WHAT A DIFFERENCE SUNSHINE MAKES

By Brian Sanderson,

I called into Weetwood in the afternoon for a hour to see Leeds and Bradford against Exeter and it looked beautiful.Pleased to see John Winn who has done a report of the match.Also there was Jenny  who give a nice little story about the Oriel ground.

The main trip yesterday was to Spout Houses who were playing Burythorpe in the Lady Faversham Cup with Ron Deaton.We had visited the ground last June when it was cold and wet. At that time the grass was about nine inces high and not been cut because of the wet weather.When we arrived the sun was still shinning and the place looked like a postcard.

We were met by the new landlady for The Sun Inn which is next to the ground.William Ainsley who ran the pub had died during the winter and the lady hoped to reopen the pub in a months time.She had a photograph of the West Indies side who had visited the ground a few years ago.As we walked up to the ground the home players were still cutting the square as this was the first match of the season.The photograph shows them removing the stone roller and a player cutting the pich in sunglasses.

Just before the match there was a minutes silence for the death of William Ainsley and his wife. William had run the club for over sixty years.Burythorpe  who are a club from the Malton area bowled first.Their players had not seen a pitch like Spout before they were used to York League grounds.The ground slopes down fowards the run with the wicket level and the grass is kept down by sheep.

Spout scored 75 in the eighteen overs which was a par score in this ground with the newly cut pitch playing low.The sun was shinning and we both were able to take numerous pictures of the ground. I will show another photograph in the next instalment.

During the second half we were joined by Charles Allenby who is the person who keeps the league going.
He played in last year match eventhough he was over seventy.Burythorpe won the match with two overs to spare but the main object was that everybody enjoyed the match. As we were leaving the players were rolling the pitch for a match to-night  Gillamoor.