A CLASS ACT…

High achievement and humility: Is there a more impressive and endearing pair of attributes that a person can possess than those?

To reach the top of your professional tree, yet remain as grounded and grateful and modest as can be… that, surely, is the definition of a class act. All of our guests in the first series of Reports from Arbroath fall into that lovely category and none more so than this week's interviewee, Alan Jones.

"I never ever thought I'd make it as a professional cricketer," Alan recalls. thinking back to when he had just launched his first class career with a blob at Bristol.

Well, he did make it. Not half! To the tune of more than 43,000 runs over 27 years.

Alan went on to emphatically become one of Glamorgan’s all-time greats, and tower in county cricket for a quarter of a century as an opening batter in an era when all the world’s best fast bowlers played county cricket. In other eras, Alan would have played many more than one Test match for England.

Alan was a very fine cricketer whose batting gave immense pleasure to many, many people and whose wisdom and kindness helped and supported countless colleagues along the way. He recalls his life in cricket with humour and charm, not a shred of arrogance, but plenty of gratitude. High-achievement and humility. High class.

It was an honour to chat to Alan in an interview to which extra poignancy was added by it taking place at the wonderful  St Helen's ground in Swansea, where Alan played some of his finest innings, where Gary Sobers smote six sixes in an over and where, unless there is a twist in the plot in the very near future, cricket will cease to be played later this year, bringing the grounds glorious 152-year cricket history to an end. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to interview a man who is a huge figure in the history of Welsh cricket at a place which is integral to it.