Angus and Adrian

Posted by Peter Davies

Southowram v Lightcliffe in the Halifax Sunday Section - and glorious sunshine. The tea ladies had been inconvenienced by the skittling of the visitors by the home side. 80-odd all out in quick time...so the players had to wait a few minutes for tea to be served. SCC stalwart Peter Jowett was entertaining by the pavilion entrance - tales of the wickets he had just taken and I had just missed, of the new marquee (put up for a big social event the night before) and plans for the future. Son David and wife Joyce were also in attendance along with Parish Cup-winning captain Ian Uttley and another legendary club stalwart, Dave Hirst. Tea was a tuna sandwich and cream cake - and the ice-cool diet coke was very welcome on a hot afternoon. The club doesn't have Sky Sports so there was no news on the Sri Lanka-Pakistan final - for some reason, I was yearning for a Sri Lanka win! The gossip was that ex-England paceman Angus Fraser would be speaking at a club event in September - a major coup, according to Mr Jowett.

Rastrick and Badger Hill were both cricket-free zones as we passed by (the game at Rastrick had finished early) so we headed for Elland - glorious in the late-afternoon sunshine. Bradshaw were the visitors in the Sunday Section of the Halifax League and they had included a number of juniors in their side. And so their run-chase effort was even more admirable for that fact. Pakistan were outclassing Sri Lanka on the big screen in the pavilion (boo, hiss), Midwoods Snr. and Jnr. were at large in the bar area and there were pork pies, cuppas and crisps on sale (teatime had been and gone). There was a small crowd, which included ECC junior coach Adrian Finn and Bradshaw veteran Mick Turner, circling the perimeter of the playing area in his club tracksuit.

At Blackley, the Parish Cup tie against Booth was reaching a climax, with the visitors - for the loss of only two wickets - about to overheal Blackley's 260+ total. When we arrived it was as if the home team were already in surrender mode, with boundaries being hit left, right and centre. There were masses of spectators. Blackley and Halifax League VIP Julie Pearson was dispensing drinks from behind the bar and the league's press officer Geoff Wright was off duty, enjoying the sunshine and reading his Sunday paper. We had arrived just after the raffle had been done, which struck one or two people as a cunning plan (it wasn't!) and there were a couple of dogs on the boundary edge (one dog lead seemed to get caught up in the bench I was sitting on at one point). In the end, the Blackley total proved to be not too much of a challenge for the Booth batters.