Proud scorer John receives England call

John, from White Lee, Batley, has been selected to score at two One Day International matches involving England Under-17s at Loughborough University on Friday and Saturday.

It is the culmination of years of hard work for the sports mad cricket scorer and self confessed statto.

John has been first team scorer at Hanging Heaton for 12 years and has been assessed as a Level Two scorer by the Association of Cricket Officials (ACO), who have appointed him to score at the two England fixtures.

John said: “I’m very honoured to have been chosen of score for the England Under-17s, who play Bangladesh Under-19s on Friday and Pakistan Under-19s on Saturday.

“People tend to take scorers for granted but when you are juggling scoring on a laptop and in a book, while keeping the scoreboard up to date it can be quite demanding.

“I put my name forward to score at these games and feel very fortunate to have been chosen from all the candidates who applied.”

John — a Batley Bulldogs fan, Leeds United season ticket holder and Yorkshire CCC member — played all his career at Hanging Heaton and faces a hectic dash back to West Yorkshire from Loughborough to score at Sunday’s Heavy Woollen Cup final.

Stats from a career before scoring

John Virr spent much of the winter researching the history of Hanging Heaton CC since they joined the Bradford League in 1980.

John trawled through old scorebooks to research the records of every player who has featured for the club in the last 33 years.

John is placed seventh in the all time appearance list having played 393 times for the club, where he scored 7,672 runs.