A day to remember at Castle Park

posted by John Winn

2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of county cricket at Castle Park, Colchester but there can have been few more thrilling finishes than one I  was lucky enough to have seen on August 22nd 1991 when Yorkshire played a rare visit to this attractive ground.

 I had spent the previous day at Derby where Leicestershire were the visitors  and drove down to Essex on the morning of the third and last day in time to see Yorkshire resume their second innings on 6 for 1 with first innings hero Martin Moxon at the crease. In the first innings Moxon, in making 200, had become Yorkshire's highest ever scorer on the ground beating 156 by Sir Leonard in 1950. Wisden describes how 'Moxon again batted fluently' to make 66 which, with support from Kellett and Robinson (P), allowed skipper Carrick to make the third declaration of the match. Essex were set 319 off 68 overs to win and good scores by Stephenson, Salim Malik, Knight and Garnham brought them within reach of victory at 293 for 5. Carrick persevered with himself and Jeremy Batty however and the last five wickets fell for 22 runs to leave the home team four short of their target.

Carrick took the tenth  wicket with the second ball of the final over giving  him and Batty  four wickets each. As well as Nick Knight who scored his maiden first class fifty in their second innings Essex also had another Sky pundit in their ranks, Nasser Hussain who had a first innings score of 1 not out and was stumped Blakey bowled Carrick for 5 on that last exciting afternoon. Essex's first innings had been dominated by a stand of 246 between Stephenson and Prichard. Those lucky enough to be there for all three days saw over 1200 runs and an average of  107 overs a day, What wouldn't we give for that kind of productivity today.

Finally some members may recall that I spent time last winter researching the beginnings of cricket in Swaledale. If so you might share my pleasure in being able to confirm that the Swaledale League did, as I had guessed, begin in 1921. My hunch that this was so was based on the fact that I could find no reference to the league before this date but on a visit to Darlington earlier this week I found in the Darlington and Stockton Times for 24th of September 1921 the final league table for that season and an accompanying note that this was indeed the inaugural season. Champions were Hipswell and Tunstall with Arkengarthdale runners up. Bottom of the six team league were Stainton who were replaced by Ravensworth in 1922. And that is where I will begin reading on my next visit.