Southport and Birkdale CC mourns death of former Chairman of Selectors Howard Skelton

By Paul Edwards 

An already difficult winter for members of Southport and Birkdale CC became considerably tougher recently with the news of the death of Howard Skelton at the age of 84.

The former chairman of selectors had been admitted to hospital with a condition unrelated to Covid-19 but then caught the virus and passed away soon afterwards.

It barely needs to be said that Skelton will be greatly missed.

A man of deep knowledge and independent mind, his summaries of the matches he had watched may have been pithy and frank but they were rarely wide of the mark.

A life devoted to club cricket in Manchester had given him the right to express his judgement, and his love of the game and all its complexities were plain to anyone who spent five minutes in his company.

No-one ever accused Howard Skelton of not caring.

And like Peter Sutcliffe, who passed away last month, Skelton had played a lot of cricket before he arrived at Trafalgar Road over 15 years ago.

A fine wicketkeeper-bats-an, he had captained all the senior teams at East Levenshulme CC at some stage in his career before moving first to Timperley and then to Newton Heath.

“Cricket was my dad’s life,” said Skelton’s son, Karl. “He used to take me every week to the games at East Levenshulme and he virtually lived in the cricket club all weekend.

“He was involved in all the functions and cricket always came first for him. He was quite intense about it.”

Both Karl and his son, Dean, were wicketkeepers and Howard’s move to Southport was prompted partly by a desire to watch them play more frequently.

Howard Skelton (front row, centre), in his days as captain of East Levenshulme CC

Before too long, however, his ability to assess players was noticed and he became chairman of selectors or, as players of a much more distant vintage were wont to describe it, “the bingo caller”.

It was not a phrase anyone could use when Howard chaired the meetings.

In more recent years Howard took considerable pleasure from seeing Dean play cricket and it is perhaps a small consolation that he was at Trafalgar Road for the final games of the 2020.

As ever, his fresh and first-hand observations were worthy of a man thirty and more years younger.

“You can’t help getting older,” said the American comedian, George Burns, “but you don’t have to get old.”

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