On the eve of the 2025 season, the Cricket Writers’ Club was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of John Curtis. John, or ‘JC’ to many, was a legend of the press box at New Road and far beyond.
His affiliation with Worcestershire spanned more than half a century, beginning when he worked as a 14-year-old ‘copy boy’, running reports from the ground back to the offices of the Worcester Evening News. He also operated the ground’s old scoreboard at the Diglis End.
After his stint at the Evening News, he joined forces with Mike Beddow, with whom he worked in both football and cricket. JC covered Brian Lara’s record-breaking 501* for Warwickshire and spent many years with the Press Association, during which time – at the 2002 FIFA World Cup – he famously (and mistakenly) boarded Argentina’s team coach after losing to England.
PA Media Sports Editor Ashley Broadley said: “It was a privilege to work with John during his career with PA, which spanned a quarter of a century (the first seven years as a freelancer). He was an outstanding journalist, with a passion for sport. He was also a generous and kind man.
“When he left PA in 2014, he sent an email to all his colleagues listing the many events he had covered. But typically, he signed off saying he was ‘proud to have worked with you all’.
“Well, we were proud of JC who was one of life’s good guys. All our thoughts at PA are with his family and his friends.”
There was no warmer, more welcoming presence than JC, who went out of his way to make any visitor feel at home in the press box that, since last September, has born his name, as well as those of Beddow and Chris Oldnall. His storytelling was iconic, his company always a pleasure and he was forever helpful and generous to young reporters.
You can read Worcestershire’s tribute to ‘the Voice of New Road’ here, and Scyld Berry has written in tribute to JC below.
By Scyld Berry
It is particularly sad when a cricketer dies at the start of a cricket season, as Neville Cardus wrote in his tribute to Roy Kilner, the Yorkshire spinner, in 1928. It is no less sad when a cricket journalist dies at the outset when he is of the calibre of John Curtis.
Our grandfathers would weigh up the worth of a man by saying whether or not he would be good to have beside you in the trenches. At an opposite extreme John, because of his humour and self-effacement and sense, would be my ideal of the person to have beside me in the New Road box at writing up time. “How many balls for his hundred, JC?” Always an unflappably good-humoured response, however much busier he might have been.
Salt of the earth has become an almost disparaging comment but if it has some worthwhile currency, it is a phrase that can be applied to JC. It is people like him that make it still worth living in this crumbling country.
His humour was often done in a duet alongside Chris Oldnall, but it was always self-deprecating, never cruel. I can remember them jesting about death a couple of years ago and in just the right spirit.
Last season he was wracked with pain. It was a triumph of professionalism to endure it right to the end. When the press box was renamed after him and Chris and Mike Beddow, I can’t think how much pain, of more than one kind, he was in on that day of the inauguration; but with a cheerful fortitude he managed to do his piece, and cheerful fortitude in adversity has to be the finest of human qualities.
His wife was wracked too last summer, so his pain was twofold. Bless you John, and sorry you’ve missed the first ball of this summer… but it’s probably the only one you’ve missed in 50 years of magnificent professionalism and dedication to your job, an example to us all.