It's been a season of batting landmarks so far.
Following on from the Bacup pro's double century and Accrington's record Alexandra Meadows score, Friday night brought possibly the purest and statistically neatest over of hitting in six-ball cricket I ever witnessed. (Although thinking deeply about it I have an idea I once saw Clitheroe's Paul Seedle do something not dissimilar).
Graeme Sneddon's assault on Clitheroe's Indian pro Madav Kaushik's final over in the first innings of the iMEP Arena's JWL Bitter T20 didn't ultimately count for much or even put Accy in any kind of driving seat but the pleasingly arithmetic sequence of 4,6,4,6,4,6 to take Sneds from 30 to 60 not out at the close of the innings - while leaving the slightly unlucky Jacob Clarke stranded on 46 at the other end - was a joy to behold.
In 1969 I saw East Lancs South African Test man Pat Trimborn (his fledgling international career truncated by the apartheid exile), a bowler really, hit 32 off an eight-ball over from Church's pro Ghulam Abbas at the Meadows. In my memory it was in the days of 'time" cricket and I'd thought it was help-yourself 'declaration" bowling which they used to put on. Looking it up, East Lancs were actually chasing Church's 157 for nine declared from 41.5 overs (333 balls, or 55.5 overs today) and were hanging on for a draw from 44 for six. Abbas , decidedly a batting pro who took just 11 wickets in two seasons, had been given a chuck to see if he could get the home side to gamble a bit.
I can remember watching Trimborn's assault from benches where the squash courts now stand not very proudly with whitewash long faded. I have a feeling he got out off the last ball or the first one of Abbas's second over (2-0-46-1: see, it happened back then too, kids) but he definitely went from 18 to 50 during the over. It finished up a draw in any case, nine down. The handbook tells you games began at 2pm then and the. last over was the one you were in at 7.30pm.
Like work, cricket has expanded to fit the time available.
I saw Trimborn maybe 25 years later queued up in the Royal Bank of Scotland in Blackburn carrying a South African Airlines flight bag. Older but instantly recognisable. I yearned to ask him about how he'd forced his way into perhaps the greatest forgotten Test side ever for the fourth game of the 1969-70 series in which the mighty Springboks of Barry Richards, the Pollock brothers, Bacher, Barlow and Proctor crushed Australia 4-1. And how he felt when his nation was cast out of international sport.
Alas, it was before my journalism training turned me into a fierce inquisitor and seeker of the truth and I was too shy to even talk to him before heading to BHS for the tuna sandwich, crisps and Double Decker I ate single every working day for 12 years working in the centre and returning to the Gas Board offices I worked at. Another opportunity missed. That phrase will go on my headstone.
Accrington's pro that Summer of '69 would be Peter Swart, a Rhodesian (Zimbabwe) international who played most of his career in South Africa. Swarty, a tyro of 23 that season, later enhanced his reputation as one of the best value for money all-round pros ever to play in the league with honours-laden spells at Haslingden and East Lancs but died tragically young (54) after a high tempo life which it could possibly said followed the famed Lou Reed maxim 'my week beats your year.'
I think I made my first ever visit to Thorneyholme Road that summer. I was very impressed that my dad actually knew Accrington wicket-keeper Terry Neville, who he'd been at St Mary's College in Blackburn with. I couldn't have been more chuffed if he'd known Bobby Charlton personally.
Swart's modern equivalent as Accy pro, Jurie, led the side against Clitheroe and with only 140 to bowl at despite Graeme and Jacob's unbroken 120 partnership, possibly with the benefit of hindsight left it too late to bring himself on.
After six overs of the amateurs Kaushik had virtually ended it as a contest, responding to his previous indignity, as well as exchanging words perhaps unnecessarily with our boys, by dishing out boundary-laden pain to some tune (eight fours and five sixes) himself.
Although he departed for an astonishing 74 off 32 balls and another wicket fell shortly thereafter Clitheroe were able to push it around and relatively plod home from there.
I had to miss Sunday's derby against Church. Virtually since the pandemic ended I have been Cherry Tree first XI scorer and they get first dibs. They had a cup game v Padiham and a Cherry home game always gives me the opportunity to call on my vey elderly parents who live nearby and help them out a bit.
After beating Astley Bridge well on Saturday, Cherry Tree lost the cup game but were very unlucky that pro Min Bhada was unable to bat after splitting webbing between fingers going for a ferocious return catch.
That doesn't adequately tell you though how disappointed I was to miss the Church away game, the first fixture I looked for when they came out. I've been a Church supporter since 1981 when I went to play there and while I'm addicted to scoring, I miss afternoons just chewing the cud with my old pals at the West End ground.
My mate Steve Pilkington, a fellow Church and Rovers fan who was born just a few days after me in early 1959, had joked that a hot reception was planned for me with a few "Judas" jibes and even suggested the old tradition of painting the Church/Accrington boundary wall after a game might be revived with a reference to my "treachery" thrown in.
Enough of the wall-painting though which got a few of us in enough bother in 1988 I think when a Rod Tucker-related taunt was emblazoned. Even years later I got into a row (really Jim? That does surprise me - Ed) with a local paper reporter who wrongly attributed the prank - and subsequent orders from the Old Bill to restore the wall to its usual state - to that perfectly upstanding citizen Roger Watson who I can categorically assure everyone had absolutely zero involvement and deserved no blame/credit for the prank..
Anyway, to even further aggravate the Churchy faithful, I found myself sat at Cherry Tree on Sunday checking play cricket and actually hoping Accrington would get the 151 required. As I've said, if you work for/with players on a weekly basis you can't not want them to succeed. At one point I was buzzing that both Cherry and Accy would chase down similar targets but on both counts I was to be disappointed.
