West Indians come to York

Posted by Tony Hutton

Thursday 13th August saw me heading for York for a T20 game with a 5.15 p.m. start.
Not really my cup of tea, especially having to drive through heavy rush hour traffic, but nevertheless an attractive game in prospect. The Queens Park cricket club from Trinidad are touring England and after three games in Leicestershire this was to be their first appearance in Yorkshire.

The club's President is Derek Murray, the former West Indies and Warwickshire wicket keeper and in an excellent booklet prepared for this tour mentions some of the great names from the past produced by Queens Park. These include Jeff Stollmeyer and Gerry Gomez who toured England in the great side of 1950, Bryan and Charlie Davies and of course the greatest of them all Brian Lara. More recently the Bravos, Keiron Pollard and Sunil Narine have played for the club.

So a lot of history but today was a chance to see the younger generation now involved with this very go ahead club. York, the leading side of the Yorkshire Premier League for so many years, reinforced their team for tonight with two old boys, Dan Woods the left arm spinner now playing in Cheshire and Duncan Snell, a prolific run scorer, now plying his trade in the Bradford League.

The visitors batted first and soon had the scoreboard moving with openers Petrock Nicholas and Jonathan Augustus, two of the more senior players, looking in good form against the varied York seam attack. They took the score to 69 before the introduction of Dan Woods saw the first six of the day, followed immediately by a wicket when he bowled Augustus for 33. Woods also dismissed Nicholas lbw for 34 and at 86-2 York must have thought they were back in the game with half the overs gone.

The two new batsman, Tion Webster and Daron Cruickshank soon put paid to those ideas and proceeded to hit the ball to all parts. Leg spinner, and captain for the night, Tom Pringle went for 31 off three overs, off spinner Ryan McKendry for 20 off two overs and Duncan Snell 25 off his single over. 20 year old Webster looks a very good prospect and the more experienced Cruickshank, who has played for Chester Boughton Hall, helped him put on a partnership of 105 to take the visitors to 191-2 in 20 overs. Webster was 56 not out and Cruickshank 57 not out. Good entertainment.

Unfortunately York's strong line up proved no match for the West Indians' bowling attack and only their Australian Whately got any runs, scoring a well played 60 but when he was out the total had only reached 99-6 in the sixteenth over, so the game was virtually over. Dan Woods enlivened the end of the proceedings by hitting three sixes off three balls to make 27 from only nine balls, but the game was up with York finishing on 138-9. Queens Park winning by 53 runs.

A good evening's cricket, although it was nearly dark when the game finished. Only a relatively small crowd turned up, including the Mayor and Mayoress of York,  but those who did saw some very useful West Indian cricketers, so some hope for the future for them.