End of season rant

Posted by Tony Hutton

It is now some weeks since the end of the 2016 cricket season, and some time since my blogging colleague John Winn reminded me the I had not done my usual end of season rant. Perhaps I am mellowing in my old age, but perhaps not as there are several subjects I am happy to have a go at.

First of all let us consider the final of the competition for various Yorkshire League champions which took place yesterday in Abu Dhabi. Congratulations to the winners Wakefield Thornes and to runners up Pudsey St Lawrence for putting on a fine show, after losing early wickets in pursuit of a huge total. Much has been made of the large audience on twitter and live streaming from the ground, with figures of up to 10,000 people said to have been involved.

However am I a lone voice, in this sea of euphoria, who feels that a Yorkshire competition final should be played in Yorkshire. Then perhaps this alleged figure of 10,000 people might have been able to watch the game live, ideally as part of the Scarborough cricket festival.

We already have the nonsense of the early season MCC game with the champion
county being played at this overseas venue, when many of the champion county's members and supporters would like the chance of seeing their team start the season at Lord's. This leads me onto another subject regarding the treatment of county cricket's long standing and traditional supporters. Apparently the frantic search for 'new people' to watch cricket takes no account of the traditionalists, who are regarded as all of an age who are going to die out in the near future

Be that as it may, but surely such longstanding support deserves some recognition by the money men who now seem to rule the game. The administrators in their headlong dash for more money making ideas, which all seem to revolve around T20 in whatever shape they can think of next, must realise that the county championship is a competition to be valued in it's own right, not merely as a source of England cricketers.

The competition should be marketed, not ignored. The Test players must have time to play in it. Highlights programmes should be shown regularly on TV and Sky should be persuaded to show more games live than the token one or two per season. The interest aroused by the Middlesex v Yorkshire game at Lord's was just one example of the cricket that is on offer, but so often ignored by the media at all levels.

Another of my ongoing complaints is the standard of cricket photography in the press these days. Despite all the high powered modern equipment available today's photographers do not seem to have the patience to capture the moment, when something actually happens. They only press the button after it has happened and invariably come up with players celebrating rather than a batsman's shot or the stumps being disturbed in a magic moment. I could go on about press reports made up largely of unintelligible quotes from players, but will spare you from that.

Now what about the long delay in obtaining county fixtures for next season, which may of course be delayed further this year because of Kent's legal challenge regarding possible promotion. County second XI, Minor Counties and University fixtures take even longer to produce and when they do appear the venues are often still not arranged.
Perhaps the powers that be should be introduced to the officials of the Derbyshire Cricket League who find it possible to produce a full fixture list for ten divisions, north and south by the 8th October!

Finally it is good to see that a petition has been started to persuade the ECB that their points deduction from Durham in all competitions next season is overkill. Relegation was bad enough but to compound this already excessive punishment with even more is morally unjustified and does the game no good at all.

 
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Nostalgia time again

Posted by Tony Hutton

Cartworth Moor cricket club

Thanks to John Winn for his excellent account of the future plans for clubs from the Huddersfield Central League. Good to see that cricket will continue at such attractive grounds as Cartworth Moor, Holmbridge and Almondburians. This is a league I took quite an interest in about ten years ago and indeed remember well my elation at completing visits to see cricket at all of the grounds. The last one was Greenmoor, which always seemed much nearer to Sheffield than to Huddersfield, perched on a hill top overlooking Stocksbridge. So a new home in the South Yorkshire league seems to make sense geographically, a subject which many cricket administrators seem unaware of.

My visit to Greenmoor, to achieve the full set of grounds, is memorable as along with Brian Senior and the late Mick Bourne we opened the car doors to almost have them ripped off the hinges by the howling gale. Cricket was going on as we stumbled up the hill to the shelter of the pavilion. At the end of the over the home team wicket keeper ran off the pitch to greet Mick, who had coached him as a junior, and held up play for a while so delighted was he to see Mick again.

Greenmoor cricket club

One of the locals pointed out the history of the club in the pavilion and told us that on a clear day you could see the Humber Bridge from this elevated vantage point. Sadly there was a lot of cloud about and we were unable to test his remarkable statement.
On a more serious note it is sad to see the demise of another league and to hear of many sides in this and other leagues who are unable to field second elevens in the future. Interest in playing cricket, particularly on two days of a weekend, is certainly on the wain and it is very difficult to see how this trend can be countered.

