Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club are saddened to learn of the death of former player and coach Mike Bore.
Born in Yorkshire, he played in 74 first class matches and 55 one-day contests for his home county before joining Notts ahead of the 1979 season.
Over the next decade he took 210 wickets from 85 first class matches for Notts and picked up a further 89 wickets in 92 one-day outings.
Bore was a member of the 1981 and 1987 county championship winning sides during his time in Nottingham.
Good friend and former team-mate Paul Johnson believes Bore, who was nicknamed Noddy or Nod, would have been a prized asset for any county in the modern game.
“When he arrived to join us I think many people thought of him as a bit-part player. Was he a left arm seamer or was he a slow left arm spinner?
“He was especially adept at bowling both and in this day and age, he’d be great to call upon because he could swing the new ball into the right-hand batsman at a decent medium pace then turn himself into a very accurate spinner, who had a wicked arm ball.
“In later years that arm ball would embarrass many a junior batsman when Mike took over the running and the captaincy of the second eleven.”
Bore formed a lethal all-spin combination for Notts, bowling for many years in tandem with Eddie Hemmings. His best figures came against Kent, when he picked up 8-89 at Folkestone.
Twice a title winner with Notts, he was also a central figure in the ‘one that got away’ in 1984.
With the county championship at stake Richard Ollis, on the field as a substitute, broke Nottinghamshire hearts when he caught Mike Bore off the penultimate ball of a match against Somerset at Taunton.
Chasing 297 to win and pip Essex for the crown, the visitors had brought the equation down to 14 from the final over and then four from the last two deliveries. Bore swung hard and handsome but couldn’t clear Ollis on the long-off fence.
Johnson recalls the moment clearly. “I tell people to this day that we lost the title by three inches that year because only the 6’4” Ollis was tall enough to reach that catch.
“I had the misery of driving home with Nod that day and during the journey home he rarely stopped crying, he was so upset.
"He’d been a Yorkshire player in the past but he was all about the green and gold.
“He became a well-respected coach and did so much to bring cricket to the masses in Nottinghamshire and went a long way to setting up the county’s cricket in the community scheme with John Cope and Stuart Burrows.
“One of the things that always made me smile,” recalls Johnson, “was that he gave people directions via fish and chip shops – ‘Go down there and turn left at the Wetherby Whaler….’ and so on.
“He had his own code for the size of the portion as well. If it was just a normal bag full then he would say it was an OTA – an off the arm, meaning he could carry it.
"Anything bigger was an OTB – on the bonnet, meaning he’d need to rest the bag on something, eg a car bonnet. He was the Egon Ronay of Fish and Chips!”
Our thoughts are with Mike’s family and friends.