Nomadic Normanby

posted by John Winn

Saturday's rain and non-cricketing activities yesterday meant no cricket watching for me this weekend and with torrential rain wiping out all cricket in the North East on Saturday today's Northern Echo is sadly short of its normal excellent coverage of the weekend's league games. How glad the sports' editor must have been that there was still life in the football season.

One NYSD Premier  game was completed however, for it was played yesterday and was between Normanby Hall and Marton and was played at Redcar. With all their close rivals washed out the previous day here was an opportunity for Marton to extend their lead at the top of the table but they will have been disappointed to be on the losing end of a draw which gave them only six points to Normanby's 16.
There is a degree of irony in this because under normal circumstances the game would have been played  at Normanby on Saturday and would doubtless have  suffered the same fate as all other cricket in the region on that day.

Time for an explanation and for this we must go back to last September when the square at the Cricket Lane ground on the outskirts of Middlesbrough was re-laid only for the recovery to be set back by heavy rain later in the month. This means that Normanby will play all this season's home matches on the grounds of other clubs in the league and on Sundays. Hence yesterday's match being at Redcar. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that these long established members of the NYSD are still without a win after six matches but yesterday's effort will have improved confidence and today's table shows three clubs below them, all without a victory so far. Another plus for Hall was the availability of Yorkshire wicketkeeper Dan Hodgson who, with Andy Hodd keeping against the Unicorns, was not required at Chesterfield. Hodgson made 54 of his side's 177 for 9 and they fell only one wicket short of an outright win with Marton's last pair seeing out the last five balls to avoid defeat.

Finally back to a favourite grouse of mine (and of many pcws too), namely the poor coverage of the county championship by the national press. So poor was The Guardian's on Saturday that I was prompted to write to the editor complaining but my letter, not surprisingly, does not appear in today's issue. On a day when there was effectively only one issue of any weight to be settled in the Premier League and that only of concern to a corner of North London, the paper devoted seven pages to coverage of the league. In contrast, other than Friday's scorecards, there was no reference to the championship where on Friday two of the season's pre-season favouritesWarwickshire and Somerset had suffered heavy defeats, and a third, Surrey seemed likely to lose to Notts, which they duly did.

Bias towards football is not confined to the press for on a day of remarkable events at Lord's BBC  yesterday evening led with stories from the day's football before moving on to the test match. Fourtenn wickets in half a day and a decent test team bowled out in under two hours not a lead story? Bah.

Finally in a posting in March on the topic of the national cup competitions I promised that if you were interested in the outcome of the match in the Village KO in group 28 (Devon and Cornwall) between Calstock CC and Perranarworthal Cc this was the place to come then I am afraid you must be prepared for an anti-climax for Perranarworthal conceded. You saw it here first, or possibly not.