Old man stars for Old England (1951)

Posted by Tony Hutton

Searching through my cricket archives recently I came across the details of a match played at the beginning of the 1951 season at Edgbaston, Birmingham. This was a warm up game for Warwickshire in what was to be an eventful season as they went on to win the county championship.

The game was against a star studded Old England XI with many players whose best years were in the 1930s before World War II. The most notable performance of the day was a magnificent century by one of the oldest men on the field Donald Knight aged 56. 'Tiger' Smith the former Warwickshire wicket keeper, and by now the county coach, was probably the oldest at 65.
       

This was a one innings match which was quite a novelty in those days and although the overs were unlimited it was a predecessor of things to come in the future. Warwickshire fielded a few youngsters in contrast to their opponents and left out all their regular bowlers with the exception of Eric Hollies, who for the first time in his life was listed as high as number nine in the batting order on the scorecard. He was not called upon to bat but had been a number eleven for all of his career.

Warwickshire batted first and a young man recruited from Yorkshire, Norman Horner, was out for 2 bowled by Surrey veteran Alf Gover. His opening partner Jimmy Ord, who had played for the county before the war, stayed around long enough to prove the mainstay of the innings with a fine 117. Don Taylor, another newcomer from New Zealand made a useful 38 but county captain Tom Dollery would not have been too pleased to be dismissed by two of his former county colleagues. He was caught Smith bowled Paine for just 1.

Nevertheless Warwickshire declared with a useful 214-6 in 60.4 overs. Paine once of Warwickshire but now of Moseley in the Birmingham League was the best bowler with 16-4-56-2. Jim Sims another spinner still plying his trade with Middlesex was a bit more expensive but also took two wickets.

Warwickshire were trying out two young and eager fast bowlers Ray Carter and Jack Bannister. Carter started off brilliantly dismissing both openers for nought. Laurie Fishlock of Surrey was clean bowled and Jack O'Connor of Essex lbw. When Bannister removed Paine for 9 the score was 28-3 and everyone thought the game was going to be a walkover for the county side. A good partnership from former England captain R.E.S. Wyatt, now with Worcester, and the aforementioned Mr Knight of Surrey swung things back Old England's way with a stand of 67. Wyatt was the dominant partner but was out for 47.

At this point Knight took over and played the innings of the day racing to 112 with 18 fours and playing some splendid shots all round the wicket.

Donald Knight was born in Sutton, Surrey in May 1894 and played for the county while still at school at Malvern College. He won a blue at Oxford either side of the First World War and his best season was as far back as 1919 when he opened regularly with Jack Hobbs and scored over 1500 runs at average of 49 with nine centuries. In 1920 he was struck on the head by a ball and was never the same batsman again.

However in 1921 he was picked for two Tests against the Australians but made only 54 runs in four innings. He became master in charge of cricket at Westminster School in 1920 and thereafter only appeared occasionally for Surrey, retiring after the 1937 season.

Having discovered this after the match made his innings all the more surprising and to this day I remember it and the fluency of his batting. He was eventually clean bowled for 112 by the persistent Bannister, who of course was to make his name as a county professional, bookmaker, journalist and commentator in future years. In fact Bannister had a very good day finishing with 5-43 in what became a drawn match with Old England 206-8 when time was up.

Wetherby League carries on

poste to the point where d by John Winn

On a number of occasions over the past few seasons I have blogged about the loss of clubs from the Wetherby League to the point where the league's very future has been called into doubt. The league has confronted this situation by polling all clubs with the choice of remaining as the Wetherby League or merging with the behemoth that is the York and District Senior League. The result of the vote, to which three clubs did not respond, was 59% in favour of the league continuing. The clubs also voted on the structure for next season and by a majority of 5% voted to reduce the number of clubs in Division 1 to ten. 13% voted for an option that would have seen the number of teams reduced to eight. Secretary Barry Oliver stresses that the decision to reduce to ten is a trial and will be reviewed for 2019.

Will this stop the exodus of clubs? Possibly not for if we turn to the Nidderdale League website there is a lengthy article under the heading 'Plan for Change' which refers to the 'potential implosion of the Wetherby League' and the reduction in divisions to three. Anticipating that the merger with the York league might have gone ahead three Wetherby  clubs within the Nidderdale catchment area had sounded out the possibility of joining the Nidderdale rather than the York.