That's not to say I'm not delighted that Church are doing so well. With sons of two wonderful old team-mates and friends of mine, Ken Fergusson and Alan Rawcliffe playing, I always particularly look for how Craig and James - I remember both as toddlers - are faring.
Looking at the scorecard I think Jurie and everyone else would admit it was a case of being 'out-pro'd' as we say on a day the ball dominated. We all know Jurie is going to make buckets of runs and have days of dominance but this time he had to play second fiddle to his compatriot.
No amateur scored more than 19 on the day and 14 extras was Church's highest contribution other than paid man Leshiba Ngoepe's superb 95 not out. My pal Eric's maxim referenced last week about not winning if nobody gets 50 certainly looked spot on this week and he reminded me he'd still give the same pep talk today if he was skippering.
Positives had to include another fine opening burst by Oliver Lowe. Other than that , not a lot I can say in absentia except to thank James from Rawtenstall for deputising as scorer.
Saturday saw a trip to Astley Bridge with Cherry Tree which is one of the easiest journeys among the NWCL's Bolton grounds to negotiate. They are a most hospitable club and, as did all three clubs I scored against this weekend, had a superb and friendly young scorer keeping these rheumy old eyes alert.
As a kid at the tail end of the 1960's/early 70's it was genuinely regarded as a family half-day outing to go to "Bolton Asda," at Astley Bridge a couple of hundred yards from the cricket ground on the main road into Bolton, the first Asda in Lancashire* according to the WhatsApp scorers' group, where you might get a whacking 15p off a Bryan Ferry LP or some such if you saved your spending money up.
These were the days before I'd ever been abroad or airborne, save for a ten pound 15-minute pleasure flight from Blackpool Airport round the Tower, and it was actually a thing for mum, dad and family to go to Ringway Airport on a Sunday afternoon to watch planes take off, perhaps sharing a basket of chicken and chips outside a pub with my sisters. Amazingly, I recently discovered the pub is still there a few yards from the runway with tables outside. If only I'd known that when I was paying for our kids to go to the zoo and stuff.
You had to go through Bolton to get to Manchester then, no M61 or anything, so it's been interesting to rediscover places like Tonge, Little Lever and Atherton again. Both parts of Bolton and Manchester itself then were so dark, doomy and foreboding, with towering brick satanic mills, clouds of smoke, tramlines and huge seedy-looking hotel type pubs serving the industrial community, you almost felt you were back in the Victorian era. Everything Tony Wilson used to say on those Joy Division documentaries was right.
Not that it isn't fraught with perils these days. I've already landed at Farnworth Social Circle once instead of Farnworth, only to be further confused having reset my SatNav by discovering yet another ground smack in the middle of Farnworth, the now disused home of what was Bolton CC.
It all reminded me of the time my clubmate, almost lifelong pal and briefly Accrington player Nick Westwell set off early for a Church friendly on the Fylde coast. Arriving early Nick, one of the most dedicated amateur cricketers I ever knew, set his stall out in the empty away dressing room only for a succession of strangers to walk in. He'd pitched up at Lytham and the game was actually at St Annes.
All the 'new' venues in the Lancashire League and the NWCL amalgam of Ribblesdale League and the Bolton Leagues, not to mention the emergence of the GMCL and the reshuffle of the Northern League and Palace Shield have changed the format and geography of local cricket. The much-vaunted at the time Pennine League crumbled almost as soon as it was set up.
After many decades of very little change, there is a great deal of flux and movement. Long-established clubs have died - Blackburn Northern and Leyland Motors for example - while others like Settle have made a clean break from their heritage to try pastures new. Some like Milnrow, Euxton and Brooksbottom have sampled one league then opted for another. Feniscowles have found senior cricket with a pro not feasible at present.
Those who once argued for a county wide pyramid system must now take in the fact that what was "Lancashire" cricket now seems to stretch from Carlisle to Colwyn Bay, Barrow-in-Furness to Barnoldswick. That could make for some long journeys if it ever materialises.
To debate what all this means or whether we preferred the old set-ups is redundant. The genie is out of the bottle now and the next decades are sure to bring more change whether old farts like me want it or like it or whatever.
I actually live at Walmer Bridge, near to the Hutton HQ of Lancashire Police, on the road out to Southport , so most of my scoring duties involve a bit of travelling. It would make more sense for me to cover Croston or Eccleston or someone in the Liverpool Comp or Palace Shield but I have no history with those competitions and I'm happier among the clubs and people I know.
This week for instance I'm at Salisbury Thursday, Enfield Friday, Oswaldtwistle on Saturday (scoring for my friends at Brinscall as Cherry Tree scheduled opponents Barnoldswick have been granted a day off for a religious occasion) and back to the iMEP on Sunday.
On my night off on Monday I went to watch my mates the Preston Royals, a team of lovely Indian fellas who I umpired a bit for last season, play PNE CC in a cup semi-final at the site of the old asylum at Whttingham. Umpiring the league fixture between the two last year I got my shin split open and badly infected by a fierce straight drive from a North End batter. And I actually like North End!
All that and Springsteen at Anfield on Wednesday, possibly an emotional final Boss gig (60-odd I've done) since 1981, Forgive me if I breathe a sigh of relief when I finish this on Tuesday and send it off ready for a nice night in with Mrs Wilky.
As ever, I can't wait for the weekend to start early and to see you all.
*I reckon there was an Asda in Preston in a big factory building off New Hall Lane at the same time. Coming soon - the teenage advantages of having a Makro card.
