Former Gloucestershire schoolboy Richard Madley and the ever-popular team from top TV show Bargain Hunt will be holding centre stage for a day at this year’s Cheltenham Cricket Festival.

They will be in the Boundary Hub Marquee, which will be located on the hospital side of the Cheltenham College ground, on Tuesday 29^th July and they want as many people as possible to come and visit them.

The day is being called ‘Cricket, Antiques and Antics’ and is the brainchild of long-time Gloucestershire supporter Chris Coley, an ex-teacher who taught Madley at Stouts Hill, near Uley, from 1968 to 1970.

Madley, like his Bargain Hunt co-stars Izzie Balmer, Charles Hanson and Rosco [Charlie Ross], is an expert in all things antiques and all four are delighted to have the opportunity to share their knowledge with anyone and everyone at what continues to be one of the county’s annual sporting highlights.

Their visit coincides with the first day of the County Championship game against Middlesex and 68-year-old Madley, a big cricket fan, told The Local Answer: “We’ll aim to get there for about midday and say hello.

“We can’t do anything too formal while play is going on but I would imagine at 1pm we’ll have 40 minutes on the mics.

“I’ll host it and there will be plenty of antiques banter.

“It’s very much a sitting and chatting day, we want as many people to get involved as possible.”

Visitors to the marquee are encouraged to bring along some of their family treasures and jewellery for valuation by the experts, and Madley continued: “Maybe at the close of play we’ll have a modest auction.

“Maybe we’ll each bring something that we can sell – we’re all leading auctioneers – and raise some money for the oncology ward at Cheltenham Hospital.”

All four are giving their services free of charge and for one of them, a day at the cricket will be a completely new experience.

“Izzie has never been to a cricket match before,” explained Madley, who is known to his fans as Madders.

Madley is a big fan of 36-year-old Balmer – “She is the future of the antiques industry on TV,” he said – and even though this will be Izzie’s first game, he says there is a huge tie-in between cricket and the world of antiques.

“Charlie’s dad played for Derbyshire – he was Bob Taylor’s understudy – and Charlie, Ross and I have all shared a microphone with Jonathan Agnew, as has Philip Serrell,” said Madley.

“It was one of my greatest honours, it was the first day of the Trent Bridge Test against India seven years ago.”

But while that was special for Madley, his greatest cricketing honour undoubtedly came 10 years earlier when he was chosen to be the auctioneer for the first ever Indian Premier League.

It was a role he held for 10 years and he said: “It was a brilliant time in my career, I was part of the biggest change in cricket history.

“The first auction was in Mumbai and there were also auctions in Chennai and Bangalore, I became a household name in India.”

He certainly did and was given the nickname ‘The Hammer Man’, although an auctioneer’s hammer is typically called a gavel!

“The IPL opened up a completely new world for me, it was massive,” said Madley, who explained he got the job through Andrew Wildblood, one of the top men at IMG,

IMG initially ran the IPL and Wildblood and Madley played schoolboy cricket together.

Madley says he made more cricketers millionaires than anyone else and he remains very much involved at the top end of the game today because he was appointed to host the player auction ahead of the recent SA20.

Fortunately, he’s a big supporter of the quickfire format even though he grew up in an era when Test match and county championship cricket was king in this country.

“I love T20 even though I’m a purist,” he said. “I prefer a five-day Test but T20 is action-packed, it’s very skilful.” 

It shows how much the game has moved on because 40 overs cricket was considered to be quickfire back in the day when Madley made his first visit to the Cheltenham Festival in the early 1980s.

It was in a working capacity and he recalled: “I was a young auctioneer, it was a year when no Gloucestershire player had a benefit, the club were the beneficiaries that year.

“It was the last day of the Festival and members were asked to bring along memorabilia and sell it for the benefit of the club.

“I stood on a chair in the dining room and auctioned off everything they’d be given, the club raised £7,000 or £8,000.”

That was a lot of money back then and Madley has been back to the Cheltenham Festival many times since.

“I love it,” he said. “It’s one of the last great traditions of English cricket, I’m a huge fan.”

And as a former wicketkeeper who played for his hometown club St Fagans in Cardiff and Cobham in the Surrey League, he has always taken a particular interest in the man behind the stumps.

“When I was working in India, I was always being asked by the journalists who my favourite Indian player was,” he said. “They wanted me to say Kohli or somebody like that.

“When I said ‘wicketkeeper/batsman’ they expected me to say Dhoni, but I always said Farokh Engineer.

“They’d never heard of him! He came over and played for Lancashire in the late 1960s and has stayed here ever since, he was a proper stumper/batsman.”

But even the great Engineer has to play second fiddle in Madley's eyes to another wicketkeeper of that bygone era.

Eifion Jones may not have been a household name but he played for Glamorgan in the 60s, 70s and 80s in the days when being a good keeper was the most important consideration when selecting the man who wore the gloves.

“I met him recently,” said Glamorgan fan Madley. “We were filming in Llandeilo, near Carmarthen, I saw him in the crowd.

“I asked if we could have a 10-minute break so that I could meet my hero. He was on walking sticks but I told him I had aspired to be him. It was lovely to meet him.”

Madley’s love of cricket, and sport in general, was developed in part by the aforementioned Chris Coley during his early years.

“We go back a long way,” said Madley, who lives in “the prettiest village” in Wiltshire, not far from Chippenham. “I still call him ‘Sir’ which he thinks is quite amusing.

“I loved my time at Stouts Hill, Mr Coley taught me rugby and cricket.”

Madley was actually best at hockey – he played for Wales Under-21s – so was something of a sporting all-rounder, and in terms of his professional life he has certainly been a sporting all-rounder because he’s sold baseball memorabilia in New York, rugby memorabilia at Cardiff Arms Park and golf memorabilia in North America.

He was very much centre stage back then, as he was at Stouts Hill more than 50 years ago when Chris Coley produced the school plays.

Actor and comedian Stephen Fry was one of Madley’s contemporaries and Madley recalled: “The first year I was cast as Bill Sikes in Oliver!, Stephen Fry had a walk-on, non-speaking role.

“The second year I played Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady, I think Stephen Fry may have had three lines in that, it’s Mr Coley’s claim to fame!”