To day has been the best weather day of the year with warm sunshine from soon after dawn until dusk and with intense heat penetrating clothing midday. Not Mediterranean high summer heat but better than can be remembered from last year but not as hot as the previous summer although I cannot recall such prolonged sunshine.
On such days the cricket does not usually matter although on this occasion it did. Real cricket comprises this form of the game with each side playing two innings over four days, In England the weather condition play an important role not just because the game cannot start or continue when it rains but the kind and level of cloud cover affects the flight of the ball in the air. Frequently it is evident that the game will be drawn at an early stage, or it is going to be one sided and over quickly. Occasionally there are two sides who are well matched and result is in doubt until the last moments on the last day thus replicating what often happens in the shorter games, originally of sixty single over innings and then reduced to fifty which is the format of the Friends Provident Trophy and in recent times two additional competitions the 40 over one day games and even more recent the English invented the short time money spinner of 20.20 which last less than four hours and is often held early evening and sometimes under floodlights, to maximise crowd and revenue and which In India this year became a tournament where cricketers could earn over a couple of weeks more than they earned for the rest of the year. The risk is that this kind of cricket takes over the rest of the game where already the number of four day games each year has been reduced by the creation of two small leagues of first class counties where there used to be one, to accommodated increase in the shorter games although in fairness the County game as it is called was increased from three to four days in order to ensure there were more games ending in result.
However because of the tendency for games still to be drawn bonus points have been introduced which are increased when all the wickets are taken to a maximum of 3 making total of 6 possible and then for batting on a similar sliding scale from 200 runs to over five. This ensures that a side which makes a large first innings total gets good overall batting points if it then bowls out the opposition quickly, twice. In the instance of this game because of the exceptional quality of several players on both sides there has been a titanic struggle to gain supremacy with the initiative swinging from side to the other but always with Durham chasing a game set by Hampshire which was proving the better side because of one player performing better on the day. He appeared to take the initiative away from Durham early on in the morning by smashing 74 runs all around the ground and he then bowled well taking some key wickets. He is called Mascarenhas and so out of touch have I become that I cannot say what his country of original and residence is what his previous level of performance has been. True cricket fans can recount the backgrounds and he performance records do this for every players in the county championship although the movement between clubs has increased significantly every year.
In some respects we are returning to the original position of Gentlemen and Players when the Gentlemen cricketers were those with family incomes or other occupations which enabled them to play cricket during the summer and return to the management of their estates, businesses and professions for the rest of the year for the one to two decades after leaving their public schools and sometimes University.
There were Winter tours abroad in which everyone played the game full time, to Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and the West Indies, former British Colonial territories where the game had been taken by the occupying forces and colonial civil servants and then adopted locally and the local commenced play better than those from the mother country. It was a tradition that the our side and visitors when they came here for the summer Tests also played the counties, Oxford and Cambridge and the Combined university team
The Gentlemen did not receive payment for playing and I cannot remember if they received their travelling and accommodation expenses. The Players who were considered to be inferior beings because they had to play the game full time for payment, although they too took up other occupations when the retired in their thirties, sometimes earlier and occasionally later.. As now it was mainly elders and mainly older men who the time to watch county cricket although in summer there was encouragement for families to attend with Yorkshire playing a week of cricket at Scarborough for example. There was no cricket on Sundays until the one day matches were held so most counties relied upon the revenue earned for Test matches relayed through the national association, especially after television, and in particular Sky TV took over the showing of cricket. There were key games during the season Surrey versus Middlesex and Yorkshire against Lancashire called the battle of the roses and these games were closely followed throughout the country.. There were five Test matches played of five days beginning at Lords, the home of the MCC, the Marylebone Cricket Club, who ran the game nationally and picked the national side and who controlled the ground, which was also the County Ground for Middlesex. Ladies were not allowed into the main Pavilion and its seating area of with the famous Long Room where you could watch play sitting at high stools at the window. Other Test grounds were the Oval where Surrey played, Test Bridge Nottingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham the Warwickshire County ground, Headingly Leeds, that of Yorkshire with its Rugby League main stand forming one side of the main public stand or the players had their own dressing room and watching balcony elsewhere, and Old Trafford, neat the Manchester United Ground, the home of Lancashire.
The international games as with the domestic games has changed beyond recognition so that touring only play a couple of warm up games with other teams, if that, and there are at least two touring sides playing a smaller number of Test games each year but then several one day games and now the 20 20 matches. There are world competitions and special tournaments for the one day game and also now for the 20.20. There are also a dozen more countries playing the one day game but the last world one day competition in the West Indies put paid to that because it went on too long before the teams were narrowed to the last eight knock out and the crowds were poor for early stages with people not prepared to visit from other countries and local interest in the game had reduced with more attention to football and basketball where the money could be made, This year a new champions league competition is to be tried involving the leading and original playing countries, although in fact some of the junior nations are better than some of the older including England, although it is really England and Wales because Glamorgan, the Welsh County plays in the primarily British League, but in Scotland there is a separate national side which plays in the English competitions but is not accepted as first class county, the position of Durham until 1992.
