Hello Duckworth-Lewis my old friend.
I don't really want to keep banging on about this on here but sometimes i think it causes more confusion than it allays.
On Saturday at Earby my game was delayed by a couple of overs at the start and we twice separately lost one further over to two more short showers. 41 overs apiece therefore instead of 45 in the NWCL.
That's three entries on the computer. Earby made 190 for five and we have to input the stoppages and see what D/L considers the appropriate revised target.
And guess what? The revised target was 191 from 41 overs. Straight chase. No difference.
Pretty sensible I reckon.
A splendid chase it was too by my Cherry Tree boys too, who got home by seven wickets with a ball to spare with Charlie Elwood making 47, professional Min Bhada with 45 but this time twin Owen Elwood making the main headlines with a superb unbeaten 50 in tandem with the irrepressible Mark Hadfield (21 not out).
Great tense game, lovely hospitality, a quick chat with pal 'Herbie Hipgrave' and home.
I did a little reccie into Earby before the game and found one nice charity shop open but was rather spooked to see an actual street sign headed "Clarets Corner" so made off promptly before being further traumatised.
I might as well have booked a nice little Air B'n'B in Barrowford for the night to be fair as on Sunday i was at Nelson with Accrington.
Where once stood the old Nelson FC ground at one end of Seedhill - and excitingly, the site of Saturday evening stock car and "hell racers" meetings which I would watch over the wall with the likes of Mike Grierson and Graham Tattersall after East Lancs seconds matches and a drink in the old bowling green bar with the legendary D P Evans holding court - now looms a huge building designated as a new Police headquarters. But, would you believe the new structure currently rising is only to be the multi-storey car park attached to what will presumably be an even more formidable behemoth behind?
Nelson have enquired whether it can be painted white to ensure the sightscreens don't have to keep being moved.
I made my club debut for Church (3rds) at Nelson in 1981, chugging there in my first car, my grandad's old blue mini, aged 22 and did ok, I think I had four for, so it's always had a place in my affections. The wicket was so close to the park side that I actually hit one of my rare career sixes.
My cricket career at least lasted longer than the mini which got crushed by a milk wagon outside Daisy Dairies near the WECG a few weeks later. The late Church committee man Brian Holt was woken by the carnage early one morning (I'd taken a taxi home after nets and left it) and gave me £25 for the scrap.
Sunday's game was, inevitably, also blighted by rain delays. Five overs apiece off the initial 50 right away at the start then one more lost to a ten-minute delay (I've seen drinks breaks take almost as long). So 44 overs a side.
Nelson made 204 for seven.
Duckworth Lewis decided in its wisdom that the Accrington target should be 206 from the same 44 overs. Two more than the Nelson total. A statistical curiosity but hardly worth applying or arguing about.
Like Accrington's, Nelson's board isn't really equipped to display the DLS Par score as the rules categorically ask. What we scorers can do is display it in a designated part of the box normally used for something else - "Last Man" for example (the woke among you are just going to have to put up with Man instead of Bat for a while). At Cherry Tree we can put a little board sign up to let everyone know what it is. Not so on may grounds. It's 2025 for goodness sake.
A further complication arose on Sunday when one skipper asked for "DLS Par score plus one" to be displayed which categorically isn't what the rules or playing regulations ask for, despite a rather huffy man with a vaguely Southern Hemisphere accent coming into the scorers' domain reiterating the request.
It's hard enough for scorers to keep up the update ball-by-ball - another rather unnecessary beseechment from players and umpires - instead of at the end of each over, and while I work in schools in South Ribble and know little about education standards in the east of the county, I wouldn't have thought the mental arithmetic agility required to see DLS par and add one on in your head was too taxing.
Goodness knows how folk obsessed with Par plus one go on at golf. "Here's the seventh, 573 yards long, par plus one 6."
Ten minutes before the end of the game people were still arriving saying 'how can the last man have got 133 when the total is only 124?" which further reinforces the confusion those not party to the discussions in the bar might endure if they are actually out on the seats designated for spectators.
Nelson's 14-year-old scorer was angelically tolerant and compliant to each and every more idiosyncratic request and even found time to prepare and take out drinks for the players. Had it been my home game a couple of officials and stakeholders might have got rather shorter shrift.
