“EDDIE’S path might have been smoother if this lad from Oswaldtwistle had not had to fight his way up from very humble beginnings,” observed a Keighley News correspondent later in his career.
In 1945, while still playing for Keighley, Eddie Paynter became licensee at the Sailor Hotel at Addingham, later at the Roebuck at Utley, seen here in 1925. Never well-to-do, his cricket was to continue as far as his circumstances allowed.
When Keighley won the Bradford League’s Priestley Cup in 1948, he batted 124 not out and took five wickets. Spread over five days, it was known as Eddie Paynter’s match.
At the cup presentation, the losing Salts captain joked: “And now we can go to sleep at night without seeing Eddie Paynter at the wicket!”
In 1959 he played for Ingrow, and in 1962 was engaged as a coach with Bingley Cricket Club.
His 1979 obituary would recall how he had “endeared himself to spectators as an attacking batsman and superb fieldsman”.
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