When Peter Vittle died in 2018 aged 91 little was written or said about one of the outstanding all-round sportsmen of the post-war generation. Conrad Sutcliffe looks back on is life and times.

PETER Vittle, who has died aged 91, was an all-round sportsman who represented Devon at cricket and bowls as well as playing hockey, snooker and rugby to a high standard.

Vittle’s form for club side Plymouth CC earned him a Devon call-up for a two-day friendly against the Royal Navy at Mount Wise in July 1952. He made 54 on his debut and stayed in the side for the next four Minor Counties games.

A knock of 32 against Oxfordshire was followed by a duck against Berkshire. Three more trips to the crease yielded seven, seven again and 17 in his final game against Surrey 2nd XI on his home ground at Plymouth CC.

Peter Dawson Vittle was born in Torquay on Christmas Eve 1926 and educated at Plymouth College (1935-41) before completing his education at Wellington School, where he was captain of the cricket and hockey teams.

He served with the Army in Italy at the end of the war before retuning to Plymouth and his numerous sporting activities. While in the Army he played football and was approached by Aldershot Town as a potential goalkeeper.

Vittle played rugby for Plymouth Albion – he fractured his collarbone on his debut – and after breaking his nose transferred to OPM, where he played from 1949 to 1959. 

He played representative games for the Plymouth & District Combination. Having planned to go out in a ‘blaze of glory’, in the 1958 Lockie Cup final against HMS Thunderer, he broke his ankle after 10 minutes!

Vittle joined Plymouth CC in 1946, playing in excess of 300 matches and scoring more than 8,500 runs, the majority of them extremely quickly!

In 1948 he played in two trial matches for a place in the Plymouth & District team to play Essex. He hit his first fifty for the club in 1949 and scored 40 for the 2nd XI with four 4s and four 6s! The following season hit scored 104 not out against OPMs at Ford Park.

Phil Barrow, Plymouth CC’s archivist, said old scorebooks showed what a destructive player Vittle could be.

“In 1951, three of his first nine scoring shots against London Polytechnic were sixes and during the season, he hit 320 of his 546 runs in boundaries,” said Barrow.

“Against Liskeard in 1953, going in at seven for two he hit 84 out of 96 while he was at the wicket, in 39 minutes from 26 scoring strokes. 

“Tourists Turner’s Sports were the victims of an initial six-shot barrage of 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6.

“A 1955 innings of 65 in 41 minutes at South Devon included two sixes, one of which went through the rear window of a parked car belonging to the home side’s captain Tony Sutton.”

Jack Davey, then playing for Tavistock before embarking on a professional career with Gloucestershire, remembers bowling to Vittle in the early 1960s.

“He hit the ball a long way,” said Davey, who had 14 seasons on the staff at Bristol.

In 1956, against United Services, his captain declared with Vittle not out on 99. The last of Vittle’s four hundreds for Plymouth 1st XI was 141 against Plymouth City Police in 1965. His career span at Peverell Park was 1946-69.

Between 1966 and 1988 Vittle and wife Joy ran a newsagents in Mannamead just a six hit away from his old school.

Retirement allowed more time for bowls, which he played into his late 80s as a member of the Sir Francis Drake Bowling Club.

In 1974 Vittle reached the final of the Sunday Independent-supported doubles snooker tournament.

Peter Vittle died in March 2018. His memorial service took place at the Emmanuel Church in Mannamead. A reception was held at the Sir Francis Drake Bowling Club, where he had been a life member since 2016.