Life with The Lyons

posted by John Winn

A small piece in the August edition of Cricketer magazine states that The North East Premier League is to be expanded to two divisions next season with the new clubs coming from four other local leagues in that area. The clubs from those leagues not admitted to the new division will form a new Durham League.
Coincidentally yesterday saw me driving up the A19 and then the A182 to the LilywhiteTerrace ground of Hetton Lyons CC for their home game with Chester le Street, sixth against fourth in the NEPL whose twelve clubs are drawn from Northumberland and Durham.

With an 11;30 start the game had been in progress for an hour when I arrived and Hetton had made 86 for 4 off 20 overs . After a lively start they were gradually being reined in by the Chester attack and I had missed the innings of Ryan Pringle who is making something of a reputation with Durham II.

The ground is extremely well appointed with a palatial clubhouse offering Saturday and Sunday lunches as well as the usual tearoom refreshments. I settled for a cup of tea and sandwich and asked a fellow refreshee if he knew anything of the details of the league reshuffle. Did he? He was able to rattle off all the clubs who were to be 'promoted' and the fate of those left behind and also made the point that not everybody was happy about the new set up. For the Durham Senior League for example it will mark the end of over a 120 year history.

Whilst making a circuit of the ground I fell into conversation with a husband and wife pair of local supporters who, originally from Huddersfield (the lady of the pair proud to be a Golcar Lily),  have lived in a number of places in the East Midlands before settling in the North East. They were very well informed about local cricket and were curious about the blog. If, John and 'Lily,' you have found it, I hope you find something of interest.

When the players left the field for lunch at 1:30 the penny dropped about the early start but whatever was served it failed to revivify the Hetton batsmen and they were all out for 132 which the visitors reached for the loss of two wickets. Meanwhile I drove a few miles south east to Blackhall, just up the coast from Hartlepool and to Welfare Park, the home of Blackhal CC, founded in 1929 and members of the NYSD league since 1933. There is an excellent history of the club on their website recounting their glory days of the 1930s and the names of professionals they have employed like Desmond Haines and Clayton Lambert. For the time being at least those days are behind them and in 2004 they were relegated after 71 years of continuous membership of the A Division. Yesterday the seconds were in action against Whitby II with the home team batting and 68 for 3 when I left. A feature of the ground is the large playing area which is used to its full size and yesterday this meant a very long boundary on one side with the wicket pitched towards the bowling green side.

A few miles south and crossing the isogloss* which separates the Durham accent from the Teesside and probably also the Sunderland supporter from the Hartlepool or Middlesbrough, I reached Hartlepool's seaside resort, Seaton Carew. As a small boy I watched my father play here but since those sepia photograph days the club has moved across the road to Hornby Park where yesterday SCCC I were playing Marske II in a NYSD Div 1 match. The sun had disappeared by this time and with the wind blowing off the nearby North Sea I did not linger long .As I left,  Marske were 80 for 6 and I drove the mile or so to a new ground, a different league and a different cricketing experience, in short Hartlepool Power Station CC who sit proudly at the top of The Langbaurgh League and where the championship flag flew proudly in an even stiffer breeze. Can any ground be more dominated by an industrial landscape,sitting as it does in the shadow of the power station and where notices in the car park spell out dire warnings of the consequences of infringement of health and safety rules?

Most Langbaurgh League clubs are in small villages in North Yorkshire and a greater contrast between those clubs and the Tees Road ground could not be imagined.. Yesterday's opponents were Moorsholm from the the other side of the Tees estuary and I remarked to one of the boundary fielders that they must love coming here but the worst he could say was that ' it wouldn't be so bad if the wind wasn't blowing', which I thought was a very chivalrous response. HPS were recovering from 38 for 3 when I left and had reached 87 without  further loss when I left behind the dominating power station with its constant hum and drove to Armstrong Park, Wolviston, where the home side's second eleven were  batting against Preston on Tees I and while I was there lost their last four wickets to some canny spin bowling. This NYSD ground is separated only by a tall hedge from Metcalfe Park where Wolviston FC were taking on Wearside League opponents Prudhoe and were, I was informed by a blazered gentleman, about to lose their third match of the season. And you thought football hadn't started yet. The cricket enclosure has a fine stand of trees on one side but these do not block out the traffic noise from the A19, which is where I came in and which road I took to drive back into the Vale of York.

Another interesting week ahead with cricket at Todmorden, always of interest to the pcw, especially those who like to fuel the corporal stove, and the return of championship cricket to Headingley after an absence of over ten weeks. Crackers.

* I only came across this word on Friday and was determined to get it in. It refers to  the geographical boundary of a linguistic feature, in this case an accent.