Much of 'Plan for Change' addresses the problem only too familiar to pcws, the plague of concessions, especially in the lower divisions of leagues. There is an excellent paragraph which sets out how the changes in both men and women's  lifestyles,  have impacted on league cricket. I recommend it to all our readers. The stats for conceded matches are truly awful, 72 in total, more than one fifth of which were by one team, Helperby III. 25% of the 'lost games' were when the cricket and football seasons overlapped and the worst day when in 11 matches no coin was tossed was when York Races, the Headingley test and the Leeds Festival coincided. Wetherby gave up 17 matches that day.

To his credit the Nidderdale secretary is not content to ring his hands and in his article puts forward several suggestions to try and reduce this problem. These include reducing the number of overs, reducing the number of matches in the lower divisions and speeding up over rates. For the full article search Theakston Nidderdale League, click on news, then a plan for change, scroll down to TNL Review plan for change discussion document, for those of you watching in black and white it's in green ink. Clubs were invited to attend a discussion meeting on this matter last week. No report on that yet.

Finally the website reports that the company that gave birth to crichq, a system the league has used for a number of seasons, has gone into administration and the league is trialling ecb's play cricket as an alternative. Whilst I feel sorry for anybody whose jobs are threatened by this news I will not be sorry to see the back of crichq, a website I have grumbled about on the blog on numerous occasions.

No play today. Hinderwell CC 26/08/17

Derbyshire in Staffordshire

Posted by Tony Hutton

A trip into Staffordshire to see Minor Counties cricket at Checkley this summer completed my set of grounds on which Derbyshire have played in that county. It all goes back a very long way as I was reminded the other day when I passed through Burton on Trent on my way home from a few days holiday in the Midlands.

The Staffordshire Knot

As a boy and a young man I lived in Walsall at the southern tip of Staffordshire and can recall an epic cycle journey (a round trip of about 50 miles) from Walsall to Burton on Trent to see Derbyshire play Worcestershire in May 1953 at the Ind Coope & Allsopp ground. I can vaguely remember Don Kenyon making top score for Worcester in a game which Derby won by three wickets, but what sticks in the memory is that the two Derbyshire amateurs came out of a different gate, and presumably dressing room, from the professionals.

Derbyshire in all played 35 first class games at this ground between 1935 and 1980 by which time it had become the Allied Breweries ground. At that time it was decided to concentrate all cricket at Derby and Chesterfield. Sadly although the ground continues as a sports and social club no cricket is played there now.

A few years after my cycle journey I returned to Burton to play on the Town Ground, which also staged county cricket on a regular basis between 1914 and 1937. Along the track off Trent Bridge (another one) we passed the third venue to stage first class cricket in the town when both Oxford and Cambridge played Derbyshire on the Bass Worthington ground during the mid 1970s. Our club side from Walsall which played a Sunday friendly at the Town Ground was notable for the inclusion of one David Brown, fresh out of school and already being looked at by Warwickshire. He was of course to go on to captain the county and play for England. On this day however he failed to take a wicket whereas my gentle off spin managed two or three!

Time moves on and with the advent of the John Player Sunday League Derbyshire had the idea of playing some matches at different grounds in Staffordshire to obtain new supporters from a county which over the years had provided them with some very useful players. So it was that games were played in the seventies and eighties at Cheadle, Leek, Knypersley and Checkley. The first three had staged Minor Counties games for Staffordshire but Checkley only caught up during the 2017 season when I visited for the first time.

Checkley cricket club.

All these grounds have their attractions but obviously it was difficult getting sponsors despite some deals with local councils. The facilities were not really up to staging county games and the experiment was eventually abandoned following further improvements to the county ground at Derby.

Some of the information in this blog has been sourced from an admirable ACS publication 'Cricket Grounds of Derbyshire' by John Shawcroft, written in 2008. Unfortunately there is one mistake which shows a picture of Hartlepool's ground labelled as Knypersley. However I am able to rectify that with a picture of my own, which without doubt was taken at Knypersley during a visit by Cumberland.

Knypersley cricket club

Another Horace

posted by John Winn

As far back as the 31st March 2014 in a posting I made welcoming the start of another season I quoted from the poet Horace. Over the next few days this sparked some of Headingley's finest brains to think of Horaces  who had played cricket. Tony came up with Horace Fisher of Yorkshire and Horace Hazell of Somerset and I put a couple of short accounts of these two men's careers on the blog. To my surprise and quite by chance I came across another Horace, a Yorkshire man no less, when thumbing the 1964 Wisden for on page 954 was the obituary of one Horace Rudston who had died in April 1962, aged 82.

