Welton win by a Furlong to top YPLN Championship East

Although cricket is a team game, individual performances frequently take the eye.

An important Yorkshire Premier League North fixture, at Welton & Brough Sports Club, between Championship East promotion contenders Welton (second) and Pickering (first), featured two stellar solo contributions.

Welton’s 104-run victory, in a contest whose outcome hung in the balance for much longer than the result suggests, owed much to all-rounder Danny Furlong.

The ex-Cottingham player, batting at four, struck an unbeaten 112 off 98 balls (five sixes, 11 fours) then took 2-37 from 13 overs and ran out tail-ender Morgan Elven (8).

Pickering’s star turn was Kieran Bowes. His pace bowling removed Welton openers James Brown (2) and the in-form Danny Anthony (18, three fours) in posting 13 over figures of 3-62. 

A Bowes catch dismissed No 3 Tom Young (10). Batting at six, Bowes then kept Pickering in contention by hitting 54 off 45 balls (one six, nine fours).

Furlong’s effort was particularly impressive because a back injury, sustained a couple of weeks earlier, hampered his seam bowling. He had to come off a short run.

With the season’s mid-point approaching, 10 match points enabled Welton to leapfrog Pickering into top spot, two points clear of Brandesburton, who won by six wickets at home to Goole Town, ninth. 

Pickering dropped to third, six points off the pace. Malton & Old Malton, fourth, two points behind Pickering, remain in contention after a seven-wicket success over visitors South Holderness.

More, later, of an absorbing Welton-Pickering encounter’s nuts and bolts.

New and improved

Although Welton Cricket Club have played at the Welton & Brough Sports Club site since 1893, their ground, to my eyes at least, manages to look very new.

Appropriately, the ground, handy for the Welton/Brough junction on the A63, is positioned between Welton (to the northeast) and Brough (to the southwest).

The ground’s apparent ‘newness’ probably has something partly to do with a pavilion refurbishment, completed in 2018, to coincide with Welton’s 125th anniversary.

Adding a patio, enclosed within a white picket fence, traditional cricket infrastructure, was a brainwave. An afternoon sun trap, it has proved hugely popular.

Perhaps the ‘newness’ of the surroundings augments the impression. New-build homes line the ground’s southern boundary and are visible alongside its entrance.

At the north end, a bank dotted with saplings fronts a recently erected wooden fence, beyond which are new roads associated with a £4.7m roundabout, completed last year and designed to ease congestion to and from the A63. Has it worked?!

The spotlessness of Welton’s facilities – from low-slung pavilion and clock-adorned scoreboard, to manicured, flat, circular pitch, and two-lane, synthetic practice nets – undoubtedly reinforces the sense of ‘newness’.

Turpin caught 1739

Framed photographs and interpretation on the walls of the pavilion bar detail the history of cricket in Welton, an attractive, Wolds-edge village renowned as the place where, in 1739, highwayman Dick Turpin was apprehended.

A conflicting local legend suggests Turpin, an Essex lad, evaded arrest by leaping through a window of Welton’s Green Dragon pub. The upstairs window exists to this day.

Whatever the truth of his capture, Turpin, using an assumed name, John Palmer, ended up at York’s debtors’ prison. Only then was his true identity discovered. Turpin was hanged, at York’s Knavesmire, on April 7, then buried at nearby St George’s graveyard.

The Welton ground is on Stanley Jackson Way. Chapel Allerton-born Jackson (1870-1947) – Sir Stanley, actually – played cricket for England (20 Tests, often as a team-mate of W.G. Grace, between 1893 and 1905), Yorkshire (1890-1907) and Cambridge University (1890-1893). 

Jackson was president of Yorkshire County Cricket Club (succeeding, in 1938, Lord Hawke) and of the Marylebone Cricket Club.

Nicknamed ‘Jacker’, Jackson captained the England team that won the Ashes in 1905. He won the toss in all five Tests, and – astonishingly – headed the batting and bowling averages. England took the home series, 2-0.

Three years earlier, Jackson had married into the Harrison-Broadley family, whose home was Welton House, a Georgian mansion demolished in 1952, along with many of its associated buildings, because the estate had become too expensive to maintain. 

The Harrison-Broadleys, who made their money from trade in Hull, are key figures in Welton Cricket Club’s story. 

Appositely, Jackson’s marriage to Julia Harrison-Broadley was celebrated at Welton’s St Helen’s Church, the tower of which is visible from the cricket square. The couple are buried in the church’s graveyard.

Away from cricket, Jackson became MP for the Howdenshire constituency (1915-26). He was Financial Secretary to the War Office (1922-23), Chairman of the Conservative Party (1923-26), and Governor of Bengal (1927-32).

It is thought Welton had a cricket team from the early 1800s. Back then, they played further south, along Common Lane, at a site known as Goforth Plantation.

