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.
No comments:
Post a Comment