Former England wicketkeeper batsman Jack Russell is a man of many shades. Turns out he has also been a military medals collector all these years, and now he has decided to put them on the auction table.
Russell played 54 Test matches and 40 ODIs from 1987 to 1998. He invariably wore a bucket-style floppy sunhat, and it gave him a very distinctive appearance. Russell scored more than 2,300 runs in international cricket, including two centuries in Test cricket. During his long cricket career, he travelled all over the world and besides scoring those runs and taking those catches or effecting those stumpings, he was also collecting military medals. Today, he has 135 of them at his disposal. At the auction, they are expected to fetch a whopping 100,000 pounds.
Stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk reported that later this month, on April 15, the big collection will go under the hammer. From a very young age, Russell, who was awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1996, was into military medals, and at some point, by his own admission, picking them up became a hobby for him.
62-year-old Russell said: “When abroad on tour with the England cricket team, I would always try to spend as much time as I could visiting the nearest battlefield or military site and, whenever possible, pay my respects to any military graves that I could find.
“I always found this very poignant as it is the experiences of the men themselves that hold the greatest fascination for me.
“I started collecting medals around 30 years ago.
“Initially, I collected from all regiments, but I soon focused my attention on my home county regiment, trying to cover each battalion and as many campaigns as possible.
“I feel that I have got as close to the regiment and its fighting men as I possibly could, and it is now the time to hand them on to other collectors to take guardianship and look after these extraordinary men’s medals for the next stage of their journey.”
Wait, there are also medals from the First World War
On all evidence, Russell enjoyed this pastime a lot, but now he wants to move on to newer hobbies. Russell said: “I suspect it may happen with most collectors, but for me it has now come to a point where I feel it is time for a change in direction.”
Meanwhile, auctioneer Oliver Pepys said: “[Jack’s] collection of Medals to the Gloucestershire Regiment [that fought in the battle of the Somme during the First World War in 1916] tells the story not only of this fine old Infantry Regiment and its major actions, but also, and perhaps more fittingly, the individual stories of some of the men of the Glorious Glosters. It is by their deeds that they are known.”
