On an assignment for The Cricket Paper – ahem, article due out this Friday, buy a copy for my forthright ramblings – it was time to head for indoor cricket to watch the The ECB Indoor National Club Championship. This was a full-throttle, pocket of cricket with different rules than I was used to: blink and […]
Club Cricket
ECB Small Grant Scheme: How cricket clubs can benefit
(Update June 2020: The ECB has reconfigured its funding for cricket clubs due to Covid-19 so visit their funding page to see the latest). As we welcome February, cricket nets will be underway and everyone is building towards the new cricket season. For cricket clubs, 2018 represents a fresh opportunity to change their circumstances for […]
Scarborough Cricket Festival: Have you any tales for my new book?
The Scarborough Cricket Festival is an integral part of the cricketing calendar here in Yorkshire. Did you know that county cricket on the North Yorkshire coast has been an annual treat since 1876 when MCC played Yorkshire in a nine-day programme? From the very first time of taking the train over and stepping out into […]
Don’t miss these Yorkshire cricket matches in 2018
If you’ve clicked through and are reading this, maybe you are someone for whom adventure knows no limits; an intrepid explorer who thirsts for left-field Yorkshire cricket suggestions. Well, as it happens, you’ve come to the right place. This is not about Pakistan Test match at Emerald Headingley, the Roses T20 or the ECB Premier […]
Mark & Charlie’s Story: Opening Up Cricket
December 14th, 2012, is seared into the memory of Mark Boyns (left) who learnt his friend Alex Miller had taken his own life. Alex and Mark were close friends who played cricket together at Sefton Park Cricket Club in the Liverpool & District Cricket Competition. They also shared a common affliction: depression. As Mark describes […]
Following On: Like Father, like Son?
James Buttler’s latest book, Following On – In the Footsteps of Cricketing Fathers, delves into the dynamic surrounding the father and son relationship in cricket. All of us, for whom county cricket is part of our DNA, can conjure paternal combinations who have played the game professionally. In Yorkshire, Bairstow and Sidebottom are two surnames that […]
Jekyll and Hyde: Life as Nidderdale Cricket League Secretary
It comes to something when stalwarts as invested in recreational cricket as Graham Hyde decide to call it a day. We are less than a minute into a roving conversation about the health of Yorkshire club cricket and the outgoing Honorary Secretary of the Theakston Nidderdale Cricket League puffs out his cheeks. In relief or […]
Retiring from club cricket: Hanging up the bowling boots
I’ll be honest. I never thought this day would come. The decision to fold up the whites for the final time and decommission the knackered, muddy cricket spikes was neither impulsive nor thrust upon me. Yet, after 31 years of playing cricket, it is the right moment to flick off the bails and call time […]
Leeds Caribbean: Life in the Dales Council Cricket League
Rocking up at Leeds Caribbean Cricket Club for their last Dales Council match of 2017 was an exercise in crossing digits and glancing anxiously at the lashing rain pinging off the bonnet of the car. This Division A contest at Scott Hall Road against Bradford Moor looked doomed from the outset as cricketers and officials […]
The Cricket Yorkshire 50 returns: Who’s in? Who’s out?
Ok, so last September I published the Cricket Yorkshire 50 – a shortlist designed to spark debate but mainly to give a nod to those from England cricketers to heros on the village green. It melted time and space and most of Yorkshire’s power supply for a year was thirstily slurped up coping with the […]