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 […]
Club Cricket
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 […]
Black Sheep Final washout at Masham but hosts excel
There was a heart-stopping moment when our car breached the top of the hill before descending into the North Yorkshire market town of Masham where the expansive views are revealed and everyone gasped. It was akin to the unrolling of a treasure map before our eyes. The Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is one […]
Heavy Woollen Cup Final delivers tradition and pies
On assignment for The Cricket Paper, this year’s Heavy Woollen Cup Final was a welcome return to Bradford Premier League leaders and 2017 hosts, Hanging Heaton. A trip back in April had involved ketchup-slathered chips, a talk to Townville’s West Indian overseas player Shkym Haynes and an appreciation for Hanging Heaton’s early league credentials. This […]
Brook-Walton’s adventure ends after four years
Brook-Walton Cricket Club, who were formed in 2013 as an entirely new cricket club, are reluctantly calling it a day at the end of this season because of a lack of players. It was the vision of ex-Streethouse and Wrenthorpe cricketer Richard Vigars to start something from scratch and their first competitive fixture was away […]