Born in Hessle where he also died Horace played as a professional for Yorkshire from 1902 to 1907. It is perhaps significant that his obituary appeared a year late for he did not set the broad acres on fire. Scoring 609 runs in 21 games  for the county 269 of which were in one match against Leicestershire in 1904, 164 runs in the first innings.  But Wisden, in the eight lines they spared for his belated obituary drew attention to what they describe as an 'eventful' match at Bristol in 1906.

In today's hyperbolic world 'eventful' would not do the game justice. Played on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of August Gloucestershire batted first and were bowled out for 164 with William Ringrose taking five wickets including that of Jessop and FH Bateman-Champain* top scoring with 42. Yorkshire responded in similar vein conceding a five run deficit with left arm spinner George Dennett opening the bowling and taking 8 for 86 . The west countrymen fared a little better in their second innings with Jessop hitting 34 in almost even time and Hirst accounting for five thus leaving Yorkshire 234 to win. Despite 52 from Wilfred Rhodes Yorkshire were five down for 119 with Dennett, who bowled unchanged again, having three to his name when Rudston was joined by skipper Ernest Smith with whom he added 66 until Horace, attempting to square cut Jessop hit his wicket. Yorkshire were not done for and when Hunter was ninth out victory was not out of the question with just 11 needed. Nine of those were gathered by Myers and Ringrose before the latter was lbw to Jessop, the croucher's 750th first class wicket. Thus Gloucestershire won by one run, for which they were awarded one point while Yorkshire were deducted one.

Yorkshire played one more championship game that season, v Somerset at Bath which they won by 389 runs, George Hirst a century in each innings, for which gave them another point which left them level on points with Kent who had won their last eleven fixtures. With counties playing different numbers of matches Kent's higher percentage gave them the first of four championships they were to win before the first world war intervened.

In what might so easily have become 'Rudston's match' over three hundred overs were bowled, more than 77 of them by Denning, without his skipper once having to suggest he take a spell. George was no stranger to hard work for he bowled over 1000 overs that season taking 160 wickets including a tenfor against Essex at Bristol.  The umpires were Messrs Millward and West but which one of them gave Ringrose out lbw and so virtually hand the title to Kent we shall probably never know.

* The Bateman-Champains were something of a cricketing family with five brothers playing in the XI at Cheltenham College. An Oxford Blue, Francis Henry would have played more for Gloucestershire had it not been for his duties as a schoolmaster at Wellington and Cheltenham. He hit a hundred for the university against the 1899 Australians and played

for the Gentlemen against the Players on two occasions. His playing days over he took up fruit farming in Canada.

A Corinthian spirit

posted by John Winn

With Arthington behind us and Boxing Day still more than ten weeks away the pcw must find alternative ways to quench his/her thirst for all things cricket and for this blogger the winter provides the opportunity to catch up on reading and I have this week finished 

‘ Runs and Catches' the slim autobiography of Tony Pawson. 

Pawson, who died in 2012 aged 91 is described in his Wisden obituary as 'one of the last of the brilliant all-round sportsman who emerged from the public schools and bestrode English sport in the first half of the twentieth century'. His cv certainly supports this view for coming from a privileged background, his father captained Oxford in 1910, Tony followed in dad's footsteps and went to Winchester and after a distinguished war he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, made a hundred in the 1947 Varsity match then captained the Dark Blues the following year.  That would be enough for most of us but he had played for Kent after being demobbed and made 90 on debut..A good county player Pawson freely admits he was not good enough for test cricket but given his credentials it would not have been surprising had he been selected. Think JG Dewes and JJ Warr.

Away from cricket HA Pawson was also an outstanding footballer in the halcyon days of the amateur game. An Oxford blue he was selected for the England amateur XI, played for Pegasus when they won the Amateur Cup in 1951, and fitted in a couple of games for Charlton Athletic, scoring on his debut against Spurs .If all this adds up to something out of the pages of Hotspur rather than Wisden then the icing on the cake is yet to come for in 1984 Tony became world champion in the sport that gave him most satisfaction, namely fly fishing. Born in Sudan he first fished in the Nile as a four year old and after his successful debut for Kent announced to his skipper Bryan Valentine that he was not available for the next match, 'gone fishing, there's a sign upon my door' to borrow from the Louis Armstrong song. 'Runs and Catches' has on its cover a photo of Pawson batting for Kent against Middlesex at Lord's in 1947 and on the back he is shown landing a salmon on the Scottish Avon.

