And Again

posted by John Winn

On Friday afternoon I spent a pleasant couple of hours in the company of Brian Senior at St Peter's School, York, watching the pupils take on MCC. After a light shower in the lunch interval, for most of the time the sun shone and with a warm south westerly breeze conditions were ideal for drying out cricket pitches. The Middlesbrough area having escaped the spectacular storm that hit Tyneside at teatime on Thursday I decided that it was worth taking the journey up the A19 yesterday to take in four grounds offering a good mixture of different standards of cricket.

First stop was Guisborough and the town centre ground at Fountain's Garth hosting a Premier Division game with visitors Middlesbrough, fourth v seventh. Blue sky jostled for space with black clouds and just before 1:30 the umpires emerged from the pavilion,crossed the white line and then returned for the stumps. After this slight hiccup Guisborough began batting after losing the toss. As I walked round the ground, which certainly looks county second eleven standard, the outfield was very soft in patches. I had initially taken a seat amongst a number of local spectators, one of whom had just arrived from north of the River Tees bringing news of heavy rain in that area. How they brought the good news from Durham to Yorkshire.
Before I could complete my circuit a squall blew up driving the local salts inside and me to the car park whence I drove to my next ground at Normanby Hall. Normanby is 'part of the Middlesbrough agglomeration' but comes within the authority of Redacr and Cleveland. The Club are long established members of the NYSD and before yesterday's game they lay tenth in the premier Division but with only one win thus far. Their opponents, Hartlepool, were better placed at fifth. Here the sun shone and with the spinners at work Hartlepool had reached forty without at loss but at only two an over.
I took the opportunity to look inside the club house where I was pleased to see many photographs, including one of the 'new' pavilion on its opening day in 1957. It is now the 'old' pavilion but still accommodates the players' dressing rooms. One particularly interesting photograph dated from 1947 and showed the then England skipper, Norman Yardley, shaking hands with 'Boro' legend George Hardwick, at that time captain of England's footballers. Both were in 'whites' and I assume were opposing captains in some sort of fund raising match.
The pace of the game failed to quicken and I decided to move on. Big mistake! My next ground was that of Marton CC, to where earlier in the season I had made a fruitless journey to see a second eleven game between Durham and Yorkshire and if you can't guess what happened then see my posting of April 12th. The sun was still keeping up appearances as I neared the ground where Marton II were fielding and their opponents were Whitby I, NYSD Div 1. Right on cue weather conditions changed. Overhead, black replaced blue, there was a flash of lightning in the distance,, the wind raced up The Beaufort Scale and after a couple of overs the players left the field as the rain began to pelt down. Further play did take place, sufficient to complete the Whitby innings, but not while I was there. Marton did not bat.
My journey took me through the downpour to the pleasant suburb of Nunthorpe and what I had hoped would be my first taste of The Cleveland League (sadly no longer sponsored by Co-operative Funeral Care), namely a match between Nunthorpe II and Loftus I. A forlorn picture awaited me: covers on and square fenced off, clearly a match abandoned with out a ball being bowled. Will 2012 set a record for those? Will anybody count?
Back down the A19 and south of Stokesley the roads were dry and I made my way back to Ouseburn where the firsts were making somewhat heavy weather against Pannal and in an innings shortened by six overs they made only 141 for 9. After the usual excellent tea, play resumed but as has happened so often this year heavy rain arrived and when the game was abandoned Pannal had made 42 without loss off just over nine overs, and were no doubt much more aggrieved than Ouseburn by the weather's intervention. Remember Crackerjack? It's Friday, it's five o'clock, it's Crackerjack! Let me update you. It's Saturday, it's five o'clock' it's raining!

To my surprise on checking the league website this morning I discovered that the games at both Guisborough and Normanby Hall had escaped the weather and resulted in victories for Middlesbrough and Normanby Hall. Got it wrong again. And I've just seen the forecast for the week ahead. 'Continuing unsettled'. Like a few pcws I expect.

Finally for my rant of the week I return to a familiar lament, namely the poor coverage of cricket by the national press. I draw my evidence from Saturday's 'Guardian Sport'. Five pages devoted to a competition in which we lost interest last Sunday, four pages to a sport in which we have one good player and 746 words* on page 13 (of 16) on a cricket match when England had beaten arguably the best team in the world at the form of the game. Heaven help us if we ever get past the quarter finals of a football tournament and/or discover another tennis player.

* My friend Alan Pinkney counted them on his kindle, I haven't got that much time on my hands.