The name, it is said, derived from an exhortation to “go forth and play cricket”.

In 1893, Colonel Henry Harrison-Broadley laid out Welton’s present ground, a significant step forward for the club.

Better still, in 1956, fulfilling the Harrison-Broadley family’s known wishes, the ground was donated to the Welton club by the dependants of the late Captain J.B. Harrison-Broadley. It is in the care of trustees nominated by the club’s management committee.

Stanley Jackson, Colonel Harrison-Broadley’s son-in-law, performed the ground’s opening ceremony.

An obvious aspect of today’s Welton & Brough Sports Club (hockey used to be played at the ground hence the plural) is the large amount of spare turf, beyond the boundary rope, to the south, north and west.

Despite acknowledging there are numerous hurdles to clear, Welton would like to acquire what is effectively ‘dead’ land immediately to the west, between the ground perimeter and Welton Road, with a view to laying out a second pitch, for juniors.

Apparently, the ECB is most impressed by what has been achieved at Welton, and has indicated that grants would be available to help make the second pitch dream a reality.

I made for Welton, partly because the village had a better-than-average chance of avoiding thunderstorms forecast to roll in any time after three in the afternoon.

In the event, I lucked out. There was a play stoppage, of 30 minutes or so, during the second innings, owing to light rain. Otherwise, a few alarming drops aside, it stayed dry.

Laid out on a sand base, Welton’s pitch, a mile from the Humber, is an adept drainer. Had the forecast cloudburst materialised, it would have been interesting to see if the game reached a conclusion.

Little rain, then, but the atmosphere was suffocatingly humid. As a Welton fielder, mopping his brow, remarked to a spectator: “It’s hot. So, so, so hot.”

I arrived just in time – A1079 stodgy, as usual – to learn Welton were to bat first.

“Did Welton win the toss?” I asked a Pickering boundary fielder, as preparations were completed for the first over to be bowled.

Grinning, he replied: “If my captain had won the toss, and chosen to field [in these parched conditions], I’d have shot him.”

Welton did not make a good start. By the 11th over, they were 36-3, with their top three batters back in the pavilion.

Pickering were cock-a-hoop. “Going nowhere, here,” a fielder crowed. “Come on, Bowesy [Kieran Bowes],” said another. “Turning the screw, pal.”

Unexpectedly, the tide turned. The immovable Furlong teamed up with No 5 Jack Steel (33 off 41, six fours) to add 61 for the fourth wicket, with No 6 and captain Chris Lound (19 off 35, three fours) to put on 46 for the fifth then with No 7 Jacob Hill (43 off 36, two sixes, four fours) to add 63 for the sixth.

Gradually, Pickering’s tune changed. “Come on, lads. Don’t get flat out here.” When a boundary misfield led to a four: “Up it, lads. Back our bowlers.”

Second drinks – it was that sort of weather – were taken at 34 overs, immediately after Furlong, crucially, had been dropped, at long on, with Welton 164-5.

In the end, despite such an unpromising beginning, Welton got through their 50 overs, posting a commendable 279-7. 

Furlong completed his century, with a driven four, off the first ball of the final over then battered the next two for towering sixes.

Strangely, Pickering’s batting encountered the same early difficulties as Welton’s.

By the 15th over, the visitors were 42-3. Pickering’s top three, Archie Welford (4), Dan Ward (21 off 38, four fours) and captain Joe Harland (5), were the players dismissed.

At 86-5, Pickering looked out of it. But Bowes put on 49, for the sixth wicket, with No 7 Tim Whincup (23 off 18, five fours), before the latter was run out by Ollie Thane.

When Bowes departed, at 163-7, caught by Lound off Jayden Stocks’s bowling, Pickering’s challenge collapsed. They were all out for 175 in 39.3 overs.

Stocks (2-38 from 6.3) and Thane (2-41 from eight) joined Furlong in taking two wickets.

To the consternation of some, many cricket clubs no longer provide teas. But Welton are happy to maintain the tradition – and in considerable style. 

For the Pickering game, Sue Lound (several women, presumably on a rota basis, share the tea-making load at Welton) was responsible for a simply magnificent spread, highlighted by several types of home-made cake. 

It is amazing how quickly 22 players, two umpires and two scorers can reduce to an unrecognisable rubble of crumbs what had been a large, gooey chocolate gâteau!

The Lound family plays a big part in life at Welton Cricket Club. First team captain Chris is Sue’s son, and Sue is married to Geoff Lound, club chairman since the start of the 2025 season.

On Saturday (June 28, 12.0), Welton attempt to retain the leadership of Yorkshire Premier League North’s Championship East when they visit Scarborough, fifth.

Pickering, now showing three defeats from 10, face a crunch home fixture with Brandesburton while Malton & Old Malton are at Pocklington, 10th. 

Enjoyed the read?

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

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