I’ve started the 2022 cricket season in pretty good nick. For me, ‘good nick’ means, during the early weeks of the summer, when enthusiasm is sky-high, watching games at grounds that have spent too long on my ‘must-get-around-to-visiting’ list. Elsecar Cricket Club’s Crab Field (crab apple trees once grew along one side) falls into this […]
Miles Per Gallon
Stokesley topple Richmondshire in NYSD season opener
I’ve got a soft spot for the far corner of Yorkshire which, when I worked on Teesside during the 1990s, was dubbed ‘Cleveland’, an ancient name reinvigorated by the local authority. At the time, I lived at Great Ayton, a pleasant village where the future Captain James Cook went to school. Ayton was an ideal […]
York Senior League Cricket: Home victory for Beverley Town
Andrew Gallon journeys to Norwood where Beverley Town 1st XI play Folkton & Flixton in their last home match of the York & District Senior Cricket League. Summer – blue sky, warm sunshine (remember them?) – made a welcome return for my penultimate cricket outing of the 2021 season. I headed southeast, down the A1079, […]
Titles, promotion and relegation in Yorkshire’s cricket leagues
Andrew Gallon shares the ups and downs across a selection of cricket leagues in Yorkshire. Championship, promotion and relegation issues are about to reach their thrilling conclusion in Yorkshire’s four ECB Premier Divisions and the county’s other cricket leagues. Owing to the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in some clubs having played fewer […]
Yorkshire Premier League North: York win Battle of Stamford Bridge
Andrew Gallon watches York get the better of hosts Stamford Bridge in the Yorkshire Premier Cricket League North. August is an important month in the club cricket calendar. Lots of knockout cup finals and plenty of league matches affecting championship, promotion and relegation issues. My aim, this late in the season, is to pinpoint a […]
Leeds and Wetherby Cricket League: The Hundred at Scholes
Andrew Gallon enjoys a day out at Scholes to watch Leeds Caribbean, Scarcroft and St Chad’s Broomfield in the Leeds and Wetherby Cricket League’s 100-ball competition. I’m starting to think the Hundred is stoking more debate even than Kerry Packer’s infamous cricket circus did during the late Seventies. Traditionalists couldn’t wait to be offended by […]
Foss Evening Cricket League: Rufforth host Londesborough Park
Andrew Gallon takes in a Foss Evening Cricket League match at Rufforth where Londesborough Park were the visitors. Unusually, I’ve left it very late – the third week of July – in the midweek season to catch a game in the Foss Evening Cricket League. This is partly because of being diverted by other evening […]
Bankfoot and Burythorpe illustrate the breadth and bounty in Yorkshire
Andrew Gallon watches cricket at Burythorpe and Bankfoot; two clubs reflecting the diversity across Yorkshire. B is for… Well, in terms of my recent cricketing travels, Burythorpe and Bankfoot. Two very different cricket clubs in hugely contrasting settings. Burythorpe Cricket Club haven’t, I learned, played weekend cricket for a couple of decades. Their village sports […]
Pilmoor Evening League: Boundaries and bullocks at Helperby
Andrew Gallon visits Helperby who welcomed Newburgh Park in the last round of the Pilmoor Evening Cricket League’s regular season. Turn right or left off the busy, high-speed A19, anywhere between York and Thirsk, and you’ll find yourself driving through some of Yorkshire’s sleepiest countryside. On a sunny summer’s evening, beneath the Vale of York’s […]
Down to the wire at Lepton Highlanders who make T20 Finals Day
Andrew Gallon heads to Lepton Highlanders, for this semi-final of the Huddersfield Cricket League’s T20 Shield, against Clayton West. “It was always going to be close,” remarked one of the match umpires, as he stowed broad-brimmed hat and white coat in the boot of his car. He’d just witnessed, at enviably closer quarters than our […]