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Catching Up With – Phil Snow

Behind the Stumps

Welcome to another edition of “Catching Up With” which is an occasional column on the people in our game. In the edition we catch up with long-time Mount Maunganui Cricket Club player Phil Snow.

There may be older active cricket players in New Zealand than Phil Snow, but they are likely to be counted on the fingers off one hand.

Phil, who was born in England in the shadows of WW2, during 1945, has a lifelong passion of two contrasting interests of music and cricket. First XI cricket at Fairfield Secondary Modern in Hampshire and some village cricket and soccer, were his sporting interests as a young man, however it was music that grabbed his attention.

The aspiring musician joined a skiffle group in his home town of Basingstoke at around 14 years of age. A few years later, he became a member of a group named The Floox who played locally and then had short tour of Germany as a backing band before fizzling out.

While Basingstoke had a population of less than fifty thousand in the swinging sixties, the city was a hotbed of the emergence of the sixties pop music. Groups such as The Animals, The Who, Long John Baldry and his Hoochie Coochie Men that included a very young Rod Stewart and Davie Bowie and The Buzz, all played the Basingstoke music and dance halls. 

“I’m quite proud of the fact that we played support to the Small Faces on a short tour and got to know them really well. We also did a Radio London show with Kenny Everett who also had a young Marc Bolan later known as T Rex on the bill”. 

Marriage to Jenny in 1972 sparked the move to New Zealand "We decided to emigrate and made visa applications to go to Canada, but after a period and we hadn't heard from the Canadian authorities, decided to come to New Zealand, where Jenny was born". "The day after we paid our fare to New Zealand, we were advised that our Canadian visa's had been approved but we were financially committed to travelling to New Zealand".

"When we first arrived, we built a house on a section that Jenny owned next to her parents in Papamoa, before shifting to our present house in the Mount in 1979".

Around the early 1990's, Phil started to play twilight cricket at Blake Park. "I then got talked into playing Golden Oldies cricket on a Sunday. At some stage our wicket keeper was injured, so I put on the keeper gloves for the first time"."We had some a couple of former first class players in the team in Richard Collinge and Bill Aldridge and the side was pretty competitive".

Phil was then courted by the Mount Maunganui B Grade side around 1992, which has led to 25 years of continuous cricket with the "Mounties", which continues to this day. While he moved up and down the Mount teams, Phil had three months with the premier side at the age of fifty, when their keeper was injured. "I took five catches behind the stumps against Eastern Pirates in Rotorua one day". "We had some real characters in the side that included Grant McKenzie, Roger Child and Graeme and Niven Aldridge". 

Phil’s love of music gravitated to jazz and his arrival in New Zealand saw him get involved in the Western Bay of Plenty jazz scene. The long-time supporter of the Tauranga Jazz Festival, which had its origins in the early 1960’s, drew Phil to assisting with the promotion and running of the annual jazz event. “I was on the committee of the Tauranga Jazz Society for 25 years including five as President”. “The best part was meeting the many stars and performers who are the real face of the Jazz Festival each year”. 

Always willing to put his hand up to help, Phil joined the Mount Maunganui Cricket Club committee and served five years as the Mount Club President. He also stepped up the plate as President of the Tauranga Cricket Association, for a time, when there were problems filling the TCA administrative positions.
 
Phil Snow preparing to bat on the first day of the 2017/18 season
The last couple of decades have seen Phil and Jenny return to the Northern Hemisphere on a regular basis. "We started to travel to catch up with family and friends and also grabbed the opportunity to catch up with jazz scene on the other side of the world. 
Phil’s ongoing passion for the game, was on show when this writer rang him on his cell phone on a recent Tuesday night to set up an interview, with the words "You better make it quick as I'm on the field at Blake Park playing twilight (cricket).