Yorkshire's cricketing religion epitomised by Bishopthorpe surviving and thriving

Every Saturday and Sunday through the summer, local league cricket is played and enjoyed by men and women, boys and girls from single figures to their 80s, from the coast to the Pennines, north to south.

That walk out to the crease is a weekly pilgrimage in what amounts to a sporting religion here in Yorkshire.

Yet for one club that plays under the shadow of the Archbishop of York’s palace on the banks of the River Ouse, their place of cricketing worship was nearly taken from them this year.

For despite 176 years of history, Bishopthorpe Cricket Club’s few remaining players sat down at the start of February faced with a grim reality.

“We decided to look at what availability was going to be like for the forthcoming season, we had three regulars leaving the club for work or family reasons, and we just realised: ‘bloody hell, we’re going to be struggling here’,” says Ed Townend, one of the last players remaining.

“We didn’t want to let the league down by cancelling or pulling out, we’d played matches the previous year with seven lads, one where we had seven adults and two kids who were aged nine and 11. They weren’t allowed to catch the ball or bat, they were only allowed to field fine leg to fine leg – we actually won that match somehow!

“So we said to the committee just give us a month to come up with some ideas, because we don’t want to quit. We set a deadline of the end of February before we’d let the league know if we could carry on.”

Nearly two centuries of cricket in the village hinged on the actions of Townend and his like-minded chums.

“We decided to hold a meet the players night at the local pub in Bishopthorpe for people who might be interested in helping us out,” he continues.

“I’m fortunate, I work in communications as my day job and have an idea of what is required to get the media involved. I put some press releases out, saying 176 years old and on the verge of closing etc, etc. Social media was huge for us as well.

“We went to the pub thinking we’d be lucky if we got two or three and we had 30+ turn up.

“And from that we got about 15 to 20 players. Some had never played cricket before, some hadn’t played for 20 years.”

That night saved Bishopthorpe Cricket Club. They were able to field two teams this summer, a first team that actually won promotion from Galtres Division Four to Division Three, and a social team on a Sunday and midweek.

Their achievement was honoured on Wednesday night at the Yorkshire Cricket Board Collective Awards at Headingley, when they won the award for Connecting Communities.

“We’ve come from having a meeting about closing the club at the beginning of the year to picking up an award for engaging with the community at the end of it,” Townend says as he shakes his head in disbelief. “I think we can put that down as a successful 2024.”

But the challenge does not stop there. To ensure there is a 178th year and more at Bishopthorpe, work has already begun.

“Numbers started to tail off again at the end of the year, but we’ve been thinking about what can we do,” he tells The Yorkshire Post.

“We’ve already booked indoor nets for the start of January. We’ve got a 10-week block booking at a school in York which is something we’ve never done before.

“Collis King, the ex West Indian World Cup winner, has a connection into the club and has offered to come down and do some coaching.

“We got £1,100 in donations for a new roller and a new mower just from people chucking £5, £10, £15 in and then the parish council matched the rest to help us.

“We’ve got bigger plans for the club in terms of the clubhouse.

“Our ground is in the centre of Bishopthorpe, the archbishop’s palace is behind us. We want the club to stay at the heart of the community.

“If we can just get half a dozen more players, it doesn’t matter if they’re 18-years-old or they’re in their 60s. One of our opening bowlers this year was 78-year-old, fit as a fiddle. Him on one end and at the other end an 18-year-old kid. There aren’t many sports like that.”

Which made Wednesday’s Yorkshire Cricket Board celebration all the more special, a night when the players, coaches, officials and volunteers who make the religion of local league cricket tick every summer across the Broad Acres were appreciated.