Pacific Cricket Club roots
Pacific CC was established in 1983 as a works team from Pacific Records, a music distribution company.
Origin of a Species Peter Hollman writes…
In 1983, I had already been at Pacific Records in Kentish Town for two years working for and alongside the sales manager, Geoff Wilmot. Geoff was mad keen on sport, being Hampstead (now Hampstead & Westminster) Hockey Club's first choice keeper for several years. With such inspiration, the Pacific Records football side was born.
Fixtures were virtually exclusively against other records companies i,e. Stiff, Island, WEA, Rough Trade, record shops such as Virgin, HMV, Our Price and even games against artistes teams such as Spandau Ballet, Bow Wow Wow & Jah Wobble.
The summer of '83 proved difficult, with available football pitches being hard to find, so it was on a late spring afternoon, having just enjoyed a light lunch at the Palmerston, that Geoff first suggested playing the same teams at cricket – and so the club was born. With only nine members of staff, I was dispatched to find players.
The captain was easy to chose: Nigel Wilkinson, co-owner of nearby Honky Tonk Records who had already captained his shop's team against a Musicians team in Regents Park and against Paul Slattery's XI at Wormwood Scrubs. Some more recruits from that team would be required such as Kevin and Ged Murphy (no relation). John McDougall was a fellow Hockey player, Charlie Paulinski a local hospital DJ, Mark Sams, G Jones, Mark Russell – all local students and anyone else from the Tufnell Park Tavern who was free.
The first season saw fixtures against Stiff records, RCA, The Scala, Rough Trade, and the inimitable Kentish Town Sun District Post Office. Top run scorer that season was Nigel with 158 at an average of 39.5, and Ged Murphy was the leading wicket taker with five at 8.4. In 1985 came the unbeaten season 15 wins and 1 tie of the 16 completed matches. The inaugural AGM was held that winter in Fat Harrys just behind The Sobell Sports Centre and the club was born.
By now several guys had joined who were to go on to make over 300 appearances – Steve Lay, Frank and John Baglivi. Matches continued to be played at Tufnell Park's artificial pitch, with teams from the Club Cricket Conference making up fixtures for the first time. But not everybody was happy about continuing to play there.
The club had outgrown beer cans in the outfield, players in jeans and tolerating at least two full-scale football matches by, through and over the midwicket boundaries.
The first CCC fixture though did take place there – a match against Priory Park which was won by seven wickets. In fact, the team remained unbeaten until defeat against Locksbottom on July 13th 1986, thereby ending a run of 19 matches without loss going all the way back to 19 August 1984. Such a run has never since been equalled.
In 2011 Pacific joined the Middlesex & Essex Invitation League on Sundays and in 2018 it also joined the North East London League on Saturdays. While the musical makeup of the team has been diluted over the years, it still boasts plenty of colourful characters.
