Three leagues in BD10

posted by John Winn

After a day of football chants, fancy dress, slow over rates and resisting a variety of attempts to get more than the price of the ticket out of my pocket, yes you've guessed right I was at Headingley on Friday, I sought quieter pastures yesterday with a trip to Bradford, in particular the BD10 postcode area.

To be fair Friday had its consolations: the sun shone, Plunkett continued a revival that would have been unthinkable eighteen months ago and Broad became only the second man to take two hat tricks in test cricket and Tattersall made more appearances than I could count. If he wasn't doing the old fashioned bit i.e. covering for absent fielders he was kept busy with the Lucozade run with its statutory requirement of high visibility jacket, and probably set a record when he ran on four times in nine balls as Broad and Plunkett blew away most of Sri Lanka's tail. But one day a year is enough of such heady excitement and yesterday's outing provided a nice restorative.

First call, and not easy to find surrounded as it is by bungalows,
was Bolton Villas for their match with Green Lane in Div 2 of the Aire Wharfe League. The All Alone Road ground is as neatly maintained as its neighbours' gardens, and when I arrived the visitors from Leeds were making good progress at 100 for 2 off 20 overs. An unpopular lbw (with the batsman that is) tilted things back towards the home side and shortly after reaching his 50 Mick Garrod was caught and bowled to make it four down.

 After half an hour's watching, Sat Nav took me out of the maze of streets and the short distance to Idle and the Westfield Lane ground of Cambing* CC. Here the fare was Bradford Mutual Sunday School League Div 1 with visitors Interlink. This is grassroots cricket although in places the grass has not really taken root and some of the money Waitrose donates to this form of cricket every time a boundary is struck in the test match could benefit this ground. The changing facilities are basic, probably a response to an arson attack the club suffered in 2006, and although the playing area is large the square is very small. Interlink, the visitors were batting and although the club historian, an 'old man' of 43, was at the crease I did get some of the club's history from his younger colleagues. The club is long established, although if 43 is old then what is long established, folded in 2000 but was reformed about four years ago and is doing well in the league. Go on You Tube and there is a short film about the club's early days. When I left the historian was leading a recovery with some fine shots off his legs which raced away down the slope towards Apperley Bridge.

 

Cambing CC

My next journey was even shorter than the last for just a couple of hundred yards up the road is the ground of Hepworth and Idle CC, so short that I arrived a week early for the beer festival. Third ground of the afternoon and third league for here it was Craven League and the Lancastrian visitors were from Barrowford: H and I I v Barrowford II, the two bottom teams in Div 2. Hepworth were struggling at 36 for 5 off 18 but had raised this to 61 for 5 when I left for a return to the Aire Wharfe and a Div 2 match between Thackley and Tong Park.

 

Tea time here with Thackley having been bowled out for 193 and after a cup of tea I took a seat near the scoreboard to watch Tong Park begin their reply. The home side were champions in 2011 but now find themselves bottom of Div 2 although I suspect their chirping can still be heard in the higher division .The constant noise was some of the worst of its kind and when the first dismissal was strongly contested by the batsman, looked out to me but not the Tong Park supporter and certainly not the departing opener, I decided that it was time to go. Pity because it was a pleasant warm afternoon but despite the good cup of tea I left with an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Just two ground left in the A-W now, Tong Park and Illingworth, be nice to tick them off by the end of the season.

 

Tong Park opener takes guard

 

* Cambridge Place (1912) merged with Bingley Road (1938) in 1996. I wonder if anybody suggested Bing Place and what if Bingley Road had merged with Crosby?