Anyone questioning the
health of club cricket following the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic could do
worse than spend some time speaking to Stephen Brenkley, the former cricket
correspondent of the Independent and the current president of Barnard Castle
Cricket Club of the North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League
(NYSDL).
This weekend, at Wantage Road,
‘Barney’, as the club is universally known, will take on Tunbridge Wells in the
final of the ECB Twenty20 competition.
And this particular corner of
the north west will empty as a result, with hundreds expected to make the trip
south to Northampton.
The whole town gathering
for a game of cricket is hardly a one-off, though,
as Brenkley explains.
“On a Saturday afternoon, we’ll
have 300 people up at the ground, lining the boundary,” he says. “And by the end
of the match we might have as many as 500, enjoying a drink at the bar. The
ground really is the centre of the town.”
They’re the kind of figures
that bring to mind the glory days of league cricket in this part of the world,
although if Barney win at the weekend it won’t be the first time that the town
has been in the headlines over the past 18 months.
“Barney, you’ll
now of heard of because Dominic Cummings famously visited us last year,”
says Brenkley, who has recently written ‘Small Town, Big Dreams – The Life and
Times of Barnard Castle Cricket Club’.
“We were thrust into the
stratosphere by his visit but I think this news is bigger in town, than even his
visit actually. The fact that we are in the National Club Twenty20 final has
really captured the imagination.
Which team comes out on top
when they clash with Tunbridge Wells, we’ll have to wait and see. Of greater
significance, perhaps, is that after the uncertainty and heartache of the past
18 months, the focus is once again on the cricket and not Covid protocols and
the battle for the recreational game to survive.
At present,
Barnard Castle is doing far more than that.
That
said, Brenkley admits that the feelgood factor permeating this particular part
of the cricket world won’t be felt elsewhere.
“I’m more
optimistic here than I would be in some places,” he says. “Both from a club
point of view and a league point of view.
“The North Yorkshire and South
Durham League is a vibrant pioneering league. When the ECB announced the Hundred
competition two or three years ago, the NYSD League was the first in the country
to say ‘right, we are going to play this Hundred ball cricket’, and we
introduced a new cup.
“We had already, for six or
seven years, been playing something called 15’s - which was 15 six ball overs
and had been hugely successful. We play a lot of cup cricket up north because we
have such long summer evenings here. We can play a lot of evening
cricket.
“We’ve also got a special
Twenty20 competition and it’s that which Barney are champions of.
“Of course, the league has
suffered during the pandemic but through careful stewardship, our president,
Chris West (also a director at the National Cricket Conference), who not only
talks a good game but also walks a very good game – hes quite simply the best
cricket administrator locally or nationally that I’ve come across, he’s
wonderful – and because of him the NYSD has made some fantastic
advances.
“Barnard Castle is symbolic of
that, really. At club level, it’s bloody hard to keep to going, particularly
when your bar is shut because that source of income is cut off, but I have to
say that the ECB has helped a little bit with the grants and loans that they
have offered. I think the NYSD is in a pretty good place.”
The evidence isn’t just
anecdotal. The fact is that the NYSD has played more cricket during this
turbulent period than any other league in the country.
And even though Barney
are in the final of a short format competition, Brenkley remains confident that
league cricket in its current form can survive. Although perhaps not
indefinitely.
“For the time being I’m
confident,” he says. “In the end – and I don’t know when that end point will be
– almost all cricket will be Twenty20. At club level, the players, and they’re
the ones that are important here, they are still keen to have 50 over matches on
a Saturday, with win, lose or draw in the pot.
“We put that point to
them quite regularly and they keep coming back and saying that. That’s a healthy
sign. We do recognise that there’s a place for all forms of cricket. For the
time being I’m reasonably sanguine about the future of league cricket in the
broader sense.
“However, if leagues
don’t have short form competitions, then they will perish.”
This
weekend, as Barney empties, the players, supporters and inhabitants of this
small market town, will very much be focusing on a format that is now very much
English crickets dominant force. For both Barnard Castle and Tunbridge Wells -
two prestigious clubs from opposite ends of the country - the battle will
commence. And the debate on the long-term future of the sport will be put on
hold.