Langbaurgh Land

posted by John Winn

The minutes of the Langbaurgh League AGM, held on February 6th, are now published and they confirm the resignations of Craythorne and Skelton Castle from the league. Westerdale CC have been admitted to the league from the Eskdale League.

The net loss of one club, sad as it is, has left the league conveniently with twenty teams and, as one might expect these will be organised in two divisions of ten. Moorsholm are reprieved from relegation by virtue of Craythorne's resignation.

Having been away from home for much of the last two weeks I had missed the announcement of the draw for the 2017 National Village Cup which this year will be sponsored by Pipers' Crisps. The first round will be played on Sunday April 30th and holders Sessay will play Scarborough Beckett League Champions, Staithes, away.

 In Scotland,  Falkland CC, always strong opponents in this competition are away to Kilmacolm with the other three Scottish entries receiving byes. Sessay's opponents in last year's final, Kent outfit Sibton Park, will travel to Castle Hill CC who play their cricket in Brenchley near Tonbridge. The full draw is available at nationalvillagecup.com

Sessay CC, near Thirsk

Art imitates life in Ambridge.

posted by John Winn

In a posting I made at the beginning of the month 'Not a new problem' 'Anonymous took advantage of the comment box which is available at the bottom of each posting to inform me that Craythorne CC, founder members of the Langbaurgh League had resigned ahead of the 2017 season citing shortage of players as their reason. Just two days later anonymous was in action again adding another postscript to the effect that Skelton Castle CC, also longstanding members of the league had given up the fight and had folded. The writer added that Westerdale had applied to join the Langbaurgh which would involve leaving them the Eskdale League, a competition he/she believed to be struggling.

Such turbulence is not unknown in this part of Yorkshire, I have posted on several occasions about clubs folding and this time last year reported the closure of the Cleveland League. Anonymous added the Langbaurgh AGM was scheduled for the 7th of November 'where all the changes should become clearer'. Alas that meeting is still being advertised as a forthcoming event and more than three weeks on there is no news that I can find from the league as to the various comings and goings and no fixtures for the soon to be with us season. The darkness was lightened a little by the Skelton Facebook page which although it had confirmed as far back as December 3rd that it would not be running a Saturday senior side in 2017 'due to the dwindling number of senior players in the area' it will continue to promote junior cricket. Evidence that it is committed to this worthy aim is clear from its subsequent Facebook postings.

My wife and I have been away for a few days in Upper Teesdale this week and I chanced upon an interesting snippet in the Teesdale Mercury, which has good coverage of local cricket including reports on Barnard Castle of the NYSD, Evenwood (Durham Cricket League) and Middleton-in-Teesdale (Darlington and District). It is perhaps this last connection that led it to report yet another club going out of business, namely Brompton on Swale CC, relegated from Div A of the D&DL last year and unable to raise a side to play in Div B this season. Their ground is visible from the A1 and from now on it would appear that the local footballers will have full use of the previously shared facility. 

There can be few followers of club cricket that are not aware of the decline in participation, particularly amongst the upper teen and early twenty age groups and followers of The Archers, of which I am one, will be aware that Ambridge CC are facing the same problem, namely a shortage of players. Here  skipper Harrison Burns has proposed the radical solution that women should be allowed to be members of the club. Not over our dead bodies said enough of the more dinosauric members this week, so where to now? Harrison is a man not to be trifled with for as well as captaining the cricket team he is also the village bobby. Watch this space or listen to Radio Four.

Not for the first time the photograph accompanying one of my postings has no connection with the article. It was taken on a fine summer's evening in 1972 at the playing fields of my old school showing the players in a match between staff and students. Staff, with the help of a couple of ringers, managed a win. My dad is by some distance the older of the two umpires, those who know me may see the resemblance, but I am not sure it will help you recognise me on the photograph.

