After our weekend in Norwich my wife and I moved on to the lovely town of Stamford in the south of Lincolnshire for a couple of nights before returning home this morning. If you are in one county in this part of the world you are never far from another for apart from Lincolnshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire are all close by. It was still a surprise, however that when looking at the Leicestershire play cricket site that I found that, together with their small neighbours Rutland they had a match yesterday against Warwickshire in the Under 15 cup Div 2A with a twelve noon start at Stamford School, just a few minutes walk from the town centre.
I arrived at the well appointed ground after an hour's play with Leicestershire and Rutland struggling at 54 for 8 with the larger bears' cubs rather bossing their smaller counterparts. To their credit L and R rallied well and despite some poor running between the wickets which had their coach swishing his tail, they reached 136 all out shortly before their 50 overs were up. By now my good luck with the weather had run out and for much of the time I was there the game continued in light drizzle which at one point was enough to persuade me to go into the most attractive pavilion where a cup of tea was available.
The pavilion had been refurbished in 1993 and the man chosen to cut the tape as it were, was, at least to a cricketing enthusiast, the school's most distinguished old boy, MJK Smith, Leicestershire and Warwickshire and of course England captain in the 1960s. Photographs of the 1993 event showed MJK with the headmaster and on a group photograph with the two teams who had played a commemorative match. Alas he was not in whites. Rather a nice coincidence that the two teams MJK represented in the county championship should be facing each other at U15 level on his old school ground.
At the closure of L and R's innings I rejoined my wife in the town to find she had discovered two other famous alumni of Stamford School, albeit famous musicians rather than cricketers, namely Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Michael Tippett. Just to throw in one more famous old boy, Colin Dexter, the creator of Morse also is an old Stamfordian, as his most famous creation.
I have searched the internet today but am unable to find the result of the game but I suspect Warwickshire won for I have found a league table which shows Warwickshire top having won all their 7 games.
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