State of play
Independent schools may well have the best facilities, but cricket is not dead in state schools, as Huw Turbervill reports
R
ugby and football boots trample over muddy outfields now, cries of “yes”, “no” and “wait” replaced by “scrumdown” and “corner”. The Cricketer put in some miles this summer covering schools cricket at these venues, helping to inform us who should make our top 100 in The Playing Fields of England 2018. We marvelled at the facilities of Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood, as they played host to Reading Blue Coat (12 grass squares!); they talked of how T20 is playing an increasing role in the fixture list… but then we heard a different message from former Essex allrounder Graham Napier. Now master in charge of cricket at RHS in Holbrook, Suffolk, he told us, while watching the match against Framlingham College: “I would like to play more declaration cricket so the boys can see how good
it can be when played in the right spirit and manner.” We also took in a trip to Woodhouse Grove in West Yorkshire (a lovely setting close to Brontë Country near Bradford), although the match against Leeds Grammar was sadly rained off. We also chronicled splendid deeds: Tom Banton hitting 155 off 61 balls to help King’s College, Taunton, against Sherborne; the Mousley brothers, Alex, Dan and Tom, all hitting centuries in the same week for Bablake School in Coventry; Lewis Bedford making Cranleigh School’s highest ever score (172, against RGS Guildford); and Freddie Fairey reaching 1,000 runs for King’s Ely at the age of 13, still with six games to go. It is fair to say that in compiling our top 100, we do receive letters asking why more state schools are not on the list. We are rigorously independent in our selection process. We choose the best in terms of how many
Red Rose: Ormskirk have one of the strongest girls’ teams in schools cricket
4 | thecricketer.com
