The Rabbit, Test Match Special And The Chipping Sodbury CC Website
Article Date: 1st September 2004
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This web site mentioned on Radio 4 LW
Last Saturday was a pretty big occasion for us cricket fans in the south west. Gloucestershire, the one-day kings, had made it to Lords yet again and as happened last year, they were to play Worcestershire in the C&G Trophy Final.
It's sometimes a tad annoying when Gloucestershire make it to these finals, but only because as a Gloucestershire fan and Saturday league club cricketer your loyalties tend to lie with the donning of whites, rather than shorts and shades at Lords!
So come match day, like many others I watched the morning action on Channel 4 as Jonathan Lewis ripped the heart out of the Worcestershire top order. There would be the odd comment from the analyst Simon Hughes who weeks before had made a joking reference to Chipping Sodbury Cricket in his Daily Telegraph column.
Test Match Special
Come the afternoon, with people on their way to matches and away from a TV they turned to the institution which is Test Match Special on BBC Radio 4 LW. So anyway, it was a bit of a surprise when Mr Agnew and co. started to talk about the Devizes Cricket Club Rabbit and then went onto mention Chipping Sodbury Cricket Club.
After an email had been sent in drawing attention to the Devizes Cricket Club rabbit story on our web site, the TMS team wondered how we were connected with Devizes Cricket Club and the rabbit. Well I'll just set the record straight. Nothing. I just thought the story was so humourous (though it obviously wouldn't be if it happened to us!) that I decided to put it on our web site.
Did the rabbit die?
There also seemed to be a bit of confusion about whether the rabbit that started the Devizes fire did actually die or escape. Our version said that the ickle rabbit may have survived as no rabbit body had been found. This was early after the story broke, but later in the day during an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, a Devizes Cricket Club representative confirmed that the skeleton of the poor poor rabbit had in fact been found in the smouldering ashes. Hare today, gone tomorrow. (I know, I know, it was a rabbit!)
