Frank Thorne remembers the early days of Grub Street on tour in the North:

My favourite sight of my friend and colleague Graham was of him charging in with a ball in his hand, as the main strike bowler of our combined Mirror Group cricket team, the Grub Street Casuals, like a man possessed. He was not only a top wicket taker, brilliantly backed up by Mirror sub Tim Minogue, a demon quickie at the other end, and then first–change medium pacer, the late Chris Evenden aka “The Claw”, he was our leader. Graham was the skipper who, with the help of his best mate Ric Papineau and their hard-working wives organised our matches home and away.
At our home ground in Chigwell, our children, wives and partners used to enjoy sunny summer days thanks to the dedication and hospitality of Graham’s wife Tessa and Ric’s missus Esther and everyone who mucked in to cater for the social side of our halcyon days. Great times.
The team was born of a challenge for the Sunday People London office to play the Manchester office. It shows just how many staff reporters and photographers, plus regular casuals, we had in those heady days in the late 70s, early 80s to be able to field two teams of 11 plus a scorer and the odd sub or ring ins. We piled into a minibus at Holborn Circus and headed north up the M1 and M6.
Many of us until that inaugural match at the wonderful Werneth Cricket Club in Oldham had not played cricket since our school days. We were pretty ropey and rusty, aching all over, but we soon got the cricket bug and went on foolishly from Manchester to take on some ridiculously good league teams in Yorkshire - where we were certainly taught some cricket lessons.
Our August bank holiday fixture against Masham was such a high-scoring comedy of errors, with our fielders constantly fishing the ball out of the river over the 6 boundary, that the big crowd did not leave. As a result Masham took a record £600 at their little tea and cake stand and the team, several of whom worked at the local Theakstons brewery took us to the legendary White Bear and would not allow us to buy a drink. A good time was had by all. Before our next game against the top of the league side, Dacre Banks,Vic Birkin downed a couple of pints of Old Peculier, the strongest beer in Yorkshire. When the ball went to him on the boundary, Vic fell to the ground, threw the ball in one handed - and never got up again. Tired and emotional.
But we went on from strength to strength with tours of Devon, South Wales thanks to freelance correspondent Gerard Kiley, the home counties and various other English cricket greens around Kent and once we even ventured as far afield as Le Touquet for a weekend – but I don’t recall a ball being bowled there! 
I was occasionally given the cherry by Graham or Tim to try my slow left-arm spinning and took a few wickets now and again and did my best with the bat down the order. Our regular opener was diary editor turned picture editor Mervyn Pamment, whose Graham Gooch-style bat was a huge block of wood I could hardly lift. Regular wicket keeper was Mirror art editor Roy Wright - occasionally replaced by the safe hands of photographer Brendan Monks. Ric and his brother David who were very disciplined batsmen, great tacticians, coaches were by far our best two players. Sometimes the News of the World’s John Smythe would get behind the stumps with his unique brand of stumping - throwing his entire body to demolish the wickets while holding the ball!
We also had some illustrious names gracing our team sheets, including Ball’s best friend David Alford, political editor Alastair Campbell, former Mirror diary editor the late Garth Gibbs, sub Richard Holledge, sports writer David Barnes, Nick Davies, later of the Guardian, Steve Doughty later Home Affairs editor at the Evening Standard. Phil Hall also made the occasional appearance, along with our lawyers Charles Collier-Wright and Tom Crone. Royal author Andrew Morton also turned out for us at Chigwell and the then Sunday People news editor Colin Myler before he moved on in his Fleet Street career, Frank Murphy, our clever union Father of the Chapel joined in as our scorer much of the time.Top man.
Myself, David Alford, Murphy, Evenden, Pamment and Co loved those cricketing times and the teamwork Graham inspired in us not only on the field but in the office too. My two daughters, Katie and Mellissa, happy little girls then playing with Graham’s two boys and the other children at Chigwell, are mums of teenagers themselves now and send their condolences to Tessa and Oscar, who they remember well from, those playing days, Thomas and Rebecca.
Graham was a lovely man and a wonderful colleague.