Byzantine, a variety of Greek,intricate, tortuous

posted by John Winn

With the prospect of some sunshine in the next few days and Tony having reminded us in yesterday's posting that in six weeks willow and leather will renew acquaintance, you might be feeling upbeat this morning but unless I have gauged our readership wrongly I am about to bring you back to earth. The source of my irritation is an article published in The Times last week by Elizabeth Ammon, aka 'Leg Side Lizzie', in which she reveals  details of the ECB's new Twenty20 competition to be introduced in 2020. The article is based on access Ms Ammon has had to a memo that has been sent to county executives.

As far back as July news broke that the ECB was planning a radical overhaul of English cricket and at that time it seemed possible that the changes might be introduced as early as 2018. By October the start date had been pushed back to 2020 in order that it would become part of a new TV deal when the current one expires in 2019. Driving the leaked proposals, the sweetheart of ECB Chairman Colin Graves and Chief Executive Tom Harrison, is the creation of a T20 competition that will rival the IPL and Australia's Big Bash, the basics of which are

• Eight 15 man squads to include three overseas players, 13 of whom will be chosen via a possibly televised draft, the remaining two will be wild cards chosen after the Nat West Blast is finished
• All county players, unless they opt out,  plus any overseas who wish to be included , will also be in the draft in three different salary bands
• The tournament will run from mid July alongside a fifty over competition
• The 36 games will be played over 38 days but England players will not be available as test matches will be played at the same time

The consultation document does not say where the 8 teams might be based and this is likely to be the most contentious issue. Ms Ammon's article goes into detail on the tortuous process of elimination required to get 38 down to the final 2,  and also touches upon issues like the replacement of injured players and the appointment of coaches.

There is no reference  to the county championship which presumably, if it survives at all. will be the bookends of the season. The article offers readers the opportunity to comment and here are some extracts

MR JRG Edwards   'utter Byzantine complexity, little if any thought has been given to the notion of supporter loyalty. 'the slow death of English cricket'

The Fox 'County Cricket died. February 2017 RIP'.

and in the interests of fairness and balance

David Harrington 'This is fantastic news! Maybe it could be the beginning of the end of the counties rule over English cricket. Now there's a happy thought'.

Access to the full article can be gained via twitter @legsidelizzy, retweeted on Feb 10th

Eventful time for Yorkshire cricket

Posted by Tony Hutton

As the 2017 domestic cricket season gets ever nearer several recent events have helped us prepare ourselves for something that is only about six weeks away.

First of all at a recent well attended meeting of the Yorkshire County Cricket Supporters Association we had a well practised double act of Dave Callaghan, 'The Voice of Yorkshire Cricket', and Martyn Moxon Yorkshire's Director of Cricket.

Dave Callaghan has an unbelievably heavy workload on BBC radio during the summer months, with live ball by ball commentary online on all Yorkshire games as well as frequent reports on all Yorkshire's various local radio stations. He is also in great demand during the winter months as a speaker and MC at various cricket functions throughout the county.

Martyn Moxon is also a busy man. Having recently appointed former captain Andrew Gale as first team coach and decided on Gary Ballance as first team captain, he has also been involved in a trip to Australia and the hopeful signing of Peter Handscomb, the new Australian batting sensation, for the coming season. Most of the supporters seem happy with the first two decisions, but there seems to be an element of uncertainty, as so often, regarding the overseas player.

It would appear that when Handscomb was signed he was not a member of Australia's one day side. Since then his success has led him into all formats and he may well be required for the Champions Trophy competition in England during the early part of the season. His availability later on now also seems in doubt. So this appears to be Mr Moxon's major problem for the coming season and it seems a bit late in the day to find a replacement.

Moxon did make the point that now is the time for some of the younger players to come to the party and to perform well enough at second team level to challenge for first team places. This is particularly relevant for the bowlers in view of the advancing years of the main seam bowling attack.

The next function was the Northern Cricket Society meeting for February at which the guest speaker was Paul Grayson, who was born in North Yorkshire and started his cricket career in the Yorkshire schools system before graduating to the first team as an all rounder. He was a right hand bat and a slow left arm bowler but despite scoring a first class hundred for Yorkshire could not gain a regular place and left to join Essex in 1996. He had a very successful career with them before becoming county coach.