Like most of us HA had to make a living and after a spell as a schoolmaster at Winchester he had a very successful career with Reed International where he was Personnel Director but then turned his hand to journalism and it is for his writings on cricket in The Observer that I best  remember him. When asked how he had the patience for fishing his reply was

that 'the only patience needed is to endure the months and days when you can't fish'. Substitute watching cricket for fishing and that sums up quite nicely the philosophy of the pcw

The umpires set forth to start the last game of the season at Arthington

Yorkshire then and now.

Posted by Tony Hutton

Last week I had the pleasure to listen to Mark Rowe, author of a new book on Brian Sellers, the former Yorkshire captain and cricket chairman for many years. As Mr Rowe admitted in his rather unorthodox presentation it was a book that should have been written by J.M. Kilburn, the long time Yorkshire Post cricket correspondent.

However Mark Rowe stated that he tried to have a balanced look at Sellers life. He was the most successful county captain of all time. Yet many people fell out with him or didn't like him, particularly in his role as administrator, or virtual dictator, that it was hard to find many plus points. I think the same can be said about Yorkshire's cricket during 2017 which has come in for a lot of criticism from the majority of supporters who demand success at all times.

The end to the season in the game against Essex at Chelmsford and the earlier game against the same opposition at Scarborough were very much the low points of the year and I had reached the stage where I felt it best not to comment at all as so much had been said already. However several people have urged me to express my opinion. My blogging colleague 'Backwatersman', who has entertained us all season with his writings on Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, was one who wanted to know what was going on - as if I knew!

So rather reluctantly here goes. The first thing to look at is the predicament of Andrew Gale, captain of two championship winning sides, thrown in at the deep end to replace Jason Gillespie as coach without any previous experience. Gale is of course very close to all the players, some might say too close, but no doubt he has their confidence and will have learned a lot from his first season in charge.
I am not one of those, and there are many, who are calling for his resignation. He needs more time to settle into the role and I for one am all in favour of having a Yorkshireman in charge rather than someone from overseas.

Which leads me nicely onto the next topic - overseas players, which has always been a thorny question for Yorkshire. They have had some very good ones notably Darren Lehmann and Michael Bevan for instance, but also quite a lot who have not done the business. They had three overseas players for shortish periods of time in 2017, none of whom really distinguished themselves and without doubt proved the point that short term signings are a complete waste of time. I appreciate the difficulty in finding players who can commit to a whole season with the current crowded international programme but that is what is needed.

The next problem has been the loss of form by all the top order batsman. Only Gary Ballance, in the first half of the season, scored a large number of runs until his season was blighted by injury and international uncertainty. Most worrying for many people has been the loss of form of opening batsman Alex Lees, who looked a certainty for England honours two or three years ago. Who could ever forget his magnificent 275 not out against Derbyshire at Chesterfield in 2013?

Lees has tried to find his form in the second team and I saw him score a double century against Durham seconds at Riverside, but even there he didn't really seem to have regained his old fluency and continued to struggle in the first team, even going down the order to number three. Hopefully both he and Adam Lyth can regain their previous high standards next season. Jack Leaning is another who needs to find more consistency in championship cricket as he too has plenty of ability.

Now for the plus points and there were quite a few. The obvious choice is Ben Coad, who had a remarkable season and made a real breakthrough at senior level, after not many outstanding performances with the seconds. However what I like about him is his ability to bowl straight, the old Brian Statham theory 'you miss, I hit'.

The other player to impress me was Harry Brook, the young opening batsman, for both the Second Eleven and the Academy side. Runs a plenty in the first half of the season brought him promotion not only to the first team but to captain the England Under 19s. Then the runs dried up and he had a poor spell of form towards the end. He is a class player with an excellent temperament and I am sure he will come back strongly.

The Yorkshire Academy side had a good season in the Yorkshire Premier League North and only just missed out on the league title. Obviously not all of the players will make the grade at first class level but there are some both past and present who could still make it and I thought both Wainman, an opening bowler, and Thompson, an all rounder, deserved a first team chance last season.

