THE Journal for this week of 1951 mourned the loss of a clearly colourful local personality Tiny Smith.

Worcester has lost one of its best known characters with the death in the Royal Infirmary of Joseph Frederick ('Tiny') Smith of No.1 Bath Road.

Tiny, who was 46 and weighed 28 stone, sold newspapers on his pitch outside Foregate Street Station for 30 years and was much photographed, particularly by American visitors.

The same Journal edition of 50 years ago also had two sports items of significance.

So great is the demand for tickets for the Football League X1 v Worcester City match at St George's Lane in May that the City FC is considering making the game an all-ticket affair. In just three days, 6,000 tickets have been sold, and more are being hurriedly printed.

Turning to England's traditional summer sport, the Journal reported a speech by Major Maurice Jewell, President of Worcestershire CCC, to the annual dinner of Worcester City Cricket Club.

Major Jewell, a former leading Worcestershire player and five times captain of the county team, asserted that steps had to be taken to make county cricket more exciting to spectators.

We live in an age of speed motor racing, horse racing, dog racing and ice-hockey and I think something has definitely to be done in order to speed up county cricket, he said.

Major Jewel considered "a grave mistake" had been made when Test matches were extended to five days just after the 1914-18 War. His solution to encourage brighter cricket" was the introduction of a points system based on scoring rates per hour. The greatest grievance in cricket today is the slowness of it, and I believe the award of points for quicker scoring would bring a big improvement, he said.

Major Jewell, who lived at Upton-on-Severn, also led a distinguished life in public service and was awarded the CBE in 1954. He died in 1978 aged 92.

Also on the Journal's 1951 sports pages was a report that Worcester Golf and Country Club had presented 300 guineas to its retiring Secretary of 28 years, Mr Russell Randall, also retiring as Worcester's Deputy Director of Education.

There were wedding bells for a popular sportsmen this week 50 years ago. The Yorkshire leg break and googly bowler, 23-year-old Edric Leadbeater, who last year took eight Worcestershire wickets for 83 runs his best bowling performance to date, has been married at St Paul's Church, Worcester to Miss Betty Knott, younger daughter of Mr and Mrs Christopher Knott of Spa Gardens, Foundry Street, Worcester.