Interviews

I caught up with a Level 2 cricket coach, Alex Brown, who combines playing for Wrenthorpe in the Bradford Premier League with improving young cricketers. Here’s our Q&A… Hey Alex, what’s your cricket background? I’ve played cricket since I was around five years old so over 13 years (I’m 19 in June 2023).  This interest […]

Paul Cummins, the Yorkshire Cricket Board’s Director of Recreational Cricket, is talking to me from Headingley about what lies ahead. Three months into the job, the honeymoon period (if there is one in that role) has seen him zip around the region, meeting some of the staff and no doubt getting a feel for the […]

Grace Hall’s path to representing the Northern Diamonds Academy began with a chance encounter at school. It speaks to how cricket can captivate us at an early age if we get the chance. Grace’s story, just like Mollie Ovenden, is of a young woman whose appetite for the game and seeking out opportunities has propelled […]

Though we’ve never met, Mollie Ovenden strikes me as a cricketer who doesn’t wait for opportunities to come her way but grabs them. She has represented Yorkshire in county age group cricket, captained a men’s league team (Raskelf) in her teens, and at just eight years old, won the Wensleydale Creamery’s Junior Voice of Cricket competition. […]

PORING over old copies of the Telegraph & Argus (Bradford’s daily paper) and the York Evening Press a few years ago made me realise how defined the football and cricket seasons used to be in the 20th Century. The football season finished in early April and the cricket season started a couple of weeks later, […]

Crossflatts Cricket Club’s Charlotte Boulton has quite the CV; which she dives into between sips of her cappuccino. One of the reasons for the interview is led by the fact that Charlotte finished the 2022 Bradford Premier League season as the second-highest wicket-taker, across all divisions. (Stats note: That’s just league cricket with Zafar Mahmood […]

Bill Marshall talks to Tom Clee, of Woodlands Cricket Club in the Bradford Premier League, about switching clubs, the Woodlands way and how his game has progressed this season. Tom Clee is used to making big decisions. For example, when the Woodlands all-rounder was an under-12 he chose to move from Northowram Fields (literally over […]

I first met Andrew Watson, the former Managing Director of the Yorkshire Cricket Board, at Headingley to talk about Cricket Yorkshire. He fizzed with ideas, had a myriad of names at his fingertips then sealed a lifetime friendship by buying me fish and chips at Stumps Restaurant. We catch up by phone a few months […]

Super 1s cricket is a disability cricket programme, funded by the Lord’s Taverners, with hubs in towns and cities offering free coaching and activities. Over an absorbing hour on Zoom with the organisers of the Dewsbury Super 1s Hub, I get an insight into the work that’s done, the challenges faced and the mindset to […]