I was in two minds about whether to do this blog. That’s no surprise, I usually am in two minds as to whether to do a blog or not, but this one is about cricket and for whatever reason, cricket is a big turn off for many people. However, as my blogs are all too infrequent nowadays, I’m doing this in the hope that the site won’t seize up due to lack of activity. Although it says in Glad To Be Grey’s title that it is about travel, cricket and trams, I’ve only done two other cricket blogs before (and no tram ones just in case you were wondering) so I don’t think I’m guilty of overdoing it. Anyway, enough of the justification, here comes the blog.
Cricket is a sport that gets a lot of attention. Most of that attention centres on international cricket, be it five day Test Matches or ‘white ball’ cricket of which there are two iterations, One Day and T20. T20 has also given us franchise cricket, particularly in India where team rosters are filled in an auction at the beginning of the season. In Britain we have a similar competition called The Hundred which has attracted the crowds and TV coverage. It is, frankly, rubbish. Yes, I know I’m an old fuddy-duddy and it introduces more people to the game. The extra revenue comes in handy too. But for your traditional cricket fan The Hundred is sacrilegious and gets in the way of the real cricket. That real cricket is played on the village greens of England (and the rest of the UK) by amateurs, at county level by the professionals and elite level by the national sides. The County Championship was once the ultimate national competition and still is despite its popularity being overtaken by shorter forms of the game. The competition commenced in 1890 and since 1992 eighteen counties have competed, seventeen of which are from England and one from Wales. Since 2000 the league has been split into two divisions with promotion and relegation to increase the number of meaningful matches. The counties each play 14 games, each of which has four scheduled playing days. This being cricket, they might only need two of them or lose all of them to the weather. The games tend to be clustered round the start of the season in April and May and the end of the season in September with shorter forms of cricket and the dreaded Hundred taking up the height of summer. It really does feel like the ultimate national competition is now out on the margins of cricket.
So, with that rather miserable summation, I do like to do my bit and contribute to the coffers of my favourite County Cricket Club, Yorkshire. It has to be Yorkshire due to birthright. As a kid growing up in Huddersfield there was absolutely no possibility of me following any other county. With 33 County Championship titles they are by far the most successful county side, though don’t accuse me of being a glory hunter – most of those titles were secured before I was born. No, I follow Yorkshire because I’m a Yorkshireman and Yorkshiremen follow Yorkshire. It’s a closed loop. There’s no escape even if I wanted to. It’s only recently that I’ve been to watch them in person. Living in Scotland means it’s hardly a day trip and some forward planning is required to get to a game. Sometimes it isn’t possible but this year we were determined to get to a game. ‘We’ I hear you cry? Well yes, my friend Graham goes too. He is also a Yorkshire fan though it’s not through birthright as he is from Kilmarnock and currently resides in Penrith. He is, however, an honorary Yorkshireman which is just as good as a real Yorkshireman as he has made a conscious decision to support the white rose county. The game we decided to go to was Yorkshire V Somerset at Headingley, Leeds. It was the middle of September, the penultimate game of the season for both clubs.
With County Championship games taking place over four days, some forward planning is required for those of us not lucky enough to live in the vicinity. We took the decision to book a nearby hotel for three nights, travelling down on Day One and back on Day Four of the game. With the game commencing at 10:30 each day, this meant we’d miss the start of D1 and if it went the full course we’d probably have to leave before the end of D4. Sure enough, after a trip down the delightful Settle-Carlisle railway (possibly worth a blog of its own) to Leeds we got an Uber to the Headingley Premier Inn, dumped our bags and walked the five minutes to the stadium. It was midway during the afternoon session so we’d missed the first three hours of play. Yorkshire had won the toss and elected to bat and it hadn’t gone particularly well but our arrival coincided with something of a recovery with club captain Jonny Bairstow completing his half century.
And so it went for the remainder of the day and the next two. Thanks in part to those Bairstow runs Yorkshire posted a modest first innings score of 212. Somerset’s first innings went a similar way with a poor start, a bit of a recovery then ending quickly on an even, erm, modester score of 201. Like their first, Yorkshire’s second innings got off to a poor start but George Hill and Dom Bess had an excellent partnership of 166 runs which helped them get to 275. This meant Somerset needed 287 runs from their second innings to win the game. By the end of Day 3 the visitors were 75 for 3 leaving the game nicely poised.
At the start of Day 4, Somerset required 212 more runs for the win whilst Yorkshire needed to take seven wickets. There was plenty of time for either scenario to happen though there was the threat of rain in the afternoon which could have brought the game to a premature end and declared a draw. As it happened, just 80 minutes of the morning session was required as the Yorkshire bowling, aided by a bowler friendly overcast sky, ripped through the remaining Somerset batsmen to dismiss them for 101. We whooped and hollered but in a calm and measured way as befits a cricket game. Yorkshire had won by 175 runs which makes it sound easier than it actually was. Therein lies the delight of watching a four day game of cricket. We had, in order, been happy, a little deflated, been very happy, been very unhappy, been delighted, despondent, happy, cautiously optimistic, ecstatic (in a measured way of course). Probably a few more emotions in between too but you get the picture. Yes, it can be the same in other sports but not for so long.
Of course it’s not for everyone. Some people who don’t enjoy cricket got to great pains to tell everyone why they don’t like it. Others can enjoy the shorter forms of the game but not the long form. The truth is the crowds at County Championship games are tiny. Headingley Stadium holds over 18,000 people but there was maybe 2000 folk there on Days one and two, fewer on three and four. Many of those were members, which is the cricket equivalent of season ticket holders. Not many paid at the gate like us. The price for watching a day’s play was £18, not bad when compared to other professional sports but of course you have to multiply that by four to see the entire game. Those that did turn up were nearly all of a certain age where working is no longer compulsory, unsurprising seeing that all four days were weekdays. The ‘crowd’ make up was mainly men but quite a few ladies too, and a couple of dozen Somerset fans had made the journey up from the West Country. There’s a couple of bars and one food and coffee concession that did fantastic pies. It’s hard to see how the counties can make any money out of hosting County Championship games yet they continue to play them, even if they’ve had to push them to the peripheries of the season. With the game ending at lunch time, it was a leisurely trip back up the Settle and Carlisle line as the rain arrived. Yorkshire had beaten both Somerset and the weather and we could not have been happier.
Footnote: Yorkshire won their final game, a very narrow one wicket victory over Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge. This meant they finished fifth in the ten team Division One of the County Championship. Somerset, who had never won the County Championship, finished second.
