Significant change is sweeping through amateur cricket across Yorkshire with a new pyramid structure being thrashed out in time for the 2016 season and beyond. The Bradford Cricket League is intended to be one of four ECB Premier League in the region but which leagues act as feeder leagues and who falls where in the […]
Taxis, takeaways and Bradford Cricket League overseas stars
What began as a trip to see taxi drivers play an informal game in Bradford transformed itself into something else entirely. From Forster Square, the walk up to Karmand Cricket Club on Barkerend Road was comfortably longer than anticipated and all uphill for this unfit cricket journalist. The steep climb takes you past Bradford Cathedral […]
Does franchise cricket affect the Scarborough Festival?
The debate around city-based T20 franchises in England and Wales has erupted again with the news that Sky has offered £40m a year to broadcast a new Twenty20 tournament for 2017. If this is to be believed, eight city-based teams would play in a three-week block in summer with games screened in the evenings. It […]
Cricket at Bolton Abbey: what’s not to like?
Of the 750 or so clubs across Yorkshire, many boast a charm of their own due to geography, history and often as not, the people who live and breath the game. The point of this particular Saturday afternoon was to go along and hear from those at a progressive club in the Theakston Nidderdale League […]
Yorkshire Vikings target one-day cricket success
Yorkshire County Cricket Club can now turn their attention fully to the Royal London One-Day Cup safe in the knowledge that little distracts them from a proper crack at one-day cricket. After being dumped out of the NatWest T20 Blast (less said the better) and then winning at Scarborough to go a whopping 34 points […]
Billy Root intent on making a name for himself
Nottinghamshire and Leeds Bradford MCCU’s Billy Root is a young cricketer to look out for and it has nothing to do with that headline-grabbing surname. The twenty-two year old from Sheffield plays for Sheffield Collegiate in the ECB Yorkshire League and crams in games for the Weetwood-based MCC universities hub in Leeds and second-eleven county […]
Halifax Cricket League: Queensbury vs Blackley
The 576 Halifax bus from Bradford wheezed and strained its way up Great Horton Road, up, up and away, further into the clouds until reaching the village of Queensbury. Deposited opposite Oxford Road, the last bit on foot takes the intrepid traveller up a quiet country lane to the highest (league) cricket ground in England, […]
How does the month of Ramadan affect cricketers?
In 2015, John Fuller talked with club cricketers in Yorkshire about the challenges and rewards of Ramadan. The month of Ramadan represents the holiest month in the year for Muslims around the world and for those that play cricket, it can offer both challenges and a positive impact on their game. In the Islamic calendar, […]
Are overseas cricketers still value for county cricket?
There is a very short and sweet answer to that question but in the spirit of cricket debate, let’s kick this topic around. The reason for the article in the first place has been rumblings from the Ridings about Aaron Finch – now sadly off back to Oz after a broken foot ended his unsuccessful […]
Drax Cup: Under nines cricket flourishing in Yorkshire
My own earliest memories of cricket are from the dim and distant past when I first played for my school team in the eighties. In junior school, I was a beanpole, marginally successful, left-arm ‘spinner’ who didn’t spin the ball. Nowadays, they call that delivery ‘the arm ball’ but back then, kids would chuckle and […]