Of course the biggest problem facing Yorkshire cricket, reflected on a regular basis by readers' letters in the Yorkshire Post is the continual absence of their England players. This will continue until the people running county cricket stand up for themselves and their members to emphasise that county cricket is not just there to provide Test players but is a treasured and valued competition in it's own right which should be marketed and promoted properly not just left to rot. The star players should be allowed to play for the county sides that produced them and the fixture programme should be planned accordingly instead of giving precedence to the money machine which is T20.

Brian Sellers was a man of forthright opinions and colourful language. One can only imagine what he would have said if his band of international players of the thirties or sixties had been taken away for the whole season.

County cricket's future is obviously very much in the balance but as long as it continues Yorkshire will produce good players. If only we could see them playing for the county rather than just for England. County members, most of whom like me belong to an older generation, are being written off by the money men now running the game. We must do all we can to stop them ruining what has always been an important part of the British way of life.

Arthington see off the season in style

Posted by Tony Hutton

The cricket festival at Arthington cricket club in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire has prolonged the season into October for the last twenty nine years. Unfortunately, the usually good weather deserted them this year and a record number of four of the eight scheduled games were called off due to rain.
Again an unfortunate clash with Yorkshire league cricket's semi finals and final at Headingley meant that few people attended the two games on 23/24 September.

Cricket in October at Arthington.

However for the final weekend 7/8 October both games were completed and both finished with victories for the home side to crown a season when both first and second elevens had achieved promotion from their respective divisions of the Nidderdale League. Of course when the festival started back in 1989 Arthington were still playing friendly cricket, which is what the festival is all about with opponents mainly from the ranks of the few teams still playing this type of game outside the league structure.

Saturday's game against Cambridge Road Methodists resulted in a fairly comfortable home victory with help of a guest player James Van der Merwe, from South Africa, who has been plying his trade with East Leeds CC in the lower reaches of the Bradford League. He took four wickets with his spin bowling as the visitors were dismissed for 113 and then scored a quick fire 50 to help the home side to a four wicket victory. The weather was dry, but cloudy, and the cold wind sent a few of the rather smallish crowd home early.

Wherever two or three are gathered together at any cricket ground in England they will alway stand in front of the scoreboard!

Sunday was a much better day, no wind for once, and even glimpses of blue sky in the distance but it never really arrived at the ground. A bigger crowd, if you could call it that, of regulars for this last farewell to the season appeared, including a visitor from Surrey, one from Teeside and two from the wrong side of the Pennines even. The visitors today were St Georges Church, who play their matches on the nearby attractive ground of Harewood House.

Despite their recent amazing victory over Cookridge Hospital when St Georges took the last eight wickets for just one run, including four clean bowled with the last four balls, they could not reproduce that form today.

St Georges could only make 104 with the lower order collapsing against the spin twins Geoff Barker and Andy Stoddart with 4-7 and 2-7. As ever though the two stars of the show were the two over eighties players Dennis Nash, who of course opened the bowling, and wicker keeper Martin Binks, who got two stumpings and thought he should have had three!

The two famous Arthington veterans - Dennis Nash and Martin Binks.

Barker lets one go through outside offstump.

After an early scare when opening bowler O'Sullivan reduced the home side to 5-3 and narrowly failed to get a fourth with his hat-trick ball, Arthington were guided to victory by the ever dependable Geoffrey Barker, with his trademark forward defensive stroke to the fore and a more aggressive 50 from first team wicket keeper, Andy Dowson which took them home with overs to spare.

Geoff Barker's trademark forward defensive while Andy Stoddart stands on one leg.

So as the evening began to get somewhat chilly just after five o'clock the game and the season came to an end. The players and spectators said their farewells, with good wishes to 'winter well' and some of us will no doubt reconvene as early as March for the beginning of next season. Although well before that we have the annual Boxing Day game at North Leeds CC to look forward to.

Good in parts

posted by John Winn

With my only chance of seeing anymore cricket this season hanging on the prospects for this weekend's two matches at Arthington it is an appropriate  time to reflect on the last six months for it is that long since I, for the first time, saw cricket in March. The occasion was not an auspicious one, Loughborough University B v Notts II, an occasion notable not so much for the standard of the cricket but more for the plethora of coaches in attendance. But it was cricket on a new ground and in the afternoon the sun came out and watching was not an unpleasant experience and in a season where there have been relatively few highlights it just about qualifies for that status.

