Mick Savage Trophy action from Penistone Cricket Club

Penistone Cricket Club’s Queen Street ground could look very different when the 2025 Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League season gets underway.

The club, whose First XI play – and are going great guns – in Division Two, the league’s fourth tier, hope next spring to unveil a state-of-the-art pavilion.

According to Penistone Cricket & Sports Club’s (to use their full title) printed 2024 handbook and fixtures guide, the existing pavilion, opened in May 1968, when Spring Vale appears to have been the preferred ground name, is well beyond repair and no longer fit for purpose.

Efforts to keep it open are a constant drain on time, energy and resources. “It’s falling to bits,” a nutshell-appreciating club official told me.

An artist’s impression, along with floor plans, of the proposed replacement suggest an impressive facility. The pavilion, to act as a hub for Penistone, in general, as well as for the cricket club, will house four changing rooms, a function room, a kitchen, a garage, loos, two general stores and a bar store.

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In the handbook and fixtures guide (lovely that Penistone are maintaining a cricket tradition), an article reads: “For the last few years our committee and members have been working tirelessly to raise the funds, and formulate the plans, for a fantastic new pavilion, fit for the needs of a growing and prospering club in the 21st century.”

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It continues: “During the last year we have drawn up plans for the building and have been working closely with potential funding partners, local councillors, BMBC [Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council], the ECB and our architects, to ensure we have the support and finances to reach our desired goal.

“Through hard work and dedication from all those involved it is with great pleasure we can advise that, as this handbook is being written, the plans for our exciting new pavilion are being submitted for planning approval. Funds have been secured and a builder selected.

“There is still plenty to do but we are extremely hopeful we can commence the demolition of the existing pavilion and construction of the new one as soon as the 2024 season comes to a conclusion, so that we have the new pavilion ready to open at the start of the 2025 season.”

All this came as news to me, last Sunday afternoon, when I headed to Queen Street to watch Penistone, second, six wins from nine, take on Division Two rivals Hatfield Town, 10th, three wins from 10, in a Mick Savage Trophy quarter-final.

The soon-to-be-history pavilion occupies the west side of Penistone’s ground, which is tucked away, northeast of the town centre, alongside the River Don, at this stage of its journey, little more than a watercourse toddler.

Located at a breezy 820 feet, Penistone is one of England’s highest market towns. In Yorkshire, only Upper Wensleydale’s Hawes, at 860 feet, outranks Penistone.

Rather splendidly, Penistone’s signature landmark looms beyond the pavilion: a 29-arch, 330-yard, stone railway viaduct, which towers 98 feet above the Don Valley.

Penistone’s Huddersfield & Sheffield Junction Railway-built viaduct, opened in 1850, does not have the chequered history of another, at Denby Dale, originally a wooden trestle, on the same line, but it did feature in a notorious 1916 accident.

As heavy rain scoured the viaduct’s foundations, two arches disintegrated, plunging a locomotive into the wreckage. Although the loco was cut up on the spot, its chimney became a plant pot, at Brockholes station, further up the track towards Huddersfield.

The Penistone club’s handbook and fixtures guide tells also of the strides being made to develop women’s and girls’ cricket.

This season, Penistone have launched their first official women’s and girls’ team. Captained by Laura Bennett, they play in Division Three North of the South Yorkshire Women and Girls Cricket League.

In 1985, the handbook and fixtures guide reveals, Michaela Strachan, 19, became the first woman to play for Penistone. Then the club’s scorer, Strachan was asked to ‘make up the numbers’, at Cartworth Moor, when the Second XI were a player short. 

Strachan marked the occasion, a defeat, by taking a reportedly “terrific” catch on the boundary. Almost 40 years on, Strachan is Penistone’s commercial manager.

Eight years ago, the handbook and fixtures guide relates, Penistone didn’t have any girls amongst their juniors. Today, more than 30 per cent of junior members are girls.

During the closing stages of the Penistone-Hatfield Town game I witnessed, I overheard a woman, circuiting the boundary, telling friends of the tremendous progress being made by the groundbreaking 2024 women’s and girls’ team. Good stuff!

Partly deterred by BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker’s unhelpful morning forecast that showers could break out “almost anywhere”, I decided to attend Queen Street only 75 minutes before the cup-tie’s scheduled noon start.

