There is no talk, none so witty and brilliant, that is so good as cricket talk, when memory sharpens memory and the dead live again ¿ the regretted, the unforgotten ¿ and the old happy days of burned-out Junes revive. We shall not see them again.

¿ Andrew Lane, for the 125th Anniversary of the Aberdeenshire Cricket Club in 1982

I was fascinated by the professional players, and although I was too young to remember much more than his name, Alma Hunt was the first Bermudan to be employed by a Scottish Club when Aberdeenshire invited him to come to Scotland as long ago as 1934. Hunt enjoyed eight marvellous seasons at Mannofield and scored 8,190 runs.

¿ Mel Edwards, "Mannofield: where the sun always shines", May 2003.

Remembrance is a matter of national as well as personal interest and commemorations are often designated for historical events and for persons of note. In daily life we celebrate notable occasions, such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries, to name but two.

Part of the reason for official designations of remembrance comes from the fact that people are forgetful of the past, as the stresses and strains of daily life take centre stage, relegating history and its personages to the waiting wings. That tendency is exemplified in the motto, "Lest we forget", of the commemorations for the dead and veterans of the two great and later wars.

Shortly on November 11, "Armistice Day", will again be upon us and a national ceremony will take place in Hamilton, centred on the Cenotaph, one of the few, by the way, on which the names of the dead were never engraved.

Armistice Day marked the end of hostilities in Europe in the First World War, of which perhaps all veterans have now passed from this earth. The numbers on parade in Hamilton from the Second World War will be less than last year, as time marches with its inevitable lockstep towards oblivion for all service personnel.

Most successive generations have not been subjected to the rigours and perils of later wars, such as Korea and Vietnam, so to some extent many are bystanders on the Remembrance Day for our military heroes who went overseas, some to leave their bones in foreign fields.

This past Monday, the Bermuda Government inaugurated a new remembrance celebration, National Heroes' Day, with the first of the group being the late Dame Lois Browne Evans, DBE.

Other deserving Bermudians, heroes and heroines, will presumably be added to such a list, although in the group of 126 dead from two world wars and Korea, we have a goodly number to add right away. Another candidate, perhaps without parallel in the Bermuda world of cricket and sport, is the subject of this article.

Remembrance is also partly synonymous with recording, for without a written history, there is no memory over time, as oral history is only good for a couple of generations, given the normal life span of our mental hard disks. Therefore in remembrance, historians are of vital importance, because as they write, they record the memories of the past. Historians also carry out research to investigate past peoples and events, so that the remembrance of the past can be reconstructed.

Archaeologists, with their own particular and unique science, also recover the past by excavating sites where people lived. They translate the layers and features buried in the earth to a written archive, from which history is reconstructed, especially for past societies that left no information in language of their times and travails on earth.

Historians and archaeologists of all types work to champion the past, to bring to life the days of our ancestors, some of whom were heroes and heroines. Those recorders are essential to the business of remembrance and they are driven to produce the evidence of the past, lest we forget. One such person, who once worked for The Bermuda Recorder, is Ira Philip, who has written numerous articles and authored a number of books, for over half a century.

As many historians do, in his latest book, Mr. Philip is "bowling for the champ", as he sets out the life and achievements of possibly Bermuda's finest cricket player, the late Alma (Champ) Hunt, MBE, OBE, JP, a man of Somerset and also of the far distant Mannofield in Scotland.

Such was the influence of the Champ on the home of the Aberdeenshire Cricket Club, and it on him, that when Hunt returned to Bermuda in 1947, he named his house "Mannofield". Today it is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Carlos Coelho, who when asked where the house sign was replied: "After we bought the house from the Champ, he came back for the 'Mannofield' sign, which was on the front door!"

Alma Victor Hunt was born in Somerset on October 1, 1910 and lived to the fine old age of 89, although he "scored his first century, playing against grown men" at the age of 12. With his nine siblings, the family of Solomon and Maria Hunt could almost field its own cricket team and several of his brothers preceded Champ in the game.

At the age of 16, he entered his first Cup Match and was destined to become the best all-rounder that the game had ever seen. A few years later, he went to play in the West Indies, but was denied a place on that team to go for a Test match in Britain, probably due to the prejudice of some of the West Indies officials against Bermuda.

Then in an unprecedented move, Hunt was hired by the Aberdeenshire Cricket Club to play for it in Scotland, which he did for six years before World War Two and for two years thereafter, retiring home to Bermuda at the age of 37 in 1947, where he and his bride, Elmira, raised a family of two, Beverly and Alma, Jr.

In an editorial in The Royal Gazette entitled "The Champ" on March 25, 1976, it was recorded that: "Champ Hunt is to Bermuda what Dr. W.G. Grace was to England; what Don Bradman was to Australia; what K.S. Duleepsinghi was to India; what the three Ws of Walcott, Weekes and Worrell were to the West Indies. He will go down in cricketing history as a legendary figure, who, not only through playing ability, but through dignified conduct, administrative prowess, determination and perseverance achieved that which, when he first started out on the long haul, would have seemed impossible."

The book Champ! The One and Only Alma Hunt by Ira Philip, MBE, JP, is now available at bookstores.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 332-5480.