Wrong call?

posted by John Winn

This morning's Yorkshire Post reveals the impact of the rain on Saturday's league cricket: a mixture of postponements, cancellations, abandonments and perhaps more games actually completed than might have been expected. It is with some disappointment that I discovered that play had been possible in three out of the four Wetherby League games I had tagged weeks ago for my Saturday entertainment and that my decision to play safe and go to Headingley was probably the wrong call.
My prediction that Yorkshire might be batting by lunch on Saturday also proved wrong, but not through a failure to break the overnight stand but because of good, dogged support for Bopara by the Essex tail and a well deserved century for Bopara himself who I feel has been rather shabbily treated by the England selectors. Take him and Masters away from the Essex side and they don't look much above ordinary.

Brian has described yesterday's events at Headingley and the counties who beat the rain and secured victories yesterday, Warwickshire and Hampshire, will count those extra points as very precious.This week's matches in the First Division see last year's top three all facing testing away games and the quirky fixture list sees Yorkshire travel to Canterbury to face Kent for the second time this season.

Tomorrow sees the start of what the Harrogate club are calling their 'festival', when Leicestershire are the visitors for four days of second eleven cricket. When these fixtures were announced I know many enthusiasts were very much looking forward to visiting St George's Road, but if you saw the Countryfile forecast for the week ahead yesterday evening then it is difficult to imagine anything but disappointment for the club, players and spectators.More rain than last week? Impossible one might think but areas of low pressure were quueing up behind the forecaster's back with Wednesday looking particularly bad. With just over a week to go April has become a month to forget. League cricket organisers may have some difficult decisions to make by Friday.

For this blogger Saturday will bring some relief for by three o'clock on that day(kick off is at one) the worst season in Darlington's one hundred and twenty nine year history will be over. We welcome Kettering Town to The Arena, one of only two teams below us in The Blue Square Premier and like The Quakers, condemned to relegation, should be a cracker. At least the early kick off will allow time for me to see some cricket on the way home, weather permitting!