                                                        Paul Grayson


He is now coaching the Durham MCC University side having taken over from Graham Fowler last year. Just before the meeting at Headingley last Tuesday he was being interviewed on Look North TV following his appointment as the new Yorkshire Diamonds ladies team coach for the coming season. This fits in very nicely with the University job as the ladies do not start until after the university term is over.

Grayson recalled growing up with the Yorkshire Academy at the same time as Darren Gough and had a few stories of touring with him in Australia with England Under 19s.
Grayson did very well on that tour with centuries in both Sydney and Melbourne. He also spoke about his two rather unfortunate appearances for England's full one day side in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Flown out as a late replacement to Kenya he was out first ball not long after getting off the plane.

Nevertheless he had an excellent county career with Essex as both player and coach.
Now he is happy to be back living in Yorkshire, with a son who has already played for Essex 2nd XI at Leeds University and a daughter who is trying hard to convert from being an Essex girl to a Yorkshire lass.

Two days later it was the turn of Steve Patterson to take centre stage with the opening event of his well deserved testimonial year in the form of a well attended lunch at Headingley. This too had been organised by the indefatigable Dave Callaghan. The MC duties were admirably performed this time by Harry Gration of BBC Look North.
After an excellent meal, followed by a raffle and well supported auction, it was time for three of the Yorkshire players to step up to the stage.

Bairstow, Brooks, Ballance and Patterson

New skipper Gary Ballance, England hero Johnny Bairstow and bowler Jack Brooks, now trying to become a TV personality, were all in the firing line as Harry Gration tried to get them to say something controversial. Ballance sounded very proud to be Yorkshire captain (and so he should) and didn't say anything controversial but made a good impression. Bairstow, as ever, spoke very well and again said all the right
things and Brooks provided the light relief. When asked which form of cricket he preferred he said he had not played T20 for two years and anyway one day cricket for bowlers was rubbish!

Steve Patterson

All paid tributes to Patto, the workhorse of the Yorkshire side, whose economic bowling as well as his consistent wicket taking has made him one of the backbones of the team. They may take the mickey out of him off the field, such as setting up a spoof Twitter account of 'boringpatto', but they were all full of praise for his onfield contributions. Good luck to him for the coming year.

The final item, hot off the presses today, was the appointment of Joe Root, the Yorkshire batsman as England captain to succeed Alastair Cook. This of course was not unexpected as Root was the obvious choice, but a little uncertainty surrounded the news that Stokes and Broad were being interviewed as well.

Joe Root

However Root now has the job with Stokes as his vice captain. This brought back memories for me from almost ten years ago when I saw young Joe score 88 for England Under 16s against an Australian School XI at Loughborough University. He had a good partnership with young Ben Stokes, who made 50. Also in the England side that day was James Taylor, then of Worcester just before he joined Leicester.

Root at sixteen, looked much younger - about twelve in fact, but in that match and throughout the following season with the Yorkshire Academy side soon proved that he was a class batsman. He may not always have had the power to get the ball off the square some times but that is obviously not a problem these days as he is now one of the world's best batsman. Good luck to him too in his new role, he will certainly need it for what in some ways is a thankless task. Hopefully his batting will not suffer and he will follow in the great tradition of Yorkshire batsman, created by the two men shown below.

A Yorkshire cricketing outpost

Posted by Tony Hutton

While friends and relations are jetting off to such exotic locations as Barbados and St Moritz for their winter holidays we prefer somewhere much closer to home for a short mid winter break. Where else but Scarborough of course. A quick look at the North Marine Road ground and hotel bookings made for cricketing visits in June, July and August.

A day in Whitby, still recovering from recent flooding, found a couple of excellent second hand book shops and a chance to browse through a few cricket books.
Came across Scyld Berry's recent book and was surprised to see a picture purporting to be of Lascelles Hall cricket club, rightly praised as the cradle of Yorkshire cricket.
However the picture, which I have seen wrongly attributed before, is certainly not Lascelles Hall, but a view from a ground on the north west side side of Huddersfield, probably near Huddersfield New College at Salendine Nook judging by the distant view of Castle Hill. I will consult our Huddersfield friends at our next meeting.