After a helter-skelter drive, from York, via the A64, the M1 and the A628, I parked my car at 11.59. Feeling smug, I entered the ground – only to discover an overrunning morning junior game had seen the start put back 10 minutes!

A few words about the hugely appealing Queen Street ground, in a district of Penistone known as Spring Vale. Access is via a sharp turn, off Sheffield Road (the B6462), into Queen Street, a tight squeeze between houses, followed by an immediate, precipitous descent to a single-track bridge over the Don. The ground, green and inviting, lies beyond the bridge’s wooden boards.

Rather nice, on crossing the bridge, how the ground opens out before you. The nearest half is enclosed by mature trees whilst the farther half is open. Fields, rising – steeply, again – away from a whitewashed gritstone wall at the far end of the pitch, maintain the pleasing sensation of enclosure.

The doomed pavilion and adjacent scorebox are over to the left, with to the right an area of overspill parking (there are a few spaces, on the left, before the river bridge). 

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A bench, in the northeast corner, is dedicated to Steve Reid. Its plaque informs Reid was a Penistone Cricket Club member across more than 47 years. He loved this ground, it adds, inviting you to tarry awhile and enjoy the view.

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I couldn’t resist watching the game from the ground’s near (south) end, slightly above the river, whose musical flow, beneath overhanging trees, provides a pleasant aural backdrop to the cricket. This proximity to rushing water brought to my mind the cricket grounds of the Greenfield (traditional Yorkshire!), Sowerby Bridge and Triangle clubs.

With the sky overcast, I was a little surprised Hatfield Town elected to bat, after winning the toss. Three balls in, and Jack Meek (2-11 from six) had bowled No 1 Paul Davies (0).

From 24-4, the visitors were rescued by No 6 Sharafat Hussain (22 off 36) and No 4 Joshua Yemm (13 off 46), who added 45 for the fifth wicket. No 9 Aidan Coulbeck (14 from 26) contributed useful runs towards the end of an innings of 108 off 35.1 overs.

With the ball keeping low, batting was tricky. Medium pacer Tom Exley (3-21 from eight), in his fourth year as Penistone’s First XI captain, did most to capitalise.

As ever, a snippet of amusing banter: a Penistone slip put down a sharp chance (so sharp, in fact, Mark Waugh, in his prime, would have been proud to take it). A few overs later, in the same position, he pouched one, on the half-volley. Quick as a flash, a team-mate remarked: “He only catches the ones that bounce.”

Penistone’s reply, 109-4 off 22, wasn’t entirely plain sailing. Early on, after the departure of openers William Mott (6 off 15) and Tom Reid (3 off 20), the hosts were 16-2. 

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But No 4 Connor Smythe (38 not out off 48 including five fours), who won Penistone’s 2023 First XI batting and fielding awards, and No 3 Charlie Armitage (17 off 18 including four fours) put on 41 for the third wicket. 

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Finally, Smythe and No 6 Chris Matthewman (15 not out off 23) came together to steer Penistone safely into the semi-finals. Andrew Decent finished with 2-28 from five. Mott and Reid were his victims. A Decent catch (as it were) removed Armitage.

Penistone struck me as being very much a community club. The number of adverts around the ground, and in the handbook and fixtures guide, suggests the club are esteemed highly in and around the town.

Three generations of at least one family were represented amongst the spectators. I enjoyed chatting to octogenarian twins (I, too, am a twin), Christine and Pauline, who reminisced about ballroom dancing (apparently, you cannot beat a slow foxtrot), as youngsters, in their native Sheffield, and told, with shining eyes, of the numerous happenings throughout their lives. They even had a double wedding!

The Mick Savage Trophy, contested by Division One and Division Two teams, is held in memory of Mick Savage, a legendary former Darfield Cricket Club player – renowned as a hard-hitting bat – and chairman, who died, suddenly, at the age of 39. 

The trophy, donated by the Savage family, was first contested in 1993, when Darfield won it. A cabinet of Mick Savage memorabilia can be seen in the Darfield clubhouse.

Semi-final ties, to be played on Sunday, August 4 (noon), in the Mick Savage Trophy: Sheffield United versus Penistone, Warmsworth versus Upper Haugh. Sheffield United and Penistone are the Division Two teams left in the competition.

Enjoyed the read?

You can check out other club visits by Andrew in his column, Miles Per Gallon.

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