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Bill Bridge: Putting village clubs back in the picture
HAVING succeeded – probably beyond his most fanciful dreams – in creating a unique insight into the way cricket became an integral part of the social fabric of a part of Yorkshire, Dr Peter Davies is now preparing to dig even deeper.
In his day job, Davies, 41, is senior lecturer in European history at Huddersfield University but his evenings and weekends since 2004 have been dedicated to compiling a picture of every one of the 100 cricket clubs in Calderdale and Kirklees.
Some, lacking perhaps in imagination, would describe his work as an archive. That somehow devalues both the concept and the delivery of a project which provides an ideal template for others to follow and discover the part sport – it does not have to be cricket – has played in the evolution of life in the towns and villages of the region.
Davies would be the first to accept that he has not been alone. For a start he received a 43,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to begin his work, the first time funds from that source had been allocated to a sport-driven project.
Huddersfield University weighed in with an in-kind contribution of 7,000 and he has had valued support from Robert Light, who lives in Pateley Bridge and is working on a PhD in cricket history, students on history and media courses at the university and volunteers through the Calderdale-Kirklees area, somewhere between
300-400 is his estimate.
The aim of the project was to explore and celebrate the cricketing heritage of Kirklees and Calderdale and to appreciate his success in achieving that simple-sounding but far from straightforward goal the quickest route is to access www.ckcricketheritage.org.uk
The process began when Davies, a keen club cricketer, injured his back playing for Birkby Nuffield in the Huddersfield Central League. "I lost confidence in my ability to play after that," he says. "Instead I began spending my Saturday afternoons wandering round the cricket grounds in the area and it gradually came to me that the sub-culture of league cricket in the towns and villages needed a wider profile".
Now all the clubs in the area, from giants of the league game like Lascelles Hall, founded in 1825 and home to many future Yorkshire cricketers, to the most modest of organisations have been featured in exhibitions in their local post office, village hall – or pub.
"We have taken the cricket clubs into their villages to show people how central they are to their community," says Davies. "Sport has long been undervalued in the fabric of our lives and this is something people care about."
His success has brought requests for advice on similar projects from other areas – including Sheffield, Barnsley and South Wales – there has been interest from centres which historically have claimed greater importance in the history of cricket, organisations like the Bradford and Lancashire Leagues. He has responded but intends to concentrate on the part of Yorkshire he has come to know so well as his studies progress.
"I have come to know this area like the back of my hand," he says. "I feel rooted here and can't imagine living anywhere else."
His next targets are the clubs in Kirklees and Calderdale which no longer exist. "There must be about 1,500 of them," he suggests. "Every village would have had three of four clubs and my ambition now is to get inside those old clubs, dig up the memories using old scorebooks, committee minutes, photographs, talking to people, all the things we did with the existing clubs".
Other themes he and colleagues are pursuing include the impact of Asian and Afro-Caribbean cricketers on the league cricket scene and the influence and involvement of women in the game, not just in their traditional role as tea-ladies but as players, umpires, scorers, secretaries and even chairpersons of clubs.
Care free and able to be England scrum-half
AS a scrum-half himself in his playing days with Fylde, Orrell and Lancashire, Brian Ashton was good enough to earn a place on an England tour and so knows the qualities required to reach the highest level in one of rugby's pivotal positions.
He is also not afraid to take a chance as his addition of Danny Care to the national squad preparing for the game in Scotland on Saturday after only a handful of games in the Harlequins' first XV proved.
Care is the closest thing English rugby has seen to another son of Otley who went on to captain his country before having his career ruined by a series of injuries. Nigel Melville went to the now defunct Aireborough GS, Care to the still thriving Prince Henry's GS on the banks of the Wharfe but, schooling apart, the pair have much in common.
Melville's potential was spotted in his schooldays, principally by officials at the Otley club and the late Ronnie Leigh, an influential figure within the England Schools' Rugby Football Union, and prospered after leaving his native heath for the delights of working in London and playing for Wasps. Now, after spells as director of rugby at Wasps and Gloucester, he is in charge of rugby development in the United States.
Care, whose first love was football, was taken on board by the Leeds academy but allowed to leave when the club suffered relegation.
He chose Harlequins as his second club and has gradually honed his game with them and the England sevens squad to such a degree that when Andy Gomersall, Quins' first-choice scrum-half, was required by England this season he rose to the chance superbly.
Like Melville, young Care is quick in three key areas: the hands, the feet and the brain. He is, if anything, quicker over the ground than his illustrious predecessor but, equally as important in these days of inflated egos, he remains the lad he was when learning the game at PHGS. He will not let England down when his chance comes; it might even be the start of a great international career.Toseland & Hamilton revving up for summer of dreams
YOU can hear them chattering in the local, in the supermarket, on the train and on their mobiles as they emerge from their hibernation. The petrol heads are back so it cannot be long before the noise heralds another season of high-quality motor and motor-cycle racing and this year even some of us would no more sit on a motor bike than try to swim the length of Windermere will be taking notice.
