My Cricket Exploits!

(Now that is a laugh!)

I have been interested in cricket for as long as I can remember. My earliest recollections are of getting up early in the morning to listen with my dad to the crackling commentaries coming through the radio from Australia.

I particularly remember Dad enthusing about the performances of Frank Tyson, Brian Statham, and of course Len Hutton, and defending Trevor Bailey for his defensive batting. That must have been about 1954/55.

Streethouse Cricket Club was the first club where I played organised cricket. The ground was near the bottom common between Sharlston and Streethouse and had a tremendous slope on it.

I could see the ground from home and the pull of the cricket ground was often greater than the need to revise Latin verbs during summer evenings. My GCE results reflected this interest in cricket even if my cricketing performances did not.

The second team was as good as I got - there were only two teams - and  although we  lost most weeks, we enjoyed our cricket.

We lads of fifteen or sixteen spent all our summer holidays at the ground practising, although the practice sessions didn't seem to influence our Saturday performances!

I was no great achiever, my highest score was 35 but I did figure in a stand of well over a hundred whilst my pal, Paul Rhodes, scored a magnificent century. We did so well that day that we were still batting as the First team returned home with their kit bag having been soundly whipped at Shafton. We lads in the second team liked that.

Click on photo for larger version

Streethouse 2nd X1 circa 1957

Arthur Salter, Peter Aldridge, Alan Moss, Alan ???, Richard Longfield, Maurice Nixon, George Bullock

Ron Lord, Pete Arnold, Brian Harper, Keith Brabbs, Derek Hobbs

(I think the pram contains Hobbs Junior!)

The pavilion was always being vandalised and the club eventually folded and the lads moved to new teams. I joined Wakefield Falcons who had just moved from Heath Common to  new ground at Stanley.

Streethouse rose from the dead several years later and they now play very good league cricket very successfully, and invariably do well in the National Village Competition organised by Cricketer magazine.

I later played for Ryhill without distinction and had the odd game in Shropshire when we lived there.

Highest score    - 35

Best bowling    - analysis unknown but I got four wickets in five balls,         including the hat trick,  with a catch being dropped off the other ball. The match was Walton versus Falcons in the Wakefield and District League, probably in 1961. Strangely I was dropped for the next match and never played for Falcons again!

Most memorable achievement (1) - coming in to bat at number eleven for Streethouse against arch rivals Sharlston, with 10 needed to win, and scoring them all. 

Most memorable achievement (2) - being the batsman at the other end during a "hat trick" of run outs! It was a Nalgo knockout match and I was not a popular man in the office next day.

Best fielding    - only one catch dropped in a match!

So there it is - no competition for Boycott and company, but by heck, we did enjoy our cricket, and that's what it's all about.

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