Evening League: Harrogate defeat Whixley at St. George’s Road

Wednesday night means Harrogate & District Amateur Evening Cricket League action. Working on a client photo and video project during the day, I had left it much too late to travel anywhere with any element of choice, so I scrolled through the Play-Cricket app to find the nearest game.

Some 30 seconds of scrolling and Harrogate were in action against Whixley. Picking up a camera and car keys, I drove the ten-minute drive to St. George’s Road, parking up as the teams were striding to the centre.

A quick aside: I love those match reports that invoke Greek or Roman mythology of heroism or tragedy that cleverly dovetails into relevance with some part of what is being reported on [hold that thought].

Looking up, I could see some Cirrus clouds, which are a portent of a change in the weather, the Latin means fringe or curl, and have also been called ‘strands of hair’.

With a steady north-easterly wind now blowing cold air down through Britain, the weather is rather unsettled, clouds threaten short sharp showers during the day, but clear at night, alarming gardeners that there may be a rare June frost.

Sitting on the boundary rope for those first few overs, it was like being in Pingu’s igloo. [Apologies, a children’s Swiss story is the closest I’m going to get to a Roman/Greek reference in this short match report].

Whixley won the toss and elected to bat first, and to be honest didn’t get off to the best of starts in this T20 game. By the fourth over, they had lost four wickets for around 20 runs, and there was a threat that they could collapse for a small total.

By the sixth over they’d lost another wicket, and then another in the ninth. William Wade (49 n.o.) and James Webster (30) then formed a partnership for Whixley that helped build a reasonable total of 108 from their twenty overs to defend.

As the teams briefly popped back to the changing rooms, the sun managed to break through the blanket of grey cloud that had been parked over the ground for pretty much most of the Whixley innings, and the wind seemed to drop slightly. A golden light crossed the ground, a little warmth returned, and I could feel my fingertips again!

Harrogate’s response got off to a faltering start as Ben Carr was dismissed in the first over having already scored eight from two boundaries.

Three more wickets fell before the pairing of William Bates (44 n.o.) and Jordan Sleightholme (26 n.o.) saw the home team reach 109 for four, with one ball left.

The game had been competitive, and probably the closest game I’ve seen this season; With two overs remaining, Harrogate had needed only eight runs to win, but some superb bowling by Whixley restricted the home team from scoring runs as the number of balls remaining dropped quickly, meaning it ultimately could have gone either way.

Harrogate sit top of Division One, separated from Whixley in third by Knaresborough – all having played four games.

📸 MATCH PHOTOS

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Thanks to Mark for his report and photography from Harrogate Cricket Club for a spot of evening league action. Here are his other articles on Cricket Yorkshire.

To check out more of his photography, you can visit caughtlight.com or he’s @caughtlight on Twitter/X. There’s also the Caught Light Photography Facebook page.

I also highly recommend his blog called Leica Moments with days out at grounds around North Yorkshire.