Len and Big D tally up many years of scoring

WARWICK SMITH/Manawatu Standard

THE LEN AND BIG D COMBO: Finishing their scoring season for the Manawatu rep side on Monday were Len Osborne, left, and Duncan Mitchell.

Relevant offers

Len Osborne remembers cutting his teeth at Lord's in London, scoring Australian great Donald Bradman's last innings there.

Osborne was a 16-year-old schoolboy then, way back in 1948, sitting in the grandstand with a scorebook on his knee.

That was 62 years ago and Osborne wants to keep scoring for at least two more years, until he is 80.

During the past 20 years or so, he and Duncan Mitchell have usually been in tandem, cocooned in glassed boxes keeping tabs on every run and ball at Manawatu and Central Districts matches.

Mitchell, a 42-year-old EziBuy employee, has also scored five tests at Napier, 16 one-day internationals and six women's one-dayers at Palmerston North and Levin.

Osborne can claim 10 international one-dayers and two tests.

In his youth, Osborne played club cricket near Slough in Buckinghamshire and by 1960 was working as an engineer with Hawker Siddeley, making nuclear power plant equipment.

When that closed, he began teaching. But living 20km from Heathrow Airport at Woking was far from ideal.

"We were directly in line with the runway and the noise was getting us down," he said.

By 1971 he wanted out.

He wasn't turned on by glossy magazines promoting prospective countries, so when he saw a "cyclostyled A4 sheet from New Zealand", that sealed it.

He chose a teaching job at Dannevirke High School in 1971 over one in Oamaru, then spent two years at Aparima College in deepest Southland and finished as a maths teacher at Palmerston North Boys' High School (1978-93).

"I packed up teaching and took up scoring," he laughed.

The Sandbrook boys are his grandsons and when their teams needed a scorer, Osborne was that man.

Meanwhile, Mitchell, from a Kimbolton farming family, got his nickname, "Big D", at Boys' High because there were two Duncan Mitchells at College House.

He began scoring for the 1st XI in 1983-84 and went on the 1984 tour to Queensland, started with the Manawatu team in 1987-88 and has scored for the Palmerston and Old Boys club sides.

"If you make a mistake you always get it fixed in five minutes," Mitchell said. "The biggest thing is regularly checking with your partner."

Four years ago he became the scoring trainer for Central Districts and since then has been paid to do live scoring for New Zealand Cricket's website.

"I enjoy doing scoring and seeing young ones like Jamie How and Mathew Sinclair come through at grass-roots level," Mitchell said.

He or Osborne travel away with the Manawatu team and Mitchell once had to play for Old Boys. He even got a wicket when a half-tracker was caught on the boundary by Paul Mochan; but when Mitchell batted, he was bowled by brother Cameron.

- © Fairfax NZ News