National Club Championship

Posted by John Winn

I took the opportunity to visit the attractive Lawns Lane ground of New Farnley cc for the first time yesterday. The occasion was a first round group two tie in the National Club Championship won last year by South Northumberland. If the aim of entering the competition was to broaden their experience then New Farnley and their opponents Townville would have been disappointed, as they had met as recently as last week in league competition when the Castleford outfit won comfortably.
By the time I arrived Townville were nearing 200 with only two wickets down and the feeling among the good size crowd was that the home side might find themselves chasing in excess of 300. The return of the opening bowlers reined the batting side in somewhat and aided by some excellent catches in the deep Townville were restricted to 281 for 9 off their 45 overs.
In the first hour of their innings New Farnsley's openers reached 80 without being parted, the runs coming mainly in fours, wides and byes, and they had kept up with the rate of just over six an over. The fielding side were extremely boisterous, when did cricket become such a noisy game?
Unfortunately I had to leave at this interesting point and have scoured several websites today in the hope of finding out the result but to no avail. Late in the day I bought the Yorkshire Post from my local Sainsburys, only to discover when I arrived home that it was Saturday's edition! The headline on the back page was 'Moxon in blast at Yorkshire batsmen over loss' which I suppose would have served equally well for today.