Just when I thought I’d been to the Yorkshire cricket ground with the finest view (insert your own favourite here), I happened upon Green Moor Cricket Club’s Hill Top Lane. When I arrived, shortly before an August heat haze obscured the eastern horizon, I could see the cooling towers of Drax power station – something […]
One weekend, short games: Kirkheaton & Upper Haugh excel
One weekend, two short games. Cricket’s unpredictable nature ranks highly amongst the sport’s many appeals, but it is very frustrating for the spectator when what looks, on paper, like being a tight contest turns out, on grass, to be nothing of the sort. So it was, on the last weekend of July, when a Saturday […]
This, is my England: Evening league cricket at Burton Agnes
It is probably fair to say Burton Agnes, an East Riding village set amid the rolling Wolds, is better known for its Elizabethan manor house than for its cricket club. As it happens, manor house and cricket ground, sites separated by the narrow Rudston Road, are barely a couple of hundred yards apart – and […]
Young Lions Cricket Championship launches with six under-18 teams
Six teams will take part in an exciting new summer league, for under-18s, to launch on Thursday, July 31. The Young Lions Cricket Championship is the brainchild of Wrenthorpe and MCC player Imran Dawood, an ECB Level Two coach. In addition to his own club, Wrenthorpe, Imran, the fledgling league’s president and chairman, has persuaded […]
Scenery and sportmanship in the evening shadows at Kildale
Some cricket grounds you drive past, and think: “One day, I must watch a game there.” Thirty-odd years ago, I was domiciled in Great Ayton (on reflection, I’m not sure I’ve lived anywhere nicer), and hiked regularly on and around the North Yorkshire Moors. Many journeys to walk starting points took me along the Easby […]
Meltham Cricket Club: Sixes in the land of the green dragon
Hunkered down beneath the Dark Peak’s Wessenden Moor, cradled within a near-circle of a Holme Valley tributary’s gritstone hills, Meltham must count amongst Yorkshire’s most attractively sited small towns. A Thursday evening Huddersfield Premier League T20 Shield Knockout quarter-final, against local and Championship division rivals Slaithwaite, tempted me into making only a second visit to […]
Super Sunday: Four clubs representing Yorkshire nationally
It is ‘Super Sunday’ this weekend – July 6 – for four of Yorkshire’s teams taking part in the climactic stages of blue riband national knockout club competitions. The men’s sides of York (ECB National Club Championship) and Thornton (National Village Cup), and their women’s counterparts from Sessay Emeralds (ECB Women’s Club Cup T20) and […]
YPLN Hundred: Bridlington and Brandesburton shine
Always keen to increase my ‘grounds visited’ total, I leapt at the chance to watch two matches – at different venues – on the same day. The Yorkshire Premier League North’s 2025 Hundred first round provided an opportunity, on a Sunday, to take in Premier League Two Bridlington hosting Championship East Scarborough (10.30) followed by […]
Yorkshire ECB Premier Divisions: Our halfway review of 2025
With the 2025 season at or approaching its halfway mark, the leaders of Yorkshire’s five ECB Premier Divisions are Castleford, New Farnley, Rastrick, Richmondshire, and Wakefield Thornes. Ten rounds into the Huddersfield Premier League’s first season with ECB Premier League status, Rastrick have a two-point lead over Hoylandswaine. Rastrick, who boast an impressive player budget […]
Wolds apart as Hull Strikers win the Battle of Walkington
For the second time in five days, I found myself watching cricket on the fringes of the rippling Wolds, surely Yorkshire’s most underrated landscape. A quarter-final of the Yorkshire Premier League North’s Dave Conner Memorial Trophy, between teams placed second and first in Division Two Holderness, held sufficient eastern promise to tempt me back along […]