For professional cricket watchers it is the time of year when the fixtures for next season gradually appear. For those of us who watch all conceivable forms of the game it is a difficult period. Yes we have the county championship fixtures, but there is far more too it than that. It always rather baffles me why it takes so long, without wishing to criticise the excellent work done by many league officials and volunteers who give their time without charge.
The benchmark seems to be set by the Derbyshire County League, which is able to produce full league fixtures for fifteen or so divisions every year before the end of October. Wonderful, but not really challenged anywhere else. However the last few days have brought riches indeed with the appearance of Yorkshire's second eleven fixtures (yet again first in their field), the national under 17s county fixtures and the national over 50's county fixtures on their respective play-cricket sites.
More locally the Aire-Wharfe League and the Bradford League have both gone to press recently. One major problem relates to the Minor Counties or Unicorns as they now prefer to be called. Their fixtures emerge as if from a slow dripping tap with about five counties details appearing over the past month or so. The latest yesterday was Suffolk on Twitter which revealed the welcome news that they will play a three day championship game at Sedbergh School (which missed out last season) against Cumberland from 18-20 August.
Good news indeed you might think, but get round to checking the county championship fixtures and you find that not only are Yorkshire at Scarborough, but Lancashire are playing Glamorgan at Colwyn Bay. So two fixtures which a lot of Cumberland followers from both sides of the Pennines will want to attend. In addition Durham are playing at Riverside, so all in all the delights of Sedbergh may only be shared by a relative few, of which I hope to be one, at least for two days.
The Yorkshire second eleven fixtures also throw up the usual anomalies with the seconds at home at the same time as the first team on a few occasions, but we are used to that and can manage an alternative day system. More good news is the return of a three day championship game at Stamford Bridge, a club which always makes spectators welcome as well as offering a plethora of prizes on their remarkable tombola stall. Here's hoping for good weather for that (15-17 July). Sadly no sign of Todmorden returning to the second eleven fold, we can only hope that Lancashire might play a game there.
Full second eleven fixtures did not appear until the third week of January last year, by which time we hope that the Yorkshire League North fixtures, which feature not only the Yorkshire Academy but important local clubs like Harrogate and York as well, will arrive. Sadly I feel they are delayed due to the administration and website being shared with the York and District Senior League. This is another competition with endless divisions, enlarged in the coming season with the advent of many new teams from the Wetherby League.
However patience is the name of the game and although we bemoan the fact that first class county cricket as we know it may well be on the way out in future years, there is still an awful lot of cricket to be played at all levels which should satisfy the most insatiable addicts for a long time to come.
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