Kim Jones, 1954 - 2014

Kim Jones was one of the nicest people I never met.  Several times, we came agonisingly close to meeting.  We were sometimes at the same cricket match on different days or even on the same day but at different ends of the ground.

I knew him mainly through Bearsfans, the on-line discussion forum for supporters of Warwickshire County Cricket Club.  He set up the forum and also was the leading light behind Spin cricket magazine, which he owned.  His articles for Spin and his Bearsfans postings all brimmed with his unique blend of wit and wisdom.

Few of us who knew him in recent times were aware of his unique and varied history – his childhood in Africa where he had a baby crocodile as a pet, his successful academic career at Shrewsbury School and at Oxford, his qualifications in both law and accountancy (not always a guarantee of either wit or wisdom) and his work in the world of advertising including running successful agencies both here and in the States.

What we did come to know was that he was a caring man of immense kindness.  When I had some problems with personal issues on-line, he helped to resolve the situation behind the scenes.  When my daughter was the victim of some unfair and untrue comments, he did the same.  He also gave her valuable opportunities to cut her journalistic teeth with Spin.

For me and for others, it was a dreadful start to the New Year when we heard that Kim was terminally ill.  Fortunately, many of us were able to send him messages of goodwill so that he was aware, in the short time before his passing, of the deep affection in which he was held by so many people.  A handwritten letter from Warwickshire and England’s Jonathan Trott probably took pride of place because, whenever anyone wrote something critical of Trotty, you could be sure that Kim would leap to his defence, often with irrefutable statistics to back up his argument.  Warwickshire captain Jim Troughton phoned him to offer his support and sympathy.

Similar tributes flowed out at his funeral on 10 February at Wrexham Crematorium and at the appropriately titled Big Bash Cricket Tea at Sweeney Hall in Oswestry.  The same words were used over and over again, in both the written and the spoken tributes.  He was kind, generous, knowledgeable, intelligent, modest, unassuming.  He made people laugh and they felt privileged to have known someone who was both a gentleman and a gentle man.

His wife and his sister both spoke movingly of their deep love for Kim.  George Dobell, a good friend over many years, also gave a heartfelt tribute.  At Kim’s request, George wore a jacket that had once belonged to the lead singer of Showaddywaddy.  Greater love hath no man for his friend than to be willing to stand up in front of so many people in such a monstrosity of a garment!

Unusually for a funeral, all three of these tributes evoked rounds of applause that seemed entirely fitting.  There was so much of Kim everywhere in that room, all his very special qualities that were being celebrated, that it seemed irrelevant to me that in front of us was a coffin that was eventually consigned to the flames.  That wooden box may have contained his mortal remains but Kim was all around us and, most especially, in our hearts.

Here is the lovely poem by Michael Laskey that is so appropriate that it might have been specially written for Kim:

I shall play cricket in heaven
in return for the afternoons
gladly given to the other
pleasure of others' leisure.

I shall walk, without haste, to the wicket
and nod to the angels kitted
in their whites waiting to discern
the kind of batspirit I am.

And one stroke in heaven, one dream
of a cover drive will redeem
every meeting of bat
and ball I've done without.

And I'll bowl too, come on to bowl
leg-breaks with such control
of flight and slight changes of pace
that one over will efface

the faint regret I now feel.
But best of all I shall field:
alert in the heavenly deep,
beyond the boundary of sleep.

Kim Jones – may you rest in peace.