If we get the good bits out of the way first then my first test cricket at Lord's on a lovely day in July and the long journey to Swansea to a ground where I had not seen cricket before and where I was blessed with warm sunshine, good company and a splendid century from the evergreen Paul Collingwood, stand out.Those two aside there has not been that much to celebrate on the county scene and I think my whole outlook on the season has been tarnished by a sense of injustice about the harshness of the punishment meted out by the ECB a year ago to Durham. Relegation and a 48 point deduction still stokes fires of bitterness inside me, not helped by Hampshire escaping relegation on the last afternoon of the season by the skin of their teeth.

Watching Yorkshire's late season collapse has not helped matters and as Tony has said enough is probably enough in terms of comments on events since the win at Taunton in June, although I suspect inquests will go on over a pint with my regular travelling companions, two Johns and an Arthur, deep into the winter.

On the club cricket scene things are a little brighter for I have visited over 25 new grounds stretching from Lands in the north to Ackworth in the south and from Mytholmroyd in the west to Whitby in the east. The last of which completed the set of NYSD grounds. Other memorable days were spent at  Booth where cricket, weather and scenery combined to paint a perfect picture and Almondbury Wesleyans where the tea lady had the presence of mind to serve hot soup on a cold April day. My local club Ouseburn were champions of the Nidderdale
League for the second successive year and giving almost equal pleasure,
they were able to turn out three teams on the third Saturday in September.

Looking ahead to next year the 153 club is back on the agenda, my pursuit of seeing every county play every other county in championship cricket, for Warwickshire's relegation means they will play Leicestershire and Gloucestershire, two of the four games needed to reach my target. Until the last few days of the season it looked like I might be able to complete the whole project for had Somerset finished in the bottom two then all four games would have been on offer, but such things are not within my behest to arrange and I will settle for what Warwickshire's poor form has given me. Of course it has been pointed out to me that under the present system there is no guarantee that second division teams play each other twice so I may only get one crack at it and even here the weather may intervene. I await the fixtures with interest.

Finally I promised in my last posting that I would throw some light on this photograph. It dates back to the 1920s and it was taken at the private ground of HM Martineau at Blind Lane, Holyport in Berkshire. Cricket was played here as far back as 1886 and in the 1920s the Australian, New Zealand and West Indian tourists played matches here, usually at a very early stage in their tour. The man looking into the heavens for the coin is thought to be the Australian captain HL Collins and their opponents on 28th and 29th April 1926 were Minor Counties. If correct then the opposing skipper is the famous Norfolk cricketer and Conservative MP, Michael Falcoln. Play was washed out on the first day and the match was drawn. In other years it was customary for the tourists to play against Hubert Martineau's XI. Looking at the card for the match against New Zealand in 1927 it is clear that Martineau was not frightened to put himself in the firing line for in a Kiwi total of 586 he has 1 for 125 off 22 overs. Not so much a case of whose bat is it but whose ground is it?

Weather threatens end of season games

Posted by Tony Hutton

October is here and the cricket season has almost run it's controversial course. John has already described the eventful end to the county season, although it appears that Middlesex are still appealing against their relegation due to points lost in the 'bow and arrow' game at the Oval. The less said about the drinking culture of some England players and the abysmal end to Yorkshire's season the better.

Last week's club games at Headingley did mean an unfortunate clash with an Arthington weekend where as far as I know cricket was played on both days at the delightful Wharfedale ground. Unfortunately the two previous Sunday's were rained off and the same has happened this weekend when both games are victims to the weather.

However, just up the road from Arthington yesterday a game was actually in progress at Harewood House where St George's Church were playing Cookridge Hospital in a 35 overs per side game.
Getting the short distance there proved rather an obstacle course as a serious road accident had taken place at the junction with the Leeds/Harrogate Road and the police were directing traffic. In addition a major event had taken place in the grounds of Harewood during the morning and a huge queue of cars was trying to leave.

The hardy spectators at Harewood House.

Having managed to arrive at the ground it was a relief to find a game in progress in front of a handful of hardy spectators, with the trees already showing their autumn colours. Nothing spectacular took place but it was just pleasant to sit and watch a friendly game of cricket, with nothing at stake, taking place.

Autumnal colours at Harewood.

The final cricket at Arthington is scheduled for next weekend 7/8th October and we can only hope that the weather will relent, as it usually does, for this traditional end to the season.