Home Birds Reprised

I love Arundel. Unashamedly so. I appreciate that such a view is probably something of a hackneyed cricketing cliché and that gushing words aplenty have been written about the West Sussex venue but I cannot help but concur with all those gushing words. Too often in this modern world, and ever more in cricket itself,...

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The Forgotten Counties: Six and Out?

Reality can be a cruel business. One can often drift along in a particular bubble, expecting everything to remain the same until the simple realities of life burst said bubble and highlight the brutal truth. As the latest Minor Counties season slowly unfolded across the summer months one was lulled into thinking how the structure...

Pied-de-Terre

Middlesex County Cricket Club’s occasional enforced sojourn away from their official residence at Lord’s has witnessed a handful of venues utilised by the former county over the decades; the hinterlands of north-west London and neighbouring Hertfordshire playing host to first-class and List A matches on an annual basis. Thus, venues such as the John Walker...

The Forgotten Counties: the Forgotten Ground

One cannot help feel rather sad and melancholy about Wormsley Cricket Ground. Such a vision of beauty amongst a fold in the Chiltern Hills, offering the most bucolic of settings and the most perfect cricket ground at which to both play and spectate. Cocooned in the eponymous estate and surrounded by bounteous trees and sweeping...

The Forgotten Counties: Cricket by the Sea

The smell of a cricket match: the fresh air of late spring or the sultry air of a hot summer’s day, fresh cut grass, a whiff of the countryside if one is in rural climes, the pleasant scent of trees and surrounding flora. Could the nasal and ocular experience be improved? How about the aroma...

In the Shadows Part Two

Mention the name Stansted and almost every person that one is conversing with will assume that said mention is referring to the airport situated near the eponymous village some forty odd miles northeast of central London. For a few the name conjures much different connotations though. Add the word ‘Park’ onto Stansted and the reference...

The Forgotten Counties: Home

Ah, Bournemouth. Dorset’s premier town that conjures images of sun, sand and holidays. On a summer’s day the masses head down the M3 from the capital in their droves and then sit in the resultant log jams at Ringwood and the southern vestiges of the aforementioned motorway as a penance for their hedonism upon returning...

The L-Word

Olympic years always sharpen the focus. For some they go as far as ephemerally re-aligning the mindset. The usual hopes, goals, aspirations and expectations evolve in line with the carrot that dangles at the end of a ten month journey. Selection for the Olympic Games re-addresses the personal goals of those individuals, jolting the previously...

The Forgotten Counties Part Eight

When is a minor county not technically a minor county? When the county in question is actually a country minus a small section of its most southerly vestiges. Aside from nineteen English counties, the minor counties structure is comprised of a team that represents all the Welsh counties that are not deemed first-class. Depending on...