John also wrote an interesting piece about his boyhood visit to the Scarborough Cricket Festival in 1955. Out of curiosity I looked up my detailed archives to see what cricket I saw that year. I was 18 years old and had just started playing club cricket for my
employer's office team in Birmingham on a delightful ground which was one of the first to be sold off for building houses in the late 1960s. So my cricket watching that season was rather limited.

I saw a Sunday benefit match in April between Sutton Coldfield and Warwickshire in
which Fred Gardner, a stonewaller in county cricket, scored rather a quick hundred and then Eric Hollies bowled the club side out for 78 by taking 5-18. Then I had a morning's cricket at Lord's (Middlesex v Derby) before catching the tube to Wembley for the cup final between Newcastle United and Manchester City.

On holiday at the end of May with relations near Morecambe I saw Cumberland play Yorkshire 2nd XI at Carlisle with the likes of Padgett, Bird, Leadbeater and Van Gelovan in the line up. That same week I saw Australian Bill Alley score a century for Blackpool at Lancaster, just before he took up county cricket with Somerset. A couple of day's county cricket at Edgbaston and finally a benefit match for the Walsall club professional Arthur Booth, the former Yorkshire spin bowler, with the Bedser twins as umpires!

Like John happy memories of long ago.

Central League clubs go every which way

posted by John Winn

As far back as May The Huddersfield Examiner reported that 2016 might be the last season for The Huddersfield Central Cricket League. At that time the talk was of a possible merger with The Halifax League but since then there have been several twists and turns and at this point it looks as though the 16 member clubs will be dispersed to not one but four leagues for next season if, as expected,  the HCCL management board confirms at its AGM in November that after over 100 years of existence stumps have been pulled for the last time.

With help from Our Golcar Correspondent I have spent time this week trawling through various websites trying to establish where each of the 16 clubs will be when play is called next April, no easy task for even now there are ifs and buts in the Kirklees and Calderdale air that mean that the list below comes with a health warning that it may well need updating before the dust finally settles. As if to underline this uncertainty as recently as the 6th of October The Examiner carried a headline saying that cricket in the area was still in a state of flux and that the Huddersfield League was still not clear how many clubs it would be accommodating.

On Tuesday of this week, October 18th, at a meeting of The Halifax League the four clubs still wishing to join that league made presentations and the executive committee encouraged the existing members to 'endorse these applications'. All four clubs are within a ten mile radius of Halifax town centre and this seem their natural new home. The four are Mount, Birchencliffe, Leymoor and Bradley and Colnebridge.

Of the remaining twelve, seven  seem likely to end up in The Huddersfield League, they are Cartworth Moor, Augustinians, Almondburians, Edgerton and Dalton, Nortonthorpe, Holmbridge, and Flockton. Green Moor and Higham  have been accepted into the South Yorkshire League, Denby Grange and Calder Grove to Pontefract which would appear to leave only Horbury Bridge with no fixed abode although their location suggests they too might favour joining Denby Grange and Calder Grove. Watch this space.

Holmbridge Cricket Club who next year will play in The Huddersfield Drakes League.

A memorable summer

posted by John Winn

The summer just passed is not the one referred to in the title of the posting but one far back in time and possibly before some of our readers were born but my memories of 1955 have been prompted by a book I have read recently, I Declare by Jack Cheetham, an account by the then South African skipper of his side's tour of England in that summer.

It is a summer remembered for fine weather, an exciting test series and on a personal level as the year when I left my little village school to move on to Darlington Grammar School. This important change in my life had the added bonus of two extra weeks holiday, the last of which was spent at Scarborough watching firstly Gentlemen v Players and to finish the week, TN Pearce's XI v South Africans, a game the tourists won by four wickets with one ball to spare, the winning hit being made on the stroke of time by Cheetham himself off the bowling of Johnny Wardle.

At the end of the match I was one of many who sought the autographs of the men from the Veld and in a small green book, still in my possession, are the signatures of six of the party who had the patience to sign after a tour that had begun when they had flown from Jan Smuts Airport Johannesburg on April 23rd and would finish with a drawn game at Carlisle on Saturday, September 10th the day after they had finished at North Marine Road, a little over 20 weeks since they had left South Africa. In that time they played 28 first class matches, including the five tests, nine of these matches being before the first test which, as was traditional at that time, was played at Trent Bridge.

