Days Of The Weak: County Cricket 2019

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County Championship, County Cricket, Cricket, Essex CCC, Hampshire CCC, Kent CCC, Nottinghamshire CCC, Somerset CCC, Surrey CCC, Warwickshire CCC, Why Does It Always Rain On Me, Yorkshire CCC

So, the fixtures were announced for the County Cricket season of 2019 earlier today, and wasn’t that a treat? Well, not if you want to watch Kent in the County Championship and work during the week it wasn’t. Nor, to be honest, was it if you wanted to watch the domestic game at all and were only free on weekends. The first division I’ve graphed out, team by team, day by day, so you can see how badly arranged the fixtures are in terms of days of the week. I am, its fair to say, disappointed.

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Clarence At Age

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County Cricket, Cricket, Cricket Poetry, Hertfordshire, Ian Botham, Minor Counties, Poetry, St Albans

We’re in St Albans at the moment, a town with not so very much to say in cricket history. There was a Women’s World Cup match at Clarence Park in 1973, and Hertfordshire played a couple of one day cup matches here about thirty years ago. It still has a ground, though, and I still wanted to see it, so I wandered there this afternoon. Alvin Kallicharran played his last List A innings there, you know, back in 1984.

The clock stopped dead at quarter past,
The final batsman then long gone,
As Autumn shadows stretch across,
Cast full by bright November sun.

While children game and dogs are walked,
As evening plans are mulled and made,
Now scene of lazy Saturdays,
Instead of where the game was played.

On seats where paying crowds once cheered,
Green paint peels back revealing rust,
And windows cracked or simply frames,
Let sunlight stream, suspending dust.

The pitch is fenced off, still protected,
Its green stands bright on darker green,
On which of this array of wickets,
Was one day Ian Botham seen?

The grass is mown in circles, too,
Outside the string between the posts,
So you can still feel cricket here,
And cast yourself back on its ghosts.

Rolled Away

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County Championship, County Cricket, Cricket, Cricket Poetry, Essex, Essex CCC, Poetry, Surrey

I don’t have the opportunity to listen to much cricket on the radio of late, but I was lucky enough to hear the end of Surrey v Essex match this afternoon, and the tension cranked up and up through some Mornie Morkel and Jade Dernbach overs, until eventually the class of Ryan ten Doeschate helped the visitors home.

Ten Doeschate flicks it wide,
Beyond the hands of Rory Burns,
And Essex win and Surrey lose,
And winter, suddenly, returns.

It was coming, the end, we knew, we knew,
Be runs or wicket brought it,
Expectation, yes, but still,
It’s always sooner than we thought it.

All that mattered even just a ball ago is gone,
The pressure Morkel helped to build,
The bouncing ball had peppered Quinn,
That he repelled, though barely skilled.

And there it goes, the season, there,
As the ball flies to the rope,
And with it some of cricket’s best,
Without whom now we have to cope,

When April will roll round, it will,
Bring cricket back on springtime dews,
But cricket now has rolled away,
As Essex win and Surrey lose.