Busy winter period

Posted by Tony Hutton

Close season it may be but plenty of cricket activity going on not only in India and U.A.E. The cricket society season is in full swing with many interesting speakers to entertain cricket enthusiasts during the winter months. 

Brian Sanderson recently gave an excellent talk to the Yorkshire Supporters Association at Headingley on the work of the Yorkshire archives committee of which he is a very active member. Those of you who frequent the long room at Headingley will have seen Brian's various displays of memorabilia during the last season which are always of great interest not only to Yorkshire members, but to many visiting members as well.

Brian Sanderson

 

Brian outlined his cricketing career both as a player and a spectator, together with the people he met along the way who pointed him in the right direction to become a collector both of memorabilia and of cricket grounds, the more obscure the better!
Yorkshire do possess a great number of items, most recently from the estates of Bob Appleyard and Philip Sharpe. Most of the items are stored at the Yorkshire archives in Morley.

Brian also talked about the very successful museum now well established at Headingley which is not really big enough for all the items they would like to put on show. There are hopes that room can be made for both an extension and a much needed library, which would be a fitting memorial for the late Tony Woodhouse who was such an inspiration as both a historian and archivist for the club.

The Northern Cricket Society, who also meet monthly at Headingley, have had an excellent group of speakers already this winter. This started with Martin Howe, author of a recent book on former Yorkshire and England captain Norman Yardley. Martin was accompanied by Norman's twin sons who added to the occasion with many memories of their famous father. Then we had Dr. Dean Allen, University lecturer, who has written another excellent book on Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa. He gave a most entertaining talk on little known facts of the development of cricket in the multi-racial atmosphere of that country.

Last week the speaker was Mark Chilton, Yorkshire born but brought up in Lancashire for whom he played throughout his career and actually captaining the county for a few seasons just prior to being a member, eventually, of their championship winning team.
It did take a long time but he was very proud to be a member of that side despite being told that many better players than him had never won it.

                                                      Mark Chilton

His early days with Lancashire were a bit of a struggle with established stars like Crawley, Fairbrother, Stuart Law and Flintoff in the side. He also talked about the different atmosphere of the second team dressing room at Old Trafford compared with all the public schoolboys he played alongside at Durham University, like Strauss and Martin Jenkins.

Mark is now a coach with Lancashire 2nd XI and is obviously a very clever man. A graduate of Durham University, he has just completed a Masters Degree with a dissertation on leadership, which is a subject very close to his heart. He talked a lot about the qualities needed to be a good captain and a good coach and is very enthusiastic about the work of Peter Moores at Lancashire. He feels strongly that he is the best coach he has worked under and is rather surprised he was not more of a success with England. Mark also felt Moores would do well at Notts next season.

He is obviously very proud of the success of young Hameed with England and also feels that Jones, a batsman who came to prominence at the end of last season, will also make his mark as well as leg spinner Parkinson He described Jones as a hundred percent team man, compared with many players who these days think only of themselves, cocooned as they are in their own little worlds of their mobile phones.

So a collection of very interesting speakers with lots more still to come. The Yorkshire supporters will have a double act of Martyn Moxon and Dave Callaghan on Sunday 29th January at 2.30 p.m. The Northern Cricket Society will have Ian Fisher, former spin bowler and now conditioning coach at Yorkshire on Tuesday 3rd January at 7.45 p.m. and Paul Grayson, now coach at Durham University on Tuesday 7th February, also at 7.45. All meetings are in the Long Room at Headingley and new members will be made very welcome.

Before all this the traditional Boxing Day cricket match will take place at 10.30 a.m. when North Leeds cricket club entertain the Northern Cricket Society XI at the Homestead, Old Park Road, Roundhay adjacent to the Soldiers Field, Roundhay Park.