Cheetham's book gives a very detailed account of his team's five months in England and Wales, they played Glamorgan at Swansea, and whilst he is no Neville Cardus he gives an insight into what was then a very different world and in which he avoids any controversy. One of the most surprising features of the tour to me was the number of receptions the tourists were expected to attend beginning in April with an appointment at South Africa House and ending at Scarborough Town Hall. The tour began in poor weather, a wet pitch at New Road contributing to a heavy defeat in the first match and the following week it was bitterly cold at Derby, plus ca change. The summer redeemed itself from July and for the first time all five tests were played to a definite conclusion: three in favour of England and two for South Africa, the first time they had achieved that feat in England. The tests were generally low scoring affairs with an average of just over 25 runs per wicket. In the decisive test at The Oval forty wickets fell for just 618 runs, 21 of them to spin.

Cheetham himself had a modest tour, a middle order batsman he averaged 24.00 in the three tests he played with a top score of 54. Injury kept him out of the third and fourth tests where under the captaincy of McGlew the South Africans had their two victories. Cheethams describes in the book how he was 'loathe to play' in the final test but was persuaded by McGlew and tour manager Ken Viljoen that he should . Back in South Africa his wife received many anonymous phone calls forcefully suggesting he should not return to the side. The beginnings of social media perhaps? The bespectacled* Paul Winslow, who had scored a century in the third test at Old Trafford, made way for his skipper.
*Percy Mansell, a fine slip fielder also wore glasses

The South Africans were let down by their batting but they had a strong hand of quicks and the off spin of Tayfield who took 143 wickets on the tour. Their strongest suit however was their fielding and I have a clear memory of them practising catching in front of the Scarborough pavilion, a pursuit we take for granted now but which was unusual, possibly unique, at that time.

Cheetham's book describes how after that final first class victory the band at Scarborough played Auld Lang Syne but does not record the names of the schoolboys who queued for his team's autographs. The signatures I have are those of Adcock, McGlew, Mansell, McLean, Smith and Goddard. For many years I believed that I was one of considerable number who wanted wicketkeeper batsman John Waite to sign and that he said he would oblige just twelve of us. I have many times recounted how I was 13th in line and that he took pity on me but as his signature is not in my book I must have imagined the incident.

In the concluding chapter of the book Cheetham gives an appraisal of each of the fifteen players under his captaincy and expresses his faith in the future of South African cricket. Wisden shared his confidence and in the last sentence of its account of the tour visit it predicts that (England) 'will find these talented Springboks even more formidable on their native Veld.' Wise words for two years later in South Africa they again conceded the first two tests to England but after a drawn third test fought back to share the series. When Cheetham left the field at The Oval on August 17th 1955, lbw Laker 9, it was his last appearance in test match cricket. He died in 1980, aged just 60. Two of his sons played first class cricket.

Cricket in October

Posted by Tony Hutton

The Arthington cricket festival took it's usual course with four weekends of friendly cricket to bring the curtain down on the cricket season. I was otherwise engaged for the first two weekends, but the weather was kind and I managed to see the last four games during the first two weekends of October.

Next man in waits his turn

Saturday 1st October and Arthington took on the Hawks a long established Wharfedale wandering side. A nice mixture of youth and experience, with leading light as ever David 'Ted' Lester scoring a hard hitting fifty. The Hawks were reinforced by the addition of the Priestley family from Pudsey St Lawrence, Ian a veteran performer who played one game for Yorkshire some years ago together with his two young sons. Number one son made a fine 31, but the youngest member was a bit put out to be dismissed cheaply.
                                            The Hawks line up

The Hawks final total of 189 all out looked a decent score, particularly when opening bowler Wilkinson took 4-4 in his early spell. Arthington were soon reduced to  51-6 when the rains, which had threatened earlier, finally arrived and the game was called off as a draw. This was the only game of the festival not to reach a positive result and reinforced the feeling of many regulars that October weather can be excellent.

Regular spectators Harold Todd and Reg Parker

The following day saw the visit of Doghouse, again a very well established Sunday wandering side from Teeside. At one time they had a wonderful fixture list of games all over North Yorkshire and the North East on some of the most beautiful grounds around. Sadly in recent years the number of fixtures has decreased rapidly due to the problems of raising a team on Sundays. Unfortunately we learned that this might indeed be their last match ever, the end of a great tradition.

Cricket in the October sunshine

For years they fielded many strong players from the North Yorkshire and South Durham League and the opening pair reflected that with David Cross from Norton and Ben Usher from Bishop Auckland soon piling up the runs. Usher made 49 and Cross went on to make a fine 72, but after that the scoring rate declined somewhat and even so a total of 223-9 looked like a winning score.

