A county pro for Surrey in the 1970s, Skinner is now chairman of the African Caribbean
Cricket Association and is still trying to address exclusion from the structures of power
Guildford cricket club, July 1977, a second XI game between Surrey and Hampshire. Fred Titmus,
England and Middlesex legend, is racially abusing Lonsdale Skinner of Surrey. “He was calling me black bastard and that kind of stuff,” Skinner recalls. He was a capped Surrey player at the time, a Guyana-born wicketkeeper-batsman who moved to England as a child and was part of the vanguard for a generation of black county cricketers.
Titmus was in the middle of a brief spell as Surrey’s head coach. He would later become an England selector and is one of several illustrious names to come up more than once when black players discuss the everyday
racism of the times. On this occasion one player stood up to support Skinner from the ranks, an unknown youngster from Uppingham School. Enter the 16-year-old Jonathan Agnew, now the BBC’s cricket correspondent.