It is with great sadness that West Wimbledon Cricket Club announces the passing of Pav Dhami at the age of just 41. He had been taken seriously ill after the Sunday game against Worcester Park in September 2024. After hospital treatment, he had come to a few West Wimbledon games in 2025, and bowled an over against us for the HMRC Dragons as recently as August, giving hope that he would be back with us in the 2026 season, but it was sadly not to be.

Pav made his debut for the club in May 2016, under our previous guise of Bank of England CC. But we already knew him from his appearances against us in midweek T20 matches for HMRC [HM Revenue and Customs] Dragons. He had an unusual bowling style, left arm pace from round the wicket, swinging both ways, and this, with the bounce generated by his height, made him difficult to score off in a T20. Several BOECC batters were delighted when he joined the Bank as one of the team writing the Inflation Report (now the Monetary Policy Report), expecting that he would come over to our side and we would no longer have to face him. In fact he maintained both old and new loyalties, continuing to play for the Dragons in their midweek matches, and so adding spice when we faced him in the Public Services T20 tournaments, while representing BOECC at weekends and in midweek games against other opposition.

Like most cricketers, he had ups and downs. On his best days, his pace, movement and bounce could be deadly. On other days, the radar could be off and the wicketkeeper tested. We enjoyed the days when his long reach made him a dangerous tailend hitter and someone who could pluck a catch out of the air from a distance away.

Most importantly, he loved the game and the company. He was a larger-than-life character metaphorically as well as physically, always cheerful, always willing to come back and bowl those difficult spells at the end of an innings when the other bowlers were tired and the batting side were on top. He was well liked by all his teammates – we cannot remember him involved in an argument, even though his bowling style was not easy to umpire so that he did not get many lbw decisions. He preferred friendly cricket, with its more social and less cutthroat atmosphere, to league cricket, and so in recent years had mainly played for BOECC on Sundays, where he encouraged the youngsters and oldsters and coped with humour from behind the wicket on his more erratic days.

It was characteristic that when he fell ill one of his biggest worries was that he might not be able to play cricket again, and characteristic too that before he married Harpreet in 2023 he hired the ground at Barn Elms Sports Centre for a cricket match for BOECC and other friends. It seems unbearably sad now that such a joyful occasion was so recent. We extend our deepest condolences to Harpreet and the many other friends and relatives he leaves behind.

The funeral will be held at Breakspear Crematorium in Ruislip (HA4 7SJ) at 12pm on Friday 7th November.