Richard Sutcliffe: Time to get our bags packed as county cricket goes on holiday

A fortnight yesterday to be specific, is when our travelling party will be heading east eagerly looking forward to a few days sampling the delights that Scarborough has to offer.

Even Yorkshire’s struggles this year have not dulled the appetite, so much so that it has been the main topic of conversation for weeks in our Riddlesden local, the Marquis of Granby.

Memories of last year’s May and August visits are still fresh in the mind, not least the rather surreal couple of hours spent in one particular hostelry where a live parrott sits on a perch in the corner and makes a beeline for the shirt buttons of anyone daft enough to stray too close.

Our feathered friend apart, though, 2010 was reassuringly familiar with all the elements we have grown to love from a trip to the coast during the cricket season still being present.

Favourite pubs, the welcoming cafe with steamy windows whose all-day breakfast acts as the perfect hangover cure and a plethora of shops offering England’s finest contribution to world cuisine, fish and chips. All provided the backdrop to another enjoyable stay by the seaside and meant that, from the very moment that the 2011 fixtures were released last December, the planning had begun for this year’s jaunts.

As enjoyable as these familiar sights and sounds are, however, the thing that brings us all back year after year is the cricket. And, more specifically, the unique experience of watching cricket by the seaside. I love it.

Being an unashamed fan of watching county cricket at the outgrounds is probably a big factor in the affection that I hold North Marine Road.

Living in Keighley, my first experience of watching Yorkshire was with my late father at Park Avenue, Bradford. It was during the final season before the football stand was demolished, meaning to this rather awe-struck youngster that it suddenly became the most fascinating place on earth – especially as the football ground, which had been abandoned in 1973, had an almost ghostly presence.

Even after the stand and the adjoining Dolls’ House (think Fulham’s Craven Cottage but with weeds growing out of the roof when I first clapped eyes on the pavilion-like structure) had come down and those of us sitting to the right of the pavilion, as we always did, looked out across the cricket field towards the trees that by now inhabited the football pitch, a visit to Park Avenue remained a thrill.

Later, we branched out to Headingley (my first game was an England Test – the year after Botham’s heroic feats against the Aussies, which set the tone for my timing in life...), Harrogate, Scarborough and Sheffield.

Abbeydale Park was, in fact, the scene for the most thrilling finale to a match this young cricket enthusiast saw when Essex’s Neil Foster was smashed for a six off the last ball of a John Player Special League game by Arnie Sidebottom to seal a nail-biting victory over a team who, at the time, dominated one-day cricket.

Sadly, the days when county cricket was taken to all four corners of Yorkshire (okay, geography was never my strong point at school...) are long gone. We do, though, still have North Marine Road to visit along with the county’s headquarters in Leeds and that is something to be thankful for.

I must admit that it is not too long ago that I feared even the wonders of Scarborough might be taken away from us due to what some saw as facilities that were not fit for purpose.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course. And, in that respect, I still loved North Marine Road. But even I could see that little had changed since the heady days when my birthday invariably brought the present of a junior member’s card and the prospect of a long and enjoyable summer holiday.

I didn’t subscribe entirely to the view of Guardian cricket writer David Hopps, late of this parish of course, when he wrote in 2009 about how, “Cricket at Scarborough seems in terminal decline. It is the sheer lack of pride – the rubbish strewn outside the back entrance, the blocked drain that gushed soapy water across the concourse behind the pavilion, the squalor of fag ends and assorted rubbish, the toilets that did not flush last year and predicatbly did not flush this.” But I knew he had a point.

So, it seems, did the powers-that-be at Scarborough Cricket Club, who have overseen a £2m revamp of the ground over the winter.

Nat West helped get the ball rolling last year with a lick of paint and a general tidy-up, which prompted the Guardian to name North Marine Road as ‘Ground of the Year’. The newspaper also noted: “One first-time visitor – a well-known cricket commentator – saw the town and ground for the first time during Yorkshire’s Clydesdale Bank-40 semi-final against Warwickshire and professed himself taken aback by their appeal.

“Few county outgrounds have survived modern-day demands. But North Marine Road gleams again.”

Nat West may have provided the initial impetus but it is supermarket giant Tesco who has been the major drivers of the multi-million pound overhaul that, club officials believe, will give Yorkshire members a pleasant surprise next month.

Tesco selected North Marine Road as their major community project of 2011, which meant not only did the project benefit from a major cash injection but also the use of the company’s contractors and partners.

The upshot is a major facelift for the ground that includes new seating on the Popular Bank along with new toilets. Both scoreboards have also been given a long-overdue renovation along with the tea-room, while the facilities for players in the pavilion have been vastly improved.

I, for one, can’t wait to see the fruits of all that hard labour, not least as one of the upgrades has been to the bar behind the West Stand.

Cheers!

Wise words from Worthington

AT last, someone talking sense in the debate about Great Britain entering a team in the Olympics for the first time in 52 years.

Amid the predictable howls of protest from the Scots, Welsh and Irish about how being a part of London 2012 under the GB banner will be the beginning of the end for the home nations, Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington has waded into the debate by saying he would back any of his players who want to take part.

He said: “The players will have their own views on whether they want to be involved in a GB team at the Olympics and whatever their view is should have no impact on their international careers. As an international manager I would have no problem with players wanting to be involved.”

Such a common sense approach puts to shame those who seem determined to derail Team GB and it is to be hoped the former Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday defender’s words resonate in the corridors of power.

With the domestic football season being delayed until August 18 next year to accommodate the Olympics, supporters from all four home nations will have the chance to really get behind the GB banner and, hopefully, cheer the team on to gold.