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Toby Reynolds: Putting the community at the heart of things
Toby Reynolds on a heart-warming story of a tour that creates special memories
Every summer for the last 44 years, a small village in the Cotswolds hosts over 30 “tourists” for a week’s cricket festival for the Fathers and Sprogs Cricket Club (FAS CC).
Last Tuesday, the players and families convened at a picturesque cottage in Blockley after the final match for one last BBQ.
As the evening progresses, the players reminisce about the week’s cricket. Inevitably, a juggled dolly becomes a flying catch and run tallies double amid friendly banter. Later, there will be prizes and live music to round off another successful tour.
Formerly known as Fathers and Sons Cricket Club, the FAS was conceived in the 1970s by Barry ‘Baz’ Dare after he played in a school fathers-and-sons match with his elder son Cliff.
In 1981 his idea took flight with the inaugural FAS match. A year later, the first multi-day tour was hosted at the home of Baz and Wendy Dare, and by the mid-80s, the FAS were playing up to three matches every day for a whole week.
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Tour Importance
Speaking on the final day of the 2025 tour, Baz’s younger son Jos described why the tour is so important.
“There is no other forum where this could happen,” he says. “There is club cricket, academy cricket and professional cricket, but there’s nowhere for intergenerational cricket.
And Baz is the guy who went and did it and set up the very first fixture, against Salford & Cornwell.”
With matches all around Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire, FAS CC have played 400 matches over the last 43 years, but the tour is so much more than cricket.
“In one way, the best memories of the tour are of the cricket itself,” Jos continues. “But it’s perhaps the most inconsequential aspect of it.
“We’re all quite competitive and want to do well but when it’s done, it’s done. We’ve had some amazing cricketing times, with people taking five-wicket hauls and scoring great hundreds.
“That’s fun, but the really good stuff is what happens off the pitch. The tour is about the parents and children who get to play together, and also about their relationship and its development.
“As any parent will tell you, there’s a tricky period when your child goes through puberty and slowly your relationship with them changes. A lot of generations have found that difficult. The tour has created a forum in which boys and girls can play with a variety of characters and ages and create a new relationship with their parents.”
Family Theme
The tour is now run by Cliff and Jos, with the third generation of Dares fully involved too. Both of Jos’s sons, Jamie and Tom, and Cliff ’s children, Hal and Zoe, play every year as the theme of family continues.
Hal says: “For me, FAS is a community. Zoe and I are in a unique position because we started coming on tour from the moment we were born. So I have known the core of this group all my life.
“It is very much a community of people who love chatting about cricket but also share the same ethos and values that we do. And that’s special, because it’s the embodiment of community that we are losing within society, through globalisation and mass media. This tour is a constant.”
Jamie echoes that sentiment: “I love playing with my dad and being able to talk to him on the cricket field, but I also love seeing him bowl his spin, especially after he broke his wrist recently. It’s just so nice seeing your family doing well and performing well alongside them.”
With grassroots cricket continuing to fight for space in a crowded market, it is becoming more and more important that success stories like the FAS continue to develop.
Jos says: “I think we had seven Dares in a side once. Those are the highs, when you’re playing with your friends and your family.
“The tour is about the impact on and the importance of the community game and grassroots cricket, and how that ultimately feeds into all of cricket. If you don’t have a community of people who are interested in the game, then who’s going to end up doing it for England?”
FAS
Over 400 people have represented FAS, from a broad spectrum of society, including a real-life rocket scientist, who has collated all the stats from the 40 years, and a 6’ 11” eco-warrior who opens the batting.
The tourists are never thirsty, thanks to supplies from brewmaster Rob, while Ben, an aspiring Michelin star chef, cooks the award-winning meat from his father’s farm in the evening after a hard day’s bowling to that self-same dad, who has been keeping wicket.
With the rise of women’s cricket, the FAS has continued to adapt, seeing mothers and daughters representing the club, the most prominent being Zoe, who has played 37 times. Her brother Hal says: “She’s awesome. She just loves her sport. I’ve had lovely moments, with her bowling to me in internal games and playing together for years. These moments are really important.”
In the chaos of everyday life, cricket and the tour remain a constant. The FAS means so much to so many, all thanks to the enduring community created by the Dares.
Vicky, Jos’ wife, captures the warmth and excitement that the tour brings each year, saying: “It’s kind of like Christmas. It comes round once a year, and you see these people every summer, but you might not see them in between. You see the people who were 11 and who are now 42!
“My highlight is whenever I go to Temple Grafton and in my mind’s eye I see Baz standing on the boundary with his grandson Jamie. It’s quite something just seeing things cycle through the generations like that.”
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