Ray Heaven

Raymond Maurice Heaven (8 October 1918 – 4 February 2004) was an English cricketer. Heaven was a right-handed batsman who bowled leg break and who could also field as a wicket-keeper. He was born at Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex.

Heaven made his only first-class appearance for Essex against Yorkshire in the 1939 County Championship at Bramall Lane, Sheffield.[1] In this match he ended Essex's innings unbeaten on 5. He did not keep wicket in this match, but did take 4 catches in the field.[2]

My father Ray Heaven loved all sport, presenting his school Leigh Hall College at the Oval in 1936. I shall quote from a newspaper cutting of 1938 from The Evening News:

     Heaven, a broad-shouldered young man, went to Leigh Hall College where he was outstanding in the cricket team. He played for Essex Public Schools against Surrey Public Schools at Lords in 1935 and made 85 runs. After that, his interest turned to tennis and in 1936 he  won the Essex Junior Singles Championship and was a partner in the successful doubles team. He then went on to play at Junior Wimbledon where he lost in the Last Sixteen.

According to an article published in The Essex County Club Yearbook, entitled Yesterday and Yesteryear, my father describes how he engineered a trial to be in the club's first team. In his own words:

Let me take you back to the winter of 1938: then as a young man, full of hope and ambition to play cricket for my county, I travelled from my place of work in the City of London to a sports complex at Leytonstone where Jack O'Connor and Stan Nichols looked after the cricketing side of the organisation. Arranging to practice in the nets three evenings a week, under the direction of these two fine Essex and England cricketers, seemed to be an excellent way in which to get noticed and known in Essex cricketing circles, especially as previously I had been playing my cricket outside the county. It was, in effect, a planned exercise, designed to make things happen, which continued right through to the spring of 1939 when I was finally invited to a trial at Woodford Wells. The planned exercise worked!

Dad then joined the team and played right up until the out-break of war in the autumn of 1939. During the war, he was a merchant seaman and suffered from post-traumatic stress that required hospitalisation. He was withdrawn from active service and played in the Empire Eleven, playing cricket to boost the nation's morale. According to the press cuttings that I am currently looking at, he was the Captain of the Empire XI in 1941 and C.B. Clarke, the West Indies Test bowler was also in the team, along with H.P. Crabtree and F. Appleyard, formerly of Herts County Cricket Club. The photographs are a real snapshot of time. I shall endeavour to upload some photographs and press cuttings if I can figure out how to do so. My father's archive of photographs from the 1940s is uplifting and insightful, telling the story of a bygone era when the primary motivation of public sporting events was to feed the spirit and the soul, irrespective of financial reward.

My father died on February 4, 2004 at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, having suffered from a surprise heart attack. He was the last of a generation who did not take medication - not even an aspirin - but relied on sport to keep him fit. Indeed, his love of all sport is what drove him and he retained right up until his death the ability to catch a ball lobbed wildly at him without warning from his grand-children. He played golf and tennis right up until his death and I am sure that had he used a little less lard whilst frying sausages, he would easily have made it to 100. (Reference - the musings of his daughter Chantal, writing with reference to a plethora of old newspaper cuttings and a bulging green scrapbook entitled Yesteryear).