80 year old Dennis Nash still taking wickets

Unfortunately the Doghouse bowling did not match the early batting and Arthington cruised to an excellent victory by six wickets, making 224-4, thanks mainly to a century by youngster James Lord from the Crossbank Methodists side in the lower reaches of the Bradford cricket league.

That end of season feeling

On the final weekend, Saturday 8th October saw a rather one sided game against Cambridge Methodists, who were bowled out very quickly for only 82. Vince Greaves-Newell took 3-7, Dougie Jones 3-15 on his 21st birthday and veteran Geoff Barker finished them off with two wickets. Arthington raced to victory with Richard Spry scoring 60 not out and Joe Nash (son of Dennis) 21 not out.

Steve Bindman batting for Cambridge Methodists

The end of the game was enlivened by a longish over from the one and only Steven Bindman, whose first two deliveries were so slow he could have retrieved them before they reached the batsman. However he then found his length and Mr Spry treated several balls with great respect before hitting one through mid wicket for four to win the game.

Arthington secretary Martin Binks enjoys the win

Sunday 9th October and the last match of the season ended in anti-climax, as it often does. Visitors St Georges Church, who play their home games in the grounds of nearby
Harewood House, made a useful total of 193-4 in their forty overs. Star performer was a young man from Zimbabwe, via school in Botswana, and now studying at Leeds University. He had the unpronounceable name of Stephen Parirenyatna (if I have spelt it correctly), but he could certainly bat and made an excellent 71 in partnership with another veteran Andrew Stoddard who ended not out on 59.

Andrew Stoddard (left) marches off undefeated

Apparently Mr Stoddard yesterday completed his one thousand runs in all forms of cricket this season, although he strongly denied that this included some scored on the beach at Scarborough. The two batsmen had put on around 120 for the fifth wicket after an early collapse but sadly Arthington never really approached the run rate required for victory. Opener Greaves-Newell made 40, but the only other batsman to make runs was last week's hero James Lord with anothe fine 50. Wickets fell at regular intervals and the game petered out just after six o'clock in the evening in the gathering gloom. Final score 156-8 so St Georges won by 37 runs. The players and umpires shook hands and said their farewells. The small band of spectators who had stayed in the cold to see the last rites made their way home and no doubt all will be making plans for next season before too long.

Dennis Nash put out to graze

More feathers to fly

posted by John Winn

In my last posting, Wednesday 5th October, I expressed my great disappointment over the punishment handed out to Durham by the ECB for their financial woes. Durham's response has cheered me a little with news of promising young players signing new contracts and an encouraging uptake of memberships for next season despite the loss of first division status. And there is even a little solace in that we will see some new faces in championship action at The Riverside, it is some years for example since the likes of Leicestershire and Glamorgan came to play first class cricket.

Yesterday however the story took another twist with an article in The Times by Elizabeth Ammon under the headline 'Kent may sue after missing promotion' in which she quotes from a letter 'seen by The Times' in which it is alleged that Durham were told in May that they would be relegated at the end of the season. My first thought, expressed in a tweet to my friend Alan Pinkney, was that this meant Durham's last match against Hampshire, the result of which sent the south coast team down, was a sham. Alan replied that of course it went much further than this for if Durham knew in May then the whole season from that point was a sham, that the excitement and tension generated in the last couple of rounds of matches when anyone of four clubs appeared to be in danger of relegation  with Notts was just a balloon that could be pricked at any moment if this were to be leaked. To quote Ms Ammon ' .....calling into question the integrity of the whole championship season'.

Later in the morning Durham issued a very brief statement stating 'that they were not told in May that the club would be relegated at the end of the season.' So who do we believe? While Durham suffered something of a slump in the second half of the season anybody who saw their performance on the fourth afternoon of their match with Surrey when, having looked likely losers at tea they fought back to win by 21 runs, a result which at the time seemed to have secured first division cricket for the twelfth season in a row at The Riverside, would not believe they were watching a team who knew it was all a waste of time. Would Mark Wood, by his own admission only 60% fit, have played in that match under such circumstances? And if the Durham dressing room had known for five months that they were part of a charade designed to dupe the paying public into thinking they were watching an honest game would there not have been rumours to that effect leaked to the members, several of whom are blood relatives of the players?

If we can discount the suggestion that the players knew their time was up then it does I suppose leave open the possibility that the DCCC hierarchy had been told of their fate in May but that such a devastating blow had been kept secret from coach Jon Lewis, skipper Paul Collingwood, Durham's backroom staff and least likely of all, Our Hartlepool Correspondent., come on!

