blowing in the wind.

Posted by John Winn

It does not seem like seven weeks since league cricket started and I watched a number of games in the Aire Wharfe league. On that opening Saturday the sun shone, the wickets were fast and batsmen enjoyed themselves. Yesterday I returned to the Aire Wharfe but the weather conditions were rather different. I remember in geography lessons we learned about famous winds, names like the chinook and the mistral stick in my mind. one of the more obscure is 'the brickfielder', typically blowing in South Australia, which can cause a rapid fall in temperature within a few minutes.The text books can now be rewritten for something very similar to the brickfielder was blowing at Rawdon yesterday. When I called for lunch at The Hunter's Inn near Pool, it was warm enough for people to be sitting outside enjoying the sunshine. When I arrived at Rawdon the players were wrapped in heavy sweaters and the majority of the small crowd were in the splendid clubhouse. Rawdon have lost the first seven games and their batsmen were struggling against Follifoot's aggressive attack.
The clubhouse has a splendid collection of photographs, including a collage of 'the three lefthanders', Brian Close, Brian Stott and Hedley Verity who all learned their early cricket at Rawdon. What wouldn't the club give for that kind of talent now?
En route for Calverley I saw some distant flannelled figures on a very large playing area. This was my first, and accidental, encounter with The Dales Council League for on something akin to Salisbury Plain,Apperley Bridge were playing Adel III. The wind appeared a little less strong here and there were a few spectators in the lee of the pavilion.Being without binoculars I soon moved on to Calverley where the visitors were Upper Wharfdale. The ground here is Calverley Victoria Park, where, to give them their Sunday name, Calverley St Wilfrids have played since 1868. Batting first the home club had reached 80 for 1 when I left.
Next stop Hall Park, Horsforth to see Hall Park v Illingworth and an opportunity to disclose today's trivia, namely that Illingworth are the only A-W club with a Halifax postcode but their journey to north west Leeds is only fifteen miles. Here the temperature whilst not rivalling Friday's semi tropical range was sufficient to have attracted many families to the park. I enjoyed couple of circuits of the ground, watching the cricket against a backdrop of a splendid stand of trees. Illingworth were batting and through some risky running between the wickets doing their best to recover the loss of five wickets for little more than a hundred runs.
Sudden changes in temperature were not over for the day for a short distance away at St. George's field, where Horsforth II were playing Tong Park Esholt II, the wind, while not quite the strength it had been at The Heights of Rawdon was sufficient to make my stay a short one.
Five new grounds and if there has to be a ground of the day, and there doesn't, it would be Hall Park, not least because it was the warmest.