This was not the only mistake I spotted, coming across a copy of Alan Hill's book on Herbert Sutcliffe, I found a photograph of the Yorkshire team of the 1930s going out onto a ground which Mr Hill obviously thought was Bradford Park Avenue. Clearly it is not the Park Avenue pavilion in the background, but more obviously Fartown at Huddersfield.

All a bit surprising to find two such well known cricket authors probably being led astray by others who provided the photographs.

After the day in Whitby it was off down the east coast exploring the delights of Bridlington, Hornsea and Withernsea, before arriving as near to Spurn Point as one can get these days. Lots of protests everywhere against the large new tourist centre being proposed. A quick look at Easington where I spent many boyhood holidays during and just after the Second World war. Unfortunately the White Horse Inn was closed.

So it was back inland in search of refreshment to Patrington where the cricket ground has been on my list to visit for several years. It was easy to find on the south side of the majestic St Patrick's Church, known as the Queen of Holderness with it's 189 foot spire. The ground is appropriately named Southside and the club's website states that the church is regarded by learned scholars as the most beautiful parish church in the entirety of England.

 

Having taken my picture I will have to return in the summer to get another one with cricket actually being played. The club now plays in Division Two South of the greatly enlarged York and District Senior League after unprecedented success in recent seasons both in the East Yorkshire Cricket Alliance and two successive promotions in the York and District League.

Patrington, which is not far from the Greenwich Meridian and sixteen miles east of Hull, is probably as far east in Yorkshire that you can find cricket being played, although it only just beats the neighbouring village of Roos to this title. This all assumes that cricket is not played in Withernsea as the cricket club went out of existence as long ago as 1955. Cricket may still be played at Withernsea High School
but details are hard to find.

Not a new problem

posted by John Winn

Not for the first time I am indebted to my neighbour June Sanderson for providing me with source material for use in the blog for yesterday she passed to me an article from last Friday's Darlington and Stockton Times by Harry Mead centring on a history of Broughton CC in the 1930s by Tim Wear which is as yet unpublished.

Great Broughton is a village in North Yorkshire on the edge of the Nork Yorkshire Moors National Park. Broughton CC joined the Langbaurgh League in 1929, some 8 years after it was formed, finishing a commendable third in their first season. There were 11 clubs in the league that year. When the league reformed in 1947 Broughton were missing but returned in 1954 having joined forces with near neighbours Kirkby. A long period of successful membership followed and the 2016 table shows Broughton and Kirkby finishing sixth in Division 1, The composition of the league today reflects  its expansion north of the Tees and east to the coast but with only two, Crathorne and Thimbleby  of the original eight clubs surviving.

The inspiration for Tim Wear's book, whose father in law played for Broughton, was every amateur cricket historian's dream, namely finding a box of old photos in a cardboard box, enough to set Tim off on his research to the point where, in the word's of the D and S, he now has 'an impeccably produced manuscript'. The emphasis of Mead's article is on the problems village cricket faces today such as the loss of clubs and clubs being forced to concede matches due to the shortage of players but Tim's book offers evidence that these difficulties are not new. Broughton for example being unable to raise a side to play Crathorne in 1935. One weekend is recorded where three clubs couldn't put out a side.

The D and S article shows a picture of Tim holding his manuscript, at present contained in a ring binder. Let's hope it can be published as a book. Any of our readers unfamiliar with the Langbaurgh League might enjoy reading a history of the league which is available on their website.

What is not available at the moment are the 2017 fixtures but those for the Wetherby League have now been published. The league will start the new season without Bilton in Ainsty (York League) and St Chad's Broomfield (Aire Wharfe). Matches start on April 22nd with champions Kirk Deighton at home to Scarcroft.

Hartlepool Power Station CC of The Langbaurgh League