Cricket round Thirsk

posted by John Winn

'a club .....deeply troubled and in desperate need of re-invigoration on and off the field' were the words of the chairman of Thirsk CC when delivering his annual report at the club's 2012 AGM. Happily a year on and chairman George Gifford was able to speak more positively about one of the oldest and most historic clubs in Yorkshire,

Thirsk is a small market town in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire with a population of just under 5000. The town lies in the Vale of Mowbray, an area of low lying land north of the Vale of York and which until 1971, had its own cricket league which had begun life after the 39-45 war. Teams came and went and when it folded the seven remaining clubs  all found homes elsewhere. Six survive until today.

Thirsk CC's CV is an impressive one. Founder members of the North Yorkshire Cricket league in 1892 a competition which thrives to this day in the form of the NYSD, Thisrk were only briefly members of this competition for after just four years, by which time clubs from north of the Tees had been admitted, they left to join the Thirsk and District League and in 1912 were founder members of the Thirsk and District Senior Cricket League. This was renamed the York and District SCL in 1932.

A Thirsk player, Yorkshire's George Macauley, became the first player from the competition to play test cricket when he took a wicket with his first ball against South Africa in 1923. Thirsk is the birth place of Thomas Lord and in 2005 a match was arranged at HQ between Thirsk and the place of Lord's death, the Hampshire village of West Meon but sadly rain prevented any play. Thirsk's ground is in the centre of the town's racecourse and there is a record of cricket being played here in 1851 when 22 of Thirsk took on an All England XI.

Cricket in Thirsk has not been confined to Thirsk CC for below is a photograph of Thirsk Junction CC, champions of the T and D SL in 1933

Stick Thirsk Junction into a search engine and you will get plenty of information on the town's railway station but before the second world war they were a strong side who ended their days in the late 1960s as members of the Wath League. The cup is kept in the trophy case at Thirsk CC.

In my recent piece on the Felixkirk and District League I made reference to another Thirsk Club, Thirsk Victoria who were admitted to the league in 1951 but whose history stretches back into the previous century. This shows them as champions of the Thirsk and District in 1898.

The Vics were champions of the Felixkirk league on more than one occasion and here they are in 1957

Earlier in the piece I touched on the closure of the VOM league in 1971 and the fact that six of those clubs who were there at the end survive today. The one that does not is Sowerby CC, a village club just three miles out of Thirsk. They too competed in the Felixkirk league and the Wath and were champions of the VOM in 1958 (pictured below).



Cricket clubs who have relied too heavily on one person to do the work are not unknown and Sowerby probably come into that category for the untimely death of its inspiration, Brian Dalloway, in 1990 led to it being disbanded. The ground is now arable land.

I am grateful for much of this material to Pat Ruecroft who I met on a number of occasions last year and who has kept splendid records of cricket in the Thirsk area. A nice touch is that Pat's grandfather was the contractor when the 'new' pavilion was built in 1907 and when it was re-roofed in 1966 Pat was the man. There is a splendid history of the club on their website thirskcricket.co.uk. Would that more clubs cared so much about their past.