From Witton le Wear I made the short trip down the A68 to Etherley, close to Bishop Auckland, a club founded in 1850 but members of the Darlington and District League only since 2015 and this after four years without an adult team. Saturday's opponents were Aldborough St John II who were batting in a Division C fixture. The ground is a spacious one and there were a few spectators enjoying the perfect cricket weather and after a spell in the deck chair I made the usual perambulation which gave me a view of the board showing Aldborough 50 for 5. A nicely judged catch at cover brought the sixth wicket and despite a bit of tail end resistance the innings closed on 86, not a great score but the website shows it was almost enough for Etherley scraped home with just one wicket in hand. They were indebted to an unbroken last wicket stand between Thomas Webb and Jackson Milner which added the fourteen needed to get them over the line. A first win for Etherley in their second game and fourth place in the division.
Etherley CC
With three new grounds ticked off I put the time machine into reverse and headed for Raby Castle, a ground beautiful enough to grace the cover of Laurence Griffiths' coffee table book 'From The Boundary's Edge'. I first watched cricket here in the early fifties when my dad was captaining Haughton, still keen rivals of Raby to this day, and played on the ground two or three times in the late sixties for Cockerton with no great success as I recall but recounting these memories to the tea ladies got me a free cup of tea.
Raby Castle CC
Raby were league champions last year and were taking on Middleton Teesdale who were saved from relegation only by the demise of Lands CC. Raby were batting and the cricket was a one sided as last year's positions might suggest. Two batsmen reached centuries and the innings closed on 310 for 3. MIT replied with 133 all out. A further round of matches were played yesterday and this morning's tables show Haughton top with three wins out of three. Dad would have been pleased but I'm not sure that he would have understood how I got this knowledge from the internet using my iPhone.
My plan yesterday was to head for Knaresborugh to see them take on Hull Zingari in a cup match but alerted to the presence of Tony and Jennifer at St George's Road, Harrogate I detoured through busy bank holiday traffic to find Harrogate struggling against Scarborough. Tony will give a full account of what proved to be an exciting finish. The game finished at 5:40 and as I switched on my car radio Durham had just taken Leicestershire's seventh wicket and twenty minutes later when James Weighell had Varun Aaron leg before it was all over. Only six runs were made while I drove 12 miles and Weighell had career best figures of 7 for 32. The Foxes had lost by 46 runs, Durham's first ever championship win having followed on. Lancashire and Worcestershire are now the only two counties not to have achieved this.
The proceedings at The Riverside where Leicestershire looked certain winners as early as tea on day two are not atypical of this year's championship matches, look no further than Yorkshire's win at Chelmsford. It as if the competition aware that is under threat is determined to put on a show for its devotees. Almost two thirds of the 31 matches played so far have ended in wins and only one game yesterday, that at The Oval, failed to raise the blood pressure of spectators. Topsy turvy or what?
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