Warwickshire Cricket Board

Warwickshire CCC and Cricket Board are very sad to inform you of the sudden passing away of Jim Carr last week, aged 74.

Jim loved cricket and put a lot of his energies into serving the game in Warwickshire. He was the Warwickshire Under 11s Team Manager during the 1990s to 2000 and took teams with the likes of Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes in them as they started their journeys towards professional cricket. He had a great rapport with everyone he met including all the players and coaches he worked with, all of whom remember him fondly. He had a good eye for spotting talent and wrote in the WCB yearbook for 2000/1, ‘Special mention must be made of Chris Woakes who was not originally selected but who was called on late in the season and showed great promise with bat and ball and in his fielding'.

In the mid to late 1990s Jim and Colin Greetham set up a Primary Schools Cricket Programme in Sutton Coldfield coaching voluntarily in 14 schools, introducing hundreds of children to the game and linking them into local clubs over a period of four years. He served as North Birmingham Schools Cricket Association for four years and helped a number of secondary schools receive coaching. Jim was indeed, a key supporter of WCB in its early formative years and passionately believed in the opportunities it would create for young cricketers. The support he showed WCB was hugely important given some negativity and resistance to its formation.

After his retirement as Head Teacher of Marsh Hill Junior & Infant School in Erdington Jim worked at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School (and latterly at Handsworth Grammar) where he took a leading role in cricket and booked out the facilities for years always helping Warwickshire and community groups along the way.

A left arm pace bowler, Jim played for the now defunct Birmingham Municipal for 20 years and also played a number of years for Four Oaks Saints and Streetly.

His enthusiasm for cricket, his engaging and positive personality and his great story telling touched and improved many people’s lives within Warwickshire Cricket and he will be greatly missed. We wish his family all the very best at this difficult time.