Rob Andrew is a legend of England rugby who won 71 caps for his country and was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame. However, it is a lifelong love of another sport that brought him to Sussex.
He took over the reins as chief executive of Sussex County Cricket Club in 2017 after 35 years in rugby. This is far from his first association with the summer sport though. Brought up in the northeast, Rob’s early life was dominated by rugby and cricket running in tandem. Summers were spent on the school and village cricket fields of North Yorkshire and County Durham, while the winters saw him in action on the rugby pitch.
At Cambridge University he captained the cricket team in the Varsity Match at Lord’s. He scored a first-class century against Nottinghamshire and spent a season with the Yorkshire Second XI. All the while he turned out for Cambridge at rugby, representing them in rugby’s annual Varsity match at Twickenham.
“It’s always been a joint love and I’ve been very lucky to have had that throughout my life,” he says. “I have been very blessed to be involved in both sports at the level that I have. Cricket just felt like a natural progression when I came down to Sussex.”
His love affair with rugby began at Barnard Castle School where he would forge an enduring partnership with future England teammate Rory Underwood.
“Rory and I were in the same house, we were in the same year. We came together at the age of 11 in September 1974. My first rugby match was with Rory in the under12s against Durham School. The coach put Rory on the left wing and he put me at flyhalf and we stayed there ever since! That clearly had an enormous impact on what the rest of my life was going to be like.”
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