Simon Prodger 1959-2023

Prodge, as he was universally known, was born into a family steeped in cricket and was brought up initially in Kenya. Prodge’s father Peter played for Kenya and East Africa so it was firstly there, and then after the family returned to the UK, that the young Prodge fell in love with cricket.

Prodge was fuelled with a natural spirit of enquiry and curiosity. He liked learning, not so much from the textbook, but through observation and self-discovery. At Sevenoaks, Prodge didn’t find the academic side of life straightforward – the dyslexia with which he contended was poorly understood – but he excelled at sport. Cricket was his real passion and he relished the competition of league cricket playing at Harlow CC, Hoddesdon CC, Harefield CC and Watford Town CC. Beyond this, he played for Stroud Green CC in Haringey, represented the MCC on 113 occasions, was a regular for the Kenya Kongonis and Stragglers of Asia and, in later years, for Bucks Over-50s.

Prodge’s contribution as a cricket player was enormous, and so too was the service he gave to the game as an administrator and trustee of many cricket-related charities. As MD of the Club Cricket and National Cricket Conference, as trustee of the Club Cricket Charity and East Africa Character Development Trust, he fought tirelessly to represent the recreational game and community clubs and in establishing the National Asian Cricket Council and the African Caribbean Cricket Association, to help players from these communities become better integrated into cricket’s mainstream. Suffice to say there’s a theme running throughout Prodge’s cricketing involvements; he sought to make it a game for everyone. It was entirely fitting that the MCC honoured Prodge posthumously with a Community Cricket Hero award.

Someone remarked to me recently: ‘In every conversation with Prodge, he made you feel as if you were his only friend.’ Of course, he had thousands of friends. But such was his remarkable capacity for making every person he encountered feel special.

Nick Gandon