Cricket Diary: Different days to solve a puzzle (9 August 1997)

Saturday 9 August 1997

Cricket Diary: Different days to solve a puzzle

By Clive Ellis

THE `Sunday sandwich` of one-day games in the middle of championship fixtures may be off the ECB menu for next season, but the programme outlined for 1998 and 1999 proposes a dog`s dinner of starting days for the championship.

Gone, it appears, is any over-riding commitment to Wednesday starts. Next season the 14 sets of matches are due to get under way on a Wednesday five times, Thursday four times, Friday four times and Saturday once.

The equivalent days for 1999 would be: Wednesday six, Thursday two, Friday five and Saturday one.

The document Raising The Standard describes the first-class fixture list as a "complex jigsaw puzzle", adding: "There are a large number of constraints, parameters and priorities which need to be taken into consideration."

One minor innovation which meets with this column`s approval is the idea of giving the 14 non-championship sides who reach the third round of the revamped NatWest Trophy guaranteed home games against the counties.

How about incorporating this levelling device in time for next year`s competition rather than waiting for 1999?

IT WAS not quite in the Sri Lanka class for occupation of the crease, but Sutton are wondering if they have created a record of their own for a total in a one-day match.

The Surrey side pulverised Lombard for an astonishing 523 for no wicket in the Rorke`s Lager Cricket Eights competition last week, with Australian opener Andrew Bailey, who has played for Queensland 2nd XI, making an unbeaten 308 and 15-year-old Sam Seadon 109 not out.

Bailey`s opening partner had retired after making a mundane 38 and Lombard`s bowlers also offered an indulgent helping of extras to send the Sutton total soaring over 500.

Cricket Eights, mentioned in the ECB blueprint as a charismatic bridge between Kwik Cricket and the hard-ball game, is true to its name. Teams are eight-a-side, matches feature 30 eightball overs and sixes count as eights to promote spectacular hitting. Bailey included 12 eights in his triple-hundred.

THERE was much gnashing of teeth when Sussex lost the use of the Central Ground in Hastings. Developers snapped up the prime site in 1989.

A shopping centre stands where the ground was, but a new home for the town club has been built with the help of -L3.3 million in Lot- tery money. Sussex 2nd XI have already played there and it is possible that championship cricket could return to Hastings.

HAT-TRICKS are common enough, but it is unlikely that many bowlers have matched Richard Young`s feat of taking wickets with the first three balls of a match.

Twenty-four-year-old Young, a left-arm seamer, did his stuff playing for Winchcombe against Stratford Bards in the Cotswold Hills League.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)