley CC of the Shropshire League not declined to join it. The Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Joel Napier led the batting with 428 runs at 25.18, and Richard Norgrove carried the attack almost alone with 45 wickets at 10.9. The promise lay elsewhere: the under-13s and under-14s each won their Warwickshire County Championship, and a ladies' team was formed under Kim Harvey.
In 2011 the drop came anyway, the 1st XI relegated out of the Birmingham League and into the Warwickshire Cricket League. Graham Clark alone distinguished himself with the bat, scoring 357 runs at 29.8, while the overseas bowler Murtuza Hussain took 38 league wickets at 13.6. Yet the two most important events of the year were not results at all: Steve Perryman was appointed the club's head coach, and on Saturday 30th April new practice nets, funded mainly by the ECB, were opened at Rectory Park.
The turn came in 2012 under a new chairman, Colin Greetham. Dan Childs, a fast bowler from Boland born in Cape Town who had played in South Africa's 2008 Under 19 World Cup side, arrived as overseas player and was the Warwickshire Premier Division's leading wicket-taker with 54 at 9.17 — including a sensational 5 for 2 against Highway. The 1st XI finished runners-up, the Sunday side won its division, and Steve Russell's Saturday 3rd XI recorded its highest league position ever. All three Saturday teams were filled with players under twenty-two.
The 2013 Season — Five Titles
The 2013 season is widely considered the greatest in the club's modern history. The Saturday 1st XI, captained by Graham Clark, went unbeaten through the Warwickshire Cricket League Premier Division, winning 13 games, drawing 8 and accumulating a league record 426 points. Dan Childs, back as overseas player and now employed as the club's groundsman, took 56 league wickets at 10.9 — his second consecutive season past fifty — with 6 for 24 at Bablake, 6 for 32 against Bedworth and 5 for 28 against Handsworth.
Lee Thomason just failed to reach a thousand runs in the division, finishing with 969 at over 60.6, including 112 not out against Nuneaton and 100 not out against Bablake. Mark Guest made 641 at 37.7 with a hundred off 100 balls against Kenilworth, James Hunt 604 at 50.3, and Jack Smith 135 not out against Olton. Promotion back into the Birmingham League was celebrated as a watershed, the 2nd XI going up alongside them as runners-up in their own Premier Division.
Four more titles followed. The Sunday 1st XI were champions of the Warwickshire Sunday League; the WCL T20 final was won at Hampton & Solihull, Bedworth held to 128 for 7 before Lee Thomason's 62 and Aaron Thomason's unbeaten 40 saw Sutton home in 17.3 overs; Walmley's floodlit round-robin was taken with three wins from three; and on Sunday 22nd September Aldridge were beaten in the Last Man Stands final, 147 answered with 148 for 7. Five titles in one summer.
Sutton Coldfield CC 1st XI, 2015 — back: James Hunt, Tom Wright, Steven Howard, Paul Griffiths, Dan Childs, Eustace; front: Mark Guest, Lee Thomason, Graham Clark (captain), Jack Smith, Lewis Harrison
Promotion, Remembrance and a Knock-Out Cup (2014–2015)
Back in the Birmingham League, the side went straight through it. Graham Clark's 1st XI won Division 3 at the first attempt in 2014, taking 340 points from 22 matches and promotion into Division 2. Lee Thomason and James Hunt each passed 500 runs, and Steven Howard and Dan Childs led the bowling. The title was sealed in the final game on Saturday 13th September, and some hundred people stayed for a hog roast in the busiest clubhouse anyone could remember.
The same year the Friends of Rectory Park began clearing the neglected ground behind the pavilion to create a Garden of Remembrance for the centenary of the Great War, erecting an inscribed stone monument in a newly planted wildflower garden — a 'nectar bank' built around the red poppy — later completed with a mural on the pavilion's rear wall. An impressive Roll of Honour had once hung in the pavilion, but it had been destroyed by hooligans and no copy of the names survived.
Promotion came again in 2015, the 1st XI finishing runners-up to Bridgnorth, and with it the B&DPCL T20 knock-out: acknowledged underdogs, Sutton beat Premier Division Berkswell by 57 runs in the semi-final and then, all out for 132 in the final, saw Lewis Harrison take three wickets for three runs in the last over to beat Barnards Green by four. That August Peter Bell marked his fiftieth year at the club with a Bank Holiday tea, at which four life members sat down together — Neil Houghton with 61 years' membership, Peter Bell with 50, James Ross with 45 and John Robinson with 44, two hundred years between them.
The Free Foresters return to their birthplace, 11th September 2016 — the 160th anniversary match at Rectory Park
La Manga, 'Ten Not Out' and the Free Foresters' 160th (2016)
The 2016 season opened abroad. On 7th April a party drawn largely from the 1st XI flew to La Manga for a four-day T20 tournament against ten sides, and won all five of their games — Findon overwhelmed by 222 for 3 with Pete McKay 126 not out, and a Spanish national team beaten by seven wickets in the final, Steve Howard taking 4 for 18. The optimism did not last: injuries and availability told, Lee Thomason's 697 runs at 38.72 were a rare bright spot, and a side that played 2016 in Division 1 of the Birmingham League would begin 2017 in Division 2.
Off the field, 2016 gave the club one of the most remarkable days in its history. On 3rd July, a hundred years after the first day of the Somme, students from Little Sutton Primary School and Birmingham Metropolitan College, working with Birmingham Hippodrome Creative, staged 'A Cricket Match Like No Other'. At the tea interval the schoolchildren sang 'Fifty Good Men', a song they had written; then a cricket ball was exchanged on stage for a hand grenade, and the match became the Somme, ending with the Last Post and the lowering of the club flag.
