Gwynne Jones : meet the CFX Academy director

FULL NAME: Gwynne Auld Jones
BORN: At Harare, 23 April 1945
MAJOR TEAMS: Worcestershire II, Buckinghamshire
KNOWN AS: Gwynne Jones
BATTING STYLE: Right Hand Bat
BOWLING STYLE: Right Arm Fast Medium, later Medium Pace
OCCUPATION: Former teacher, now Director of CFX Academy

BIOGRAPHY (November 2000)

When the CFX Academy opened at Country Club in Harare, it was vital for the Zimbabwe Cricket Union to find the right man as its first director. They made an excellent choice when they appointed Gwynne Jones, a man with wide experience as a player, teacher and coach with experience in Zimbabwe, England, South Africa and New Zealand.

Gwynne was born in Harare, then Salisbury, in a strong cricketing family and his younger brother Robin was to play for the country several times during the Seventies. Gwynne also had the ability to play first-class cricket, but circumstances deprived him of the opportunity to show what he could do.

Gwynne attended Blakiston Primary School in Harare, and later Prince Edward High School. An all-rounder, he played for the Prince Edward first team in 1963 and 1964, and in the latter year played in the Rhodesia Schools Nuffield team. Between 1962 and 1966 he played first-league cricket for Harare Sports Club and Old Hararians.

In 1966 he did his national service in the Rhodesian air force and immediately after that left for Loughborough University in England, which offered the best physical education teaching course in the world. While there he obtained the MCC Youth Coaching Certificate and captained their cricket team during his last two years, in 1968 and 1969.

Informed that if he returned to Rhodesia he would be required to do a further 18 months' national service, during the UDI years and at the start of a war that he did not believe in, and having just married an English girl, he decided to stay in that country. From 1969 to 1972 he was director of physical education at Forest School in Wanstead, Essex, then had successive jobs as head of physical education and master in charge of cricket at Gravesend Grammar School from 1973 to 1975 and Hutton Grammar School in Lancashire from 1976 to 1982.

In the meantime he was pursuing his own cricket career, and almost had a chance to play professional county cricket at this time. While at Loughborough University he had played a number of matches against county second teams and club and ground sides, which contained players who had already represented their counties. He played a couple of matches for Glamorgan Seconds, and when he scored a century against the Worcestershire club and ground side he was invited to trials there in 1972. Worcestershire already had three overseas players then in the New Zealanders Glenn Turner and John Parker, and West Indian Vanburn Holder, but Gwynne was now a naturalized English player, having lived in the country for five years. He was on the verge of being signed up for the county when suddenly the regulations regarding overseas players were changed from five to ten years and he no longer qualified. They still wanted to sign up Gwynne and play him in their second team, but he was now a schoolteacher and was not prepared to give up teaching to play second XI cricket.

Instead he became the overseas player for Buckinghamshire in the Minor Counties championship and the Gillette Cup in 1972, and played for the county until 1981. He remembers playing Kent at Canterbury in his first Gillette Cup in 1973 match, when he opened the batting with John Turner. Buckinghamshire were put in to bat on a damp pitch, but Gwynne and Turner had put on 90 for the first wicket by lunch and shared a stand that eventually realized 126. Gwynne made 47 and, although his team eventually went down by seven wickets, he also took the wicket of the current England captain Mike Denness.

Having scored more than 800 runs for the county in 1975, he was chosen to play for Minor Counties (West) in the Benson and Hedges Cup of 1976. His first match was at Amersham in April, facing Gloucestershire and Mike Procter on a green and uneven club pitch that he considered as being positively dangerous.

By now he was playing primarily as an opening batsman; a knee injury had forced him to slow down from fast bowling to become a fairly occasional medium-pacer. While at Gravesend he played Kent league cricket for the town club but continued to play Minor Counties cricket for Buckinghamshire. In about 1972 he recorded the highest score of his career in any class of cricket, an innings of about 190 for Stoics. In 1974 he qualified as an MCC Advanced Coach.

He moved up to Lancashire in 1976, playing as the club professional and coach for Middleton in the Central Lancashire League in 1976, when he scored 824 runs at an average of 35.83 and took 24 wickets at 19.58. In 1977 and 1978 he was the professional for Preston in the Northern League before captaining them for a further three seasons. He then moved to Fleetwood, where he set up an amateur batting record in 1982. That year he organized the Lancashire leagues professional tour to Holland that included Rob Bentley, Lawrence Seeff and Greg Hayes.

Rhodesia was now the independent country of Zimbabwe, and in 1982 Gwynne returned there, taking up a job in commerce and resuming club cricket for Old Hararians and taking on responsibilities as team selector and coach. He spent 1985 and 1986 back in England, studying for a master's degree in business administration at Bradford University and writing a 20 000-word thesis on finances and sponsorship of first-class cricket as part of the course.

Returning to Zimbabwe, he was appointed Zimbabwe Under-25 team manager against the Young New Zealand touring team and also joint liaison manager with Russell Tiffin for that tour. Again, however, he was not to stay long, spending the 1989/90 season as player-coach for the University of Auckland Cricket Club before moving back to England. He took up a post as the A-level economics teacher at Epsom College in Surrey, and in 1994 took over as master in charge of cricket. The Flower brothers came to Epsom as professional coaches under his guidance.

In 1997 he took early retirement from teaching with the aim of working professionally within cricket. He spent six months during the 1997/98 season as professional coach at St Andrew's College in Grahamstown in South Africa, and it was while he was here that Dave Houghton contacted him and urged him to consider setting up the national cricket academy in Harare, due to start in 1999.

Gwynne still had to finish his contract with Epsom, and spent the 1998 season there, his last, as director of cricket and professional coach. He then returned to Zimbabwe to take over the post of Academy director immediately, preparing for the first intake of students in 1999. During this time he managed the successful Zimbabwe A team to tour South Africa and Namibia.

He has now completed two years as director of the Academy, taking overall responsibility for every aspect of the students' training. The job gives him the opportunity to use his MBA skills and all the experience he has accumulated over the years in four different countries, and the young cricketers of the country could not be in better hands. Already seven Academy players have played international cricket and twelve have represented the A side.