Seconds wind

ON a day as grey and as cold as the German Ocean out the back, Yorkshire II played Durham II at Marskeby- the-Sea. It was the column’s first cricket match of the season.

Seconds best, these are big days for the host clubs, months of preparation in the capricious hands of the weather gods (and, as we shall hear, of the demigods of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council).

It’s to be 40 overs, noon start, a sea fret upon arrival at Marske railway station and more general consternation in the clubhouse.

Someone essays a couple of lines from Mull of Kintyre, the bit about mist rolling in from the sea.

“Shurrup,” mutters John Hodgson, a member of the club’s events committee.

It’s a lovely, immaculately maintained ground, a wrought iron gate properly proclaiming it to be MCC.

That it’s in Windy Hill Lane is inauspicious; meteorologically, it is not a good day to be beside the MCCside.

Play starts on time. Durham bat, fretful, nithered to the quick. Many in the crowd appear more appropriately dressed for the launch of Redcar lifeboat than for a cricket match in mid-May.

They include our old friend Surreal Neil, he who collects telephone exchanges, but not his mate Tony Day – known universally as Jesus – who, says Surreal Neil, is becoming a bit of a hermit.

Jesus had, however, been at a meeting a few days earlier to discuss diamond jubilee celebrations in Marske. “He wanted to have a large inflatable Sooty and a large inflatable Queen and have them fighting in the air,” says Neil.

For some reason, this excellent suggestion appears not to have been adopted.

ADMISSION’S only £1, 50p concessions. I’m pondering whether to opt for the ten-bob end or to remind them of the time all those years ago when I spoke at the annual dinner and thus get in buckshee when the gateman makes a unilateral decision.

“Pensioner,” he says. It still sits uncomfortably.

Ian Bernard, the club’s perspicacious president, remembers that annual dinner, too. “You were very good but the others went on too long.

I had to send you a letter of apology,”

he says. Honest.

They’ve worked hard to promote the occasion, efforts somewhat frustrated when banners erected on the town centre roundabout suddenly vanished last Friday teatime.

“I rang the police, had them watching CCTV, all sorts,” says John McVeigh, a generous sponsor. Two days later, it turned out that the culprits were the council. “They started banging on about some road traffic act or other,” says John.

“It’s ridiculous, disgusting. They never even told us what they were doing. We’re trying to promote the place, bring a few visitors in, and that’s what they do to help.”

Roundabout route or otherwise, around 200 are in at the start, joined by well-wrapped kids from the local primary school armed with those little 4/6 placards, as seen on television.

It’s a top class occasion – an education, too – but weather-wise they’re on the naughty stool.

DURHAM include Gordon Muchall and Mitch Claydon, on first team duty just the day previously, Yorkshire field Ed Wilson, whose grandfather won a World Cup medal at Wembley in 1966, and 24-year-old Adil Rashid – Dilly to his friends – who made several England one-day international appearances as a leg break bowling all-rounder but spent much of his overseas tours carrying the spritzers.

Now relegated to the second team, he waits a little further down the white rose pecking order.

The crowd includes NYSD League president and prolific cricket writer Chris West whose son Ian may never himself play for England – he did play for Great Ayton – but who’s now doing 100 days voluntary work in Samoa in order to qualify for their World Cup squad.

“If that doesn’t work, he’s also qualified for Norway,” says Chris who, the day previously, had recorded the 1,000th North-East match lost thus far to the rainy season.

Durham lose two early wickets, might be even worse off save for the well-known correlation between cold hands and dropped catches.

A lady in a sou’wester is drinking coffee from a bottomless flask, her husband has a nip of something stronger. As they used almost to say of Phylossan, this is fortifying the 40 overs, though a passing St Bernard might be useful, too.

Players who would normally walk the ground in shorts do so in tracksuit and top coat, ne’er casting a clout. There’s also a girl in hot-pants, a sartorial solecism of perverse and preposterous proportions. They might not be supposed fair weather fans.

THE visitors are steadied by a near 200 stand between Michael Richardson, whose father Dave kept wicket for South Africa and is now general manager of the International Cricket Council, and Keaton Jennings, another South African who captained his country’s under-19s.

Jennings makes a handsome 85 – they really should have been playing Derbyshire, the headline would have written itself – Richardson finishes with an unbeaten century. Poor Rashid, daffy-down Dilly, gets a bit of a carting, breaking a leggy.

At the break, Durham have reached 252-3; the players have first sitting, but save us a most welcome lunch.

THE programme notes that it’s the 27th occasion on which MCC have hosted Yorkshire, the first 40 years ago to the day for Don Wilson’s benefit.

Men like David Gower, Nick Cook and Richie Richardson have played at Marske at the start of their careers; men like Geoffrey Boycott at the opposite end of the timeline.

That was in 1986; what Sir Geoffrey made of it all is, sadly, unrecorded.

Lunch over, the crowd appears to have dwindled. “About a third of them have died of hypothermia,”

says John Hodsgon, a former chairman of Marske United Football Club.

Yorkshire’s innings also takes time to warm up; the conversation returns to the weather. “This is nothing compared to Scarborough two weeks ago,” someone says.

“Oh aye,” agrees his mate, “wicked wind off Peasholm Park lake.”

Frank Siddle supposes the best place to watch Yorkshire II is at Stamford Bridge, by which he probably doesn’t mean the home of the new European football champions.

Yorkshire accelerate, Rashid’s 46 earning him the home side’s man of the match award from Jamie Hood, Saltburn lad and former Yorkshire cricketer whose career was ended by a road accident in South Africa 16 years ago. He remains paralysed from the neck down.

Despite improbable late order improvisation, Yorkshire lose by 20- odd, all out in the last over. Jennings finishes with 4-50, indisputably Durham’s man of the match as Windy Hill Lane shivers to a halt.

They’re thawing in the clubhouse, hoping that the Headingley hierarchy will remember all the very good things about the day, not dwell too long on the weather and give them another seconds chance next year.

“We love these occasions,” says Ian Bernard. “It’ll be 80 degrees next year.”