FOREWORD

The words ‘Yorkshire’ and ‘Cricket’ are often spoken together.  There is a passion for cricket in Yorkshire that is rarely displayed elsewhere in the country (well apart from Lancashire and we don’t really talk about that county).  This devotion to the game is remarkable, since for many years Yorkshire County Cricket Club have not actually been very good.  The last County Championship success in 1968 is now but a distant memory and represented an era when Raymond Illingworth and Geoffrey Boycott still had a civil word for each other.

Despite a poor recent example set by our county mentors and an even poorer showing from our national ‘heroes’, cricket is alive and just about kicking in Yorkshire, but only just in the village of Chip Goat.  Incompetence, underachievement, bickering and sheer optimism; the new cricket season at Chip Goat is not far away.

INTRODUCTION

Deep in the heart of North Yorkshire,  you can hear the sound of squelching foot on sodden outfield as cricketers prepare for the start of the new cricket season.  Team-mates squabbling and  bickering at the pre-season Annual General Meeting over the club’s accounts,  the state of the ground, the unfair tea rota, inbuilt nepotism in the appointment of the club’s officials, the environmental crisis likely to erupt over the team’s toilet facilities and whether eleven players can in fact be persuaded to turn out for that first game of the season.

Captain’s log takes the reader on a journey from early season optimism when the only thing that can stop Chip Goat’s pursuit of glory is the British weather well that and the fact that the team is not actually very good, through to ultimate and unexpected Nirvana. 

As the team struggles to overcome one of the wettest British summers on record, the early season is dominated by sulky and stroppy bowlers, an incompetent groundsman, rank bad umpiring, a mountain of unused cheese sandwiches and jam tarts and not very much success.

As the sun belatedly shows its face, Chip Goat rise from the ashes of despair to go on a roller-coaster ride to possible cup glory.   Upsetting the formbook and winning games against the odds Chip Goat have the unexpected treat of playing in two cup finals.

Player shortage raises his ugly head and for reasons as diverse as the activities of William Hague and the start of the shooting season, Chip Goat hit those August blues and sensationally blow their first cup final appearance and reach a new low for the season as the team is forced to select pensioners, tracksuited spectators, street urchins and young lads just to keep afloat.  The drama of starting a cricket match with only six cricketers is, however, soon forgotten following another bizarre throw of the dice. 

Success finally comes to even those that are not very good, as Chip Goat win their first cup for over a decade as for a change team-mates pull in the same direction rather than pressing the self destruct button.  Chip Goat cricketers then do when they do best as they celebrate in outrageous fashion at the local watering hole.

As the season meanders to a gentle and watery conclusion, there is still time for one more evening of drunken celebration and debauched behaviour as team-mates are ferried from the surrounding hinterland in a hired mini-bus to participate in a presentation evening with a difference.   After all only at a Chip Goat cricket club presentation evening could team-mates mull over the rightful winner of the Brown trousers award!

Chip Goat cricket club has a long-standing history, playing in the Langton West Rural Cricket league in North Yorkshire for well over a century.  The club also competes in a number of local cup competitions.  The league is a collection of small village teams drawn from a rural area in the northern part of the county.  The fourteen  teams that constitute the league contain the usual mixture of good former club cricketers, seasoned and wily village campaigners, hopeful youngsters looking to go on to better things, irritating club ‘characters’ who seem to exist at all clubs and those who simply make up the numbers.  

The balance between these elements in a team varies between clubs and has a major bearing on how well the particular team will actually do.  Each team strives to minimise the numbers of players it has who ‘make up the numbers’, however, these players always have a vital role to play in times of player shortage.  The problem comes on those rare occasions you are spoilt for choice and you are forced to leave out old Joe despite the fact that his wife makes the finest chocolate cake.  Joe is usually not too happy when he is told that he can umpire for the entire game instead.  Beware old Joe in these circumstances.  Team success means little as personal vendettas are settled.  Joe gets his ultimate retribution as he gives his skipper out LBW to a ball clearly pitching outside leg stump and hopes of a victory vanish.  In the pub Joe is phlegmatic as he points out that the result would have been different if only he had played.  

Club characters are an essential part of village cricket.  They sometimes have cricketing ability, sometimes they don’t.  For some it is a question of living on past glories (glory which becomes less fact and more fiction as the years go by).  The fifties become hundreds and the sixes cleared more fields more often.  Their bowling was always faster and more devastating.  Teams were cleaned up in three overs of lethal fast bowling.  The cricket was always better in the old days.  Goodness I am starting to sound like Fred Trueman.   

In many respects though the club characters are remarkable by the fact their existence almost seems timeless. They never seem to change or age or improve much at cricket for that matter.  You know that they are going to be playing.  These characters never have family commitments and they never go on holiday in the summer.  They have there own changing spot in the pavilion and should they find some fresh faced youngster already there, it is likely their clothes will soon be flying out of the pavilion window with the youngster following them with a hefty kick up the backside.  Indeed on one famous occasion whilst playing at local rivals Kilmore, I recall a famous red haired, bushy bearded  Kilmore cricketing legend deciding  to deposit a cheeky youngster headfirst into a handy water butt near the pavilion for simply irritating him.  Having later played in the same team as the aforementioned cheeky youth I can well understand the decision to throw him in the water butt.  

Club characters come in many shapes and forms but usually they share one important characteristic; they are all miserable gits.  Everybody tolerates a club character, because after all they are a club character and the league would never be the same place without them.  Accurate medium paced bowling and moaning usually come as a joint package.  Club characters are always the last to leave the pub in the evening as they desperately cling on to a remaining member of the opposition who has been foolish enough to strike up a conversation with him on the state of umpiring, pitches, teas, the weather or the championship of 1978. The one certainty is that they won’t buy you a beer!             