If the weather is fine tomorrow I may go for finish and then do the riverside photography as part of the Rivera project.
On such days the cricket does not usually matter although on this occasion it did. Real cricket comprises this form of the game with each side playing two innings over four days, In England the weather condition play an important role not just because the game cannot start or continue when it rains but the kind and level of cloud cover affects the flight of the ball in the air. Frequently it is evident that the game will be drawn at an early stage, or it is going to be one sided and over quickly. Occasionally there are two sides who are well matched and result is in doubt until the last moments on the last day thus replicating what often happens in the shorter games, originally of sixty single over innings and then reduced to fifty which is the format of the Friends Provident Trophy and in recent times two additional competitions the 40 over one day games and even more recent the English invented the short time money spinner of 20.20 which last less than four hours and is often held early evening and sometimes under floodlights, to maximise crowd and revenue and which In India this year became a tournament where cricketers could earn over a couple of weeks more than they earned for the rest of the year. The risk is that this kind of cricket takes over the rest of the game where already the number of four day games each year has been reduced by the creation of two small leagues of first class counties where there used to be one, to accommodated increase in the shorter games although in fairness the County game as it is called was increased from three to four days in order to ensure there were more games ending in result.
However because of the tendency for games still to be drawn bonus points have been introduced which are increased when all the wickets are taken to a maximum of 3 making total of 6 possible and then for batting on a similar sliding scale from 200 runs to over five. This ensures that a side which makes a large first innings total gets good overall batting points if it then bowls out the opposition quickly, twice. In the instance of this game because of the exceptional quality of several players on both sides there has been a titanic struggle to gain supremacy with the initiative swinging from side to the other but always with Durham chasing a game set by Hampshire which was proving the better side because of one player performing better on the day. He appeared to take the initiative away from Durham early on in the morning by smashing 74 runs all around the ground and he then bowled well taking some key wickets. He is called Mascarenhas and so out of touch have I become that I cannot say what his country of original and residence is what his previous level of performance has been. True cricket fans can recount the backgrounds and he performance records do this for every players in the county championship although the movement between clubs has increased significantly every year.
In some respects we are returning to the original position of Gentlemen and Players when the Gentlemen cricketers were those with family incomes or other occupations which enabled them to play cricket during the summer and return to the management of their estates, businesses and professions for the rest of the year for the one to two decades after leaving their public schools and sometimes University.
There were Winter tours abroad in which everyone played the game full time, to Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and the West Indies, former British Colonial territories where the game had been taken by the occupying forces and colonial civil servants and then adopted locally and the local commenced play better than those from the mother country. It was a tradition that the our side and visitors when they came here for the summer Tests also played the counties, Oxford and Cambridge and the Combined university team
The Gentlemen did not receive payment for playing and I cannot remember if they received their travelling and accommodation expenses. The Players who were considered to be inferior beings because they had to play the game full time for payment, although they too took up other occupations when the retired in their thirties, sometimes earlier and occasionally later.. As now it was mainly elders and mainly older men who the time to watch county cricket although in summer there was encouragement for families to attend with Yorkshire playing a week of cricket at Scarborough for example. There was no cricket on Sundays until the one day matches were held so most counties relied upon the revenue earned for Test matches relayed through the national association, especially after television, and in particular Sky TV took over the showing of cricket. There were key games during the season Surrey versus Middlesex and Yorkshire against Lancashire called the battle of the roses and these games were closely followed throughout the country.. There were five Test matches played of five days beginning at Lords, the home of the MCC, the Marylebone Cricket Club, who ran the game nationally and picked the national side and who controlled the ground, which was also the County Ground for Middlesex. Ladies were not allowed into the main Pavilion and its seating area of with the famous Long Room where you could watch play sitting at high stools at the window. Other Test grounds were the Oval where Surrey played, Test Bridge Nottingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham the Warwickshire County ground, Headingly Leeds, that of Yorkshire with its Rugby League main stand forming one side of the main public stand or the players had their own dressing room and watching balcony elsewhere, and Old Trafford, neat the Manchester United Ground, the home of Lancashire.
The international games as with the domestic games has changed beyond recognition so that touring only play a couple of warm up games with other teams, if that, and there are at least two touring sides playing a smaller number of Test games each year but then several one day games and now the 20 20 matches. There are world competitions and special tournaments for the one day game and also now for the 20.20. There are also a dozen more countries playing the one day game but the last world one day competition in the West Indies put paid to that because it went on too long before the teams were narrowed to the last eight knock out and the crowds were poor for early stages with people not prepared to visit from other countries and local interest in the game had reduced with more attention to football and basketball where the money could be made, This year a new champions league competition is to be tried involving the leading and original playing countries, although in fact some of the junior nations are better than some of the older including England, although it is really England and Wales because Glamorgan, the Welsh County plays in the primarily British League, but in Scotland there is a separate national side which plays in the English competitions but is not accepted as first class county, the position of Durham until 1992.
If the weather is fine tomorrow I may go for finish and then do the riverside photography as part of the Rivera project.
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