At one point while all the mayhem was going on Bob Dylan's magnificent "Highway 61 Revisited" randomly blasted over the PA in the bar area complete with that odd whistling motif, although the way I was feeling by then "Can You Please Crawl Out of Your Window" might have made a more fitting choice from his catalogue. At least that was an improvement on Elaine Paige's showtunes provided earlier in the afternoon.
At one point after a period of relative quiet and calm somebody called for more music to soothe a crying baby. Oh for the relative serenity and isolation of the scorers' quarters at the iMEP Arena. A window with a view of more than half of the field is always to be enjoyed too.
On the field, after a fairly calamitous start a wonderful stand of 109 between Jacob Clarke and Emil Haratbar put us perfectly in contention for a while, if always a shade behind on DLS or DLS plus one, or "Last Man" whichever you preferred to follow.
For Jacob, his 50 chalked up his second collection of the day, having earlier collected five for 47 with the ball. Young Ryan Bond was charged with going round with the hat for both, and the handful of spectators outside won't have exactly afforded JC or Emile a week off work. Always remember to work the bar, Ryan that's where the serious money is although in fairness he might still be refused entry on age grounds.
I remember my pal Gerard telling me that back in the days of healthy gates, he once had two fifties in a weekend for Church and even after buying a couple of large rounds ended up with considerably more than his weekly wage to spend.
With another downpour looking possible a renewed urgency to hurry up the run rate ASAP accounted for both batsmen and when Emile fell to an ambitious reverse paddle in the pursuit of quick runs that was more or lesss that. Three bonus points was the least we deserved but no real consolation at another opportunity gone west and another loss.
Sub pro Nico Van Zyl didn't have their greatest Sunday, his height and pace rather levelled out by the soggy conditions and able to make no impression with the bat. He looks a big handy lad though and I'm sure we didn't see the best of him.
I noted that with Jurie absent, none of the five bowlers who were used in the season's opener against Nelson played other than Thomas Braysford who wasn't used on Sunday.
Friday without T20 made a change but to be honest I get addicted to the triple-headers and can't wait for the year one or more of my sides gets to the July knock-out stages. Not that anybody played on a wet Friday night anyway.
This weekend Cherry Tree host Ribblesdale Wanderers while Accrington welcome Crompton to the iMEP.
A couple of years ago I was scoring the first game of the season for Immanuel at Ribb Wanderers and arrived, as is my wont, at about ten past 12 and sat on a bench in front of the pavilion with my dog Rollo.
A gentleman approached and introduced himself as a (quite well-known locally) coach and said "Your name is Wilkinson isn't it? You still spend all your time on Twitter?"
I gathered from this witty exchange of badinage that he and I had had some kind of social media run in years previously. In all honesty, that wouldn't really distinguish him from half of the users of what's now X and after my Covid near-death coma experience I had to admit I had absolutely no recollection of what we were supposed to have fell out about. Still no idea to this day. Answers on a postcard if you know.
He disappeared and minutes later a committee man appeared from the clubhouse and announced: "Could you move, please, these seats are for players and officials only." Three quarters of an hour before the start. He retreated back inside when I informed him I was the visiting scorer. I had to grudgingly admire that level of pettiness if not the delegation aspect.
Later in the afternoon looking out of the score box, a lady with a pram, two small children and three youths drinking bottles of Madri occupied the benches so I can only assume an EGM was hurriedly held to relax the seating restrictions.
I can assure anyone who visits from Ribb, whose scorers are always very nice people, or Crompton at either of the clubs I score at and comes and says hello that they'll get a warmer welcome than that this weekend and I might even follow you on Twitter, where I now only spend a proportion of my time.
Last week's quiz answer - Paul Barratt was the leading Accrington amateur batsman in the averages in Shane Warne's season. 'Busy' scored 597 at 23.9 ahead of Bill Rawstron and Nick Marsh.
This week's quiz - the (sur)namesake of a current Accrington first teamer played just one game as sub pro for Accrington, his Lancs League debut in the 1990s against a team he would go on to win the league title twice with. Can you name him?
