Mike Groves

Michael Godfrey Melvin Groves (born 14 January 1943) played first-class cricket for Western Province, Oxford University, Somerset, MCC and the Free Foresters between 1961 and 1968. He was born at Taihape, Manawatu, New Zealand.

The son of Henry Basil Melvin Groves, an Englishman whose single first-class cricket appearance came in India, Mike Groves was born in New Zealand but brought up in South Africa, where he was educated at Diocesan College, Cape Town. Usually a right-handed middle-order batsman and irregular right-arm medium-pace bowler, he played a single match as an 18-year-old in 1960/61 for Western Province as an opening batsman, scoring 5 and 45. He then came to England and played occasional amateur first-class matches in 1962 before going to Oxford University in autumn 1962 as an undergraduate at St Edmund Hall.

Over the next four cricket seasons, Groves played regularly for Oxford University's first eleven cricket team, but in 1963, despite finishing fourth in the university's batting averages with 485 runs at an average of 26.94 runs per innings, he was left out of the team for the University Match and did not win a Blue. His highest score in the season was an unbeaten 74 in the match against Northamptonshire. In 1964, he failed to match either the aggregate or the average, and his only score of 50 or more for the season was 61, but he retained his place through the Oxford season and was awarded a Blue, scoring eight and 10 not out and taking a single wicket, that of Richard Hutton, in the match.