Apart from containing at least one character, an essential facet of each team in the league is that is must contain at least one pair of brothers, sometimes two pairs, often a father and son and certainly some close relatives.  There is, however, no truth to the rumour that nearby locals Swearby have a nephew and aunty playing regularly.  They certainly have a girls blouse who turns out  for  the team most weeks.   

I am surprised there is not a league management committee rule that decrees that all participating teams must have at least five players who are related to somebody else in the team.  They have complicated rules governing most other aspects regarding the registration of players and playing conditions and besides I am sure most teams would comply with a ‘family’ qualification rule.   

There is tremendous loyalty and commitment in village cricket and for some the place in the village cricket team has been handed down from generation to generation regardless of cricketing ability.  This is not to say players don’t move between clubs and indeed the fun can really start when relatives start appearing on opposing sides.  The solving of family feuds with willow and leather can be very amusing to watch.  The family connection thrives in village cricket.  Chip Goat is no exception.   

Apart from having plenty of family connections the other distinguishing feature of Chip Goat is that we are an old team, indeed we are a team getting older every year.  We have few young players coming in and we could certainly do with a fresh faced child prodigy.  There is no influx of young talent and the Chip Goat Cricket Academy remains but a distant dream.   Besides I am not sure I would want the cream of local talent being coached into bad ways by members of the Chip Goat team.  On the positive side, I am sure Chip Goat regulars could put together an essential series of life lessons for youngsters hoping to succeed at village cricket.  An introductory programme might include:  

Lesson 1           how to edge a catch and look suitably innocent enough for the umpire to give you not out;

Lesson 2           how to persuade your Dad to umpire when you are bowling/batting (delete as appropriate);  

Lesson 3           learn the art of the convincing excuse to cover you for a dropped catch or a poor batting shot (it is essential you have variations on the excuse to cover bright sunlight, a slippery ball, the ‘unplayable’ ball and the ‘tricky’ pitch).  Master the excuse and team-mates will readily accept you into the fold; 

Lesson 4            on those few occasions you have a good day, learn how to

                        score at least thirty runs or take three wickets so your efforts

                        will be suitably recorded the following week in the cricket section of the local paper.  A youngster’s status in the village can rise to astronomical proportions following a glowing report next to the local pig prices;  

Lesson 5           as you discover the world of alcohol,  learn how to cope with a hangover and successfully convince your team-mates your game is completely unaffected; 

Lesson 6           learn how to buy the captain a drink to ensure that as the youngest member of the team you are not number eleven in the batting order for the entire season.  Nepotism can go a long way in village cricket.  

Lessons in how to bat, bowl and field, well I think we would have to leave that to the experts.  

The Chip Goat side is not only old but has a reputation for being very unhealthy.  The players of Chip Goat cricket team can only loosely be defined ‘sportsmen’.  Pre-season training most certainly does not include laps of the outfield followed by shuttle sprints.  Unhealthy lifestyle excesses involving the consumption of inappropriately large amounts of  alcohol and the fact that over half the team smoke like the proverbial chimney mean fitness is at a low level.  

I am sure the local Health Education Authority could base a very illuminating case study on the team’s lack of fitness and the impact it has on Chip Goat’s level of performance,  however, I think smoking bans, no drinking on the eve of a match and 3 mile runs would probably deplete playing resources to the point of extinction.  I think a fitness campaign would be a disaster.  I say go with the flow, let’s follow the lead of Soccer and Formula one car racing.  I think a joint sponsorship package with Carlsberg and Benson & Hedges would be entirely suitable as after all we would be excellent ambassadors of their products. 

The Chip Goat team has struggled manfully on throughout the last two decades. The club nearly folded in the early 1980s through lack of interest and loss of the club ground, but a dedicated few kept the club going and eventually a new ground was found.  Success and Chip Goat have never tended to go hand in hand.  The last league success was in 1970 and whilst we did win a cup in 1988, it has tended to be the fun of taking part that has kept the club going.  Finishing in the top half of the table has always been seen as a major achievement.  Not usually achieved I might add.                      

THE VENUE

Chip Goat is a picturesque village in the Bolsdale valley in the heart of the North Yorkshire moors.  Remote and surrounded by hills and sheep and more sheep and just far enough away from the urban sprawl of Teesside.  The ground was established in 1989 after the club had spent 8 years in the wilderness without a ground and playing all games away.  It is just a stone’s throw away from the small village itself and the main central attraction ‘The Bog Inn’ where the real battles take place after the match.  The ground itself provides a breathtaking backdrop for the game of cricket.  The wicket would never be described as a ‘belter’, the outfield with its cracks, ridges and slope to the short boundary could never be compared to a bowling green.  It is our ground though and it always gives us something to grouse about.

The ‘pavilion’ might accurately be described as a second-hand workman’s hut (which is what indeed it is).  Assembled like some complicated airfix construction, club members carried, nailed and painted (without numbered instructions I might add) and then stood back to admire their efforts praying it would stand the test of time.  Nearly ten years later the pavilion is still standing (just).  Beware the loose floorboard as you enter the hut. A stroppy dismissed batsman can lose both a boot and his dignity if he places his foot aggressively in the danger area.

I always feel it is essential to remember the real beauty of the ground when batting in early May and receiving a ball that pitches in the middle of a soggy, uneven wicket and rolls all the way along the ground before catching you plum LBW.  It is village cricket after all!