The reason? Simple really, there is Lewis Hamilton's second season to watch in Formula 1 and James Toseland's progress in MotoGP to grab the attention between next Sunday and the end of October.
Hamilton's year starts a week later in Melbourne and despite domestic difficulties for his McLaren team the prospects are excellent for him going one better than in his debut season when his worst drive of the year in the final race cost him his chance of becoming the first driver to win the title in his debut season.
Reports trickling from the McLaren camp suggest that team supremo Ron Dennis will be scaling down his involvement this year and that in itself will be a blow to young Hamilton, who has benefited enormously from the protective shield Dennis put in place when it became obvious that Britain had produced a potential world champion.
Still being questioned by the Italian police as the saga of the Ferrarigate investigation drags on, Dennis says he wants to spend more time with his family, explore new business avenues, take a long rest, all the usual platitudes we hear from someone who wants nothing more than to be left alone to enjoy doing what they do best.
The allegations involving leaked information on Ferrari's machinery finding its way into the McLaren shed have undoubtedly damaged Dennis and his company but it appears the drama has failed to distract Hamilton.
In the final pre-season test session in Barcelona Hamilton's McLaren was lapping consistently faster than world champion Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari and to underline the point, McLaren's second driver, Heikki Kovalainen, was also quicker than his fellow-countryman. It should be Hamilton's year.
It is unlikely to be Toseland's year but that should not deter us from taking a close interest in Yorkshire's Superbike world champion who takes the massive step up into MotoGP.
Seeking to become Britain's first world No 1 since the great days of the late Barry Sheene in the Seventies, Toseland has been hard at work getting to know his Yamaha Tec3 bike and its almost unbelievable power.
He has had to learn all over again about when to brake, to accelerate and to apply a little patience, a word which is used amazingly often in a world where speed is king.
There will be the gentle pursuit of golf balls, days for watching cricket's timeless tableaux and the pageants of the racing calendar but this summer, more perhaps than any before, the roar of the engines will demand attention.
Good luck to both Hamilton and Toseland.
Pietersen tops short list wanted by Indian Twenty20
THEY are getting rather warm under the collar in the offices of the Professional Cricketers' Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board as the magnet that is Twenty20 cricket in India draws ever more players into its grubby clutches.
Give a cricketer – or any professional sportsman – the chance to make a lot of money for comparatively little effort and he will shake hands then bite the same hand without blinking. There is nothing wrong with that; the earning span of anyone who earns a living playing games is short.
India is cricket mad and now, as its economy thrives at a rate which only the Chinese can equal, is awash with the kind of money which brings a gleam to the eye of any self-respecting cricketer.
Television, of course, is the driving force and it was an argument over the rights to show India's international matches which spawned the Indian Cricket League, an organisation set by the Zee TV channel in defiance of the Board of Control for Cricket in India which responded by setting up its own Indian Premier League.
Both organisations plan to pull in viewers hooked on the short form of the old game and have set aside billions of rupees to pay for players to attract the audiences. Now the PCA and the ECB are worried that England's best cricketers might be attracted to India and especially the ICL, which is not sanctioned by the International Cricket Council and whose players might well find themselves banned from playing on their return from the Twenty20 series.
England's Test players are bound by their central contracts and many of them retain a vestige of loyalty to their counties, playing for them whenever England duties, injuries, tiredness and sponsors' days permit. But there is another point: exactly how many of our gallant lads, who commence a Test series in New Zealand tomorrow on the back of a losing one-day tournament, would be wanted by either of the two Indian organisations?
Kevin Pietersen is one but he has already insisted that – "for now" – his loyalties lie with his adopted country.
Paul Collingwood and Dimitri Mascarenhas might be others and a fully-fit Andrew Flintoff would certainly be on most lists of the best cricketers around. After that? Not much.
Would you fork out a few thousand for the pleasure of having Ian Bell or Alastair Cook block and chop for an hour or so?
Or to see Steve Harmison whistle a few deliveries in the general direction of third slip?
And, just before leaving the subject of India's official and "rebel" rivals and their impact on the English game, there will be no tears shed hereabouts should Yorkshire's plans to have Rava Naved-ul-Hassan spearheading their pace attack this summer come to nought.
His absence from Yorkshire might open the door for a young, home-grown quick bowler to experience first XI cricket.
According to the county's chief executive Stewart Regan there is "some terrific talent" within the club: we look forward to seeing them in the coming months.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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