Back to Kent, who are on the warpath for they have threatened legal action against the ECB if the latter are not prepared to go to independent arbitration over the decision to reprieve Hants from relegation and deny Kent, who finished second in Division Two, promotion. I know who I am rooting for.

Arthington last Sunday when tea was taken at three during the last match of the season.

End of season blues

Posted by Tony Hutton

So soon after the euphoria created by the Middlesex v Yorkshire game to decide the championship came the decision to relegate Durham, with considerable other penalties as well, which John Winn and many others have expressed their outrage. I share these views and feel that the ECB have shot themselves in the foot with several recent decisions which do the county game no good at all.

It is a sad time anyway with only two games remaining this coming weekend at Arthington, which will really be the end of season. I am hoping to do a comprehensive blog covering all the games of the Arthington festival, which last Sunday saw what is likely to be the last match played by the Teeside based wandering club Doghouse. They have entertained us right royally for many years and not that long ago had a full fixture list of Sunday matches throughout North Yorkshire and the North East on some of the loveliest grounds around. Sadly in today's environment they struggle to raise a side for more than a handful of games, a problem not confined to Sunday cricket.

Anyway as today is national poetry day, I feel moved to try and write something more cheerful on a rare venture into this alternative genre.

END OF SEASON

The cricket season's over
and we never got to Dover.
We went to many places,
all with familiar faces.
Of course to Scarborough fair,
a place beyond compare.

We ended up at Lord's,
surrounded by the hoards,
but that ending cannot beat
the Minor Counties treat.

We had been to Tattenhall,
to Whitchurch and Colwall,
Kendal and Sedbergh School,
enough to make you drool.
We enjoyed the peace and quiet
and a very healthy diet!

Now a plug for two cricket books to enjoy during the months ahead. Firstly I was fortunate enough to attend the Northern Cricket Society meeting at Headingley last Tuesday when author Martin Howe talked about his recent book on former Yorkshire and England captain Norman Yardley. To assist him he brought along the twin sons of Yardley and all three of them contributed to an excellent evening, particularly for those of us who remember the 1940s and 1950s. The book is published by ACS (The Association of Cricket Statisticians).

The second volume is the sort of book I would like to write myself  'Sweet Shires' by Dave Morton published by SilverWood Books of Bristol. It is a paperback story of his cricket watching all over the country and is full of excellent colour photographs - I just wish mine were of the same high standard. Dave was born in Yorkshire and seems to have overcome the handicap of spending most of his life in Lancashire very well. A wonderful book ideal for people who collect cricket grounds.

'unjust, unprecedented and alien to cricket's code of fair play'

posted by John Winn

'Build it and they will come' unless it is against an inexperienced Sri Lankan side in May and just eight days after a test at Headingley and the genius who came up with the piece of scheduling knew nothing of meterology, geography and the depths of people's pockets.A  condition attached to the granting of first class status to Durham 25 years ago was that they should construct a ground fit for international cricket and in 2003 Riverside became England's first new test venue for 101 years when Zimbabwe were the visitors. Wisden drew attention to modest crowds on the first and second days but linked that to the quality of the opposition and since then England have paid five further tests at the ground, although they had to wait until 2013 before Australia dropped in, only one of which has been played in the school holidays.

Set this against the ECB's bidding system, since dropped, which encouraged counties to overreach themselves, an increasing number of grounds competing to host tests and the difficulty of establishing a tradition of attendance when only six tests are played in a fourteen year period, mostly against the less attractive opposition in a town where only one north bound train stops between 10:03 and 14:03, fewer than was the case in 2003.

That was the hand Durham were dealt in 1992 and perhaps they have not played it well but the woes arising from the staging of tests and other internationals have brought my native county to its knees culminating in this week's devastating news that they will start next season in Division Two, when despite  playing the recent season without an overseas player they finished 45 points above Hampshire who are thus reprieved, and furthermore Durham will start next year on minus 48. A clear message from the ECB here that Durham are not fit to be in the top flight and will not be so for some time to come. Of course I have an axe to grind here, I was born a couple of miles north of the River Tees and have been a Durham member since 1992, but I do not know of any of the major cricket writers, the title of my posting is from the Daily Telegraph's Scyld Berry, who do not think Durham's punishement harsh in the extreme. Points deduction for next season or simple relegation, either of these I could just about take but both? No sir.

One understands there is no right of appeal and nobody from the ECB will be required to justify the butchery of the hopes of county which in its short existence has produced several England test players and whose policy of  dependence on mainly home produced players has won three championships in the last nine years. A sad week for Durham and for domestic cricket.