User:Mgriggs1961/sandbox

Michael John Griggs, born 20th August 1961 in Carshalton, Surrey to Margaret a College Lecturer from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Herbert a Butcher from Margate. The household was a very sporty and active one with parents who played tennis and cricket. The family home was at Wallington in Surrey. The back garden was used for cricket and football from the age of 5 and shared with a brother Peter. The grass was often worn from the level of sport played on it. Michael soon followed in the family tradition playing cricket, where he joined Beddington Cricket Club at the age of 10. He showed early promise and had 2 trials for Surrey County Cricket Club where, at the second one, he was to face Wasim Akram in the nets at the Oval.

He schooled at Bandon Hill Primary School followed by Glastonbury High School. From there he went to Portsmouth Polytechnic where he represented the British Polytechnics at Cricket scoring a fine 42 against the Kent 2nd XI at Dover. His cricket career lasted for 20 years at Beddington, Cheam, Uxbridge and Dorking CCs. A highlight in his career was a 50 against the MCC for Dorking where he went on to Captain the 1st XI. In his first year as Captain he took the side to the brink of promotion to the Surrey Championship First Division when on the last game a win would have seen them promoted. Unfortunately, the side lost but still finished 3rd overall - the best finish in the club's history. In his career as a batsman he scored 4 hundreds and over 80 fifties.

As well as playing Cricket he did many other things as a sportsman. He played hockey from the age of 14 to 34 mainly at Purley progressing from the 8th team to win over 100 caps in the 1st XI. The highlight of his career was a run in the Hockey Association Cup finally losing to Leicester Westleigh in the quarter finals. He played for many years in the National League rubbing shoulders with the best players in the country. After cricket and hockey he went on to play golf and squash. He won golf tournaments at 4 different clubs with a best score of 79 in his career off a handicap of 15. He ran completing 2 half marathons and 20 10ks with best times of 1hr 32mins and 40mins. He also cycled completing the Glasgow to Edinburgh cycle for charity. At the ripe old age of 52 he's ran a sprint season in the Scottish Borders. Other past times included fly fishing for trout and salmon which he enjoyed very much.

On the career front he was a Transformation Project Director initially working for large Global firms such as Computer Sciences, McDonnell Douglas and Cap Gemini but towards the end of his career working as a Freelancer. Some of the achievements of his career saw him introduce computer systems into RAF plane maintenance, systems to allow doctors to communicate with pharmacies so the prescriptions could be collected, develop one of the first Mortgage processing computer systems at Sun Alliance and to combine the computer systems to allow the Bank of Scotland to merge with the Lloyds Banking Group.

His only son Charlie went to Heriots school in Edinburgh and then on to Downing College, Cambridge to study law. After graduating he worked for Global Law Practices.