Worcestershire County Cricket Club have honoured three of the most dedicated contributors to press coverage of the county during the last five decades by renaming the New Road Press Box ‘The Curtis, Oldnall and Beddow Press Lounge’. Mike Beddow is the longest serving of the three who have between them given over 150 years of service to Worcestershire cricket.
Mike covered his first Worcestershire game in 1963 and so has covered all five of the county’s championship title winning seasons. After starting work for the John Moxley agency in Birmingham he covered both Warwickshire and Worcestershire for over forty years. He also reported on both Birmingham City and Aston Villa until 1992 before specialising in football programme production for Villa, Everton, Leeds, Manchester City, Luton and Millwall.
But his area of particular expertise was cricket, and he filed copy on Worcestershire and Warwickshire to The Daily Telegraph, The Birmingham Post, Evening Mail, Sunday Mercury, Sports Argus and the Press Association.
Chris Oldnall started as a junior reporter in the mid 1960s working on weekly titles, chiefly the Kidderminster Times and the Stourbridge News before taking over from Jack Godfrey as the Worcestershire cricket correspondent for the Worcester Evening News in 1979. He did 25 years on the paper and its sister, the Saturday night Green ‘Un, before stepping down in 2004 having reported on every home game plus various significant away fixtures in that time. He has also worked as a football reporter throughout and recently clocked up 60 years covering his hometown club, Kidderminster Harriers.
John Curtis is a lifelong Worcestershire fan who first became involved at the club whilst a 14 year old schoolboy at the Royal Grammar School. In those days he was a ‘copy boy’, running Jack Godfrey’s reports from the ground back to the Evening News office on Hylton Road. He became the very first member of the Junior Pears Club and was one of the energetic and industrious operators of the old Diglis End scoreboard.
After starting on the Evening News, John began working with Mike Beddow in 1989, before leaving to join The Press Association in 1995. Here his main role was covering England football games at home and abroad, work which took him all over the world,to numerous major tournaments and allowed him to forge lasting friendships with some of the national game’s most illustrious figures.
However, his heart has always belonged to New Road and as Mike Beddow started to reduce his hours so John’s involvement and influence grew. In the last few years he has become the key man in the New Road Press Box, not only producing huge amounts of interesting and informative copy for the club website but also creating the most warm and welcoming atmosphere in any such facility in the game.
John is irrepressibly enthusiastic, whether talking cricket, music, utter nonsense or mending the coffee machine. No journalist goes unnoticed at New Road, nor is one ever not suitably fed and watered.
All three of the above have played their part in making the New Road Press Box one of the absolute favourites on the cricket journalists’ circuit.
A Club spokesperson, said: “It’s an absolute pleasure to honour Mike, Chris, and John, who have given so much to this club.
“Their dedication to reporting on Worcestershire Cricket has been second to none, and the warmth they’ve shown to everyone passing through the press box is legendary.
“This renaming is a small way for us to say thank you for all the work they’ve done, not just for the club, but for the cricketing community at large.”
In a nod to the spirit of the space, it will now be officially called the “The Curtis, Oldnall & Beddow Press Lounge” — a light-hearted reference to the trio’s priority of building relationships and enjoying each other’s company rather than maintaining a strict, office-like atmosphere. After all, anyone who’s visited will know it was as much about great cricket discussions and friendships as it was about hard-hitting journalism.