The 1914 minute book had recorded that fifty members went to war and only ten returned; later research by the club and its partners identified thirty-nine or forty who served and thirteen or fourteen who did not come back. On 11th September the Free Foresters returned to the ground where the Rev. William Bedford founded them on 20th July 1856, for a 160th anniversary match against a Sutton side chosen by Andy Biddle; Sutton won it, with a century by Lee Thomason the highlight. At the AGM of 7th November Colin Greetham stood down after five years in the chair and Steve Russell was elected in his place.
Tom Banton, raised in the SCCC junior section, named PCA Young Player of the Year in 2019 and called up by England
Four Hundred and Eleven, and Two Great Losses (2017–2019)
On Saturday 8th July 2017 at Harborne's Old Church Avenue ground, a Sutton team passed 400 runs for the first time in the club's 170 years. Captain and wicketkeeper Lee Thomason, then 24, finished 202 not out from just 147 balls with 11 sixes and 18 fours, his second hundred coming off 32 deliveries; 22-year-old Tom Eustace made 127 not out from 84 balls, and their unbroken third-wicket stand of 290 carried Sutton to 411 for 2. Nine replacement balls were needed. Harborne replied with 219 for 8, the Sri Lankan overseas player Dinushka Nawarathnage taking 4 for 62.
The 2018 season was overshadowed by loss. Roger Coombs — life member, and a wicketkeeper who claimed 76 victims in the 1961 season, a club record still standing, and close to 900 in his career — died on 6th February aged 83. In June came the sudden death of Andy 'Bids' Biddle, aged 52, after a heart attack while playing for the very Veterans XI he had assembled by cajoling old teammates out of retirement. A junior member since 1978 and known across the town as 'Mr Sutton Coldfield', he was mourned at a packed Holy Trinity. The club acquired a defibrillator for the pavilion wall, and at the 2019 dinner the 'Ten Not Out' trophy was presented posthumously to both men.
In 2019, restructured back into the Warwickshire Premier Division, the 1st XI finished eighth, though Lee Thomason made 854 runs at 53.4 and Dinushka Nawarathnage took 42 wickets at 10.07 with 7 for 44 at Streetly. The proudest moments came from players the club had raised itself. Aaron Thomason, who had made his Warwickshire debut at Lord's on 27th July 2014, signed for Sussex and on first-class debut at Kidderminster made 90 batting at number ten — the third-highest score ever recorded from that position on debut. Tom Banton, a product of the SCCC junior section, was named PCA Young Player of the Year and called into England's Twenty20 squad for the tour of New Zealand.
Key Moments
2011
Relegation and a New Head Coach
The 1st XI were relegated out of the Birmingham League, but Steve Perryman, formerly of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, was appointed head coach and new ECB-funded nets opened on 30th April
2012
Dan Childs Arrives
The Boland fast bowler took 54 wickets at 9.17 to lead the Warwickshire Premier Division, including 5 for 2 against Highway, as Sutton finished runners-up
2013
Five Titles in One Season
Unbeaten WCL Premier Division champions with a record 426 points, plus the Warwickshire Sunday League, the WCL T20 final against Bedworth, Walmley's floodlit competition and the Last Man Stands final against Aldridge
2014
Champions at the First Attempt
Back in the Birmingham League, Graham Clark's side won Division 3 with 340 points from 22 matches and went up to Division 2
2015
T20 Knock-Out Winners
Underdogs beat Berkswell by 57 runs in the semi-final and then Barnards Green by four in the B&DPCL T20 final, Lewis Harrison taking three for three in the last over; the 1st XI were also promoted as runners-up to Bridgnorth
2016
La Manga and 'Ten Not Out'
An SCCC XI won all five of its games at the La Manga T20 tournament in April, and on 3rd July schoolchildren and students staged 'A Cricket Match Like No Other' to mark the centenary of the Somme
2016
The Free Foresters' 160th
On 11th September the Free Foresters returned to the ground where Rev. Bedford founded them in 1856, and Sutton won the anniversary match with a century from Lee Thomason
2017
411 for 2 at Harborne
Lee Thomason's 202 not out and Tom Eustace's unbeaten 127, in a stand of 290, produced the first 400-plus total in the club's 170 years
2018
Roger Coombs and Andy Biddle
The club lost life member and record-setting wicketkeeper Roger Coombs in February and Andy 'Bids' Biddle in June, aged 52, after a heart attack while playing for the Veterans XI he had founded
2019
Banton and Thomason
Tom Banton was named PCA Young Player of the Year and called into England's T20 squad, while Aaron Thomason made 90 at number ten on first-class debut for Sussex
"The position we find ourselves in is where every other team in the 1st XI Premier Division would love to be. We have achieved the leading spot in the league by dividing each game into sessions and playing each one in turn."
Jump to New Decade
Foundations Before Formation
1837-1847
The First Fifty Years
1847-1899
A Time of Change and Uncertainty
1901-1909
A Decade of Transition and Challenge
1910-1919
The Golden Resurgence
1920-1929
The Thirties
1930-1939
Wartime and Renewal
1940-1949
The Fabulous Fifties
1950-1959
Transformation and Tradition
1960-1969
Dixon's Decade
1970-1979
Trophies and Tragedy
1980-1989
Champions at Last
1990-1999
The New Millennium
2000-2009
The Twenty-Tens
2010-2019
The Twenty-Twenties
2020-Present