Leicestershire Reciprocal Agreement and Championship Fixtures

April 2018

20FRI

Sussex

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  11:00

27FRI

Derbyshire

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  11:00

May 2018

11FRI

Glamorgan

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  11:00

June 2018

20WED

Middlesex

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  11:00

July 2018

August 2018

19SUN

Kent

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  11:00

September 2018

10MON

Warwickshire

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  10:30

18TUE

Durham

 Specsavers County Championship |  Fischer County Ground, Grace Road |  10:30

Leicestershire Statement

There is lots of interesting red ball cricket scheduled for 2018 – and you can watch it at two venues through your Leicestershire CCC Membership.

Leicestershire CCC has joined forces with Nottinghamshire CCC to reintroduce the reciprocal agreement. This benefit allows Leicestershire Members to attend Specsavers County Championship fixtures played at Trent Bridge throughout 2018. 

We recognised that this was a popular benefit within our Membership packages in previous seasons and we hope that you are able once again to take advantage of this arrangement and enjoy further games of county cricket throughout the season. 

Leicestershire CCC Members can gain access to the fixtures by presenting their Membership card upon entry. 

Badgers present a challenge for Yorkshire club.

PTG Editor.

Wednesday, 8 November 2017.

PTG 2299-11620.

Parkhead Cricket Club (PCC) on the outskirts of Sheffield in Yorkshire is having problems with a colony of Badgers who have taken to their ground with a vengeance, leaving holes and discarded dirt over a wide area.  Like all clubs that have been similarly affected in recent years, Parkhead have had to take a crash course in badger warfare, the first lesson of which is that they are a protected species, and it is illegal to trap or harm them or interfere with their burrows. 

The second lesson is that hi-tech sonic deterrents are pretty much useless, and the third is that of the three traditional repellents recommended by 'The Badger Trust', “human hair clippings, lion dung, and human urine”, one is a lot easier to obtain in large quantities than the other two. A PCC spokesman said that the club are now considering “putting buckets outside the local pub and asking people to wee in them rather than using the toilets"

Nearly five years ago, the Rickmansworth Cricket Club’s ground in Hertfordshire was ripped up and turned into a "mud bath" by the animals (PTG 1086-5288, 8 April 2013).

BADGERS STOP PLAY 'INDEFINITELY' 

 [PTG 1086-5288]

One of the oldest clubs in England has had to suspend play at its ground indefinitely as a result of an unprecedented ground invasion by a colony of badgers, say media reports from London on Saturday.  Over the last few months turf at the Rickmansworth Cricket Club's (RCC) ground in Hertfordshire has been ripped up and turned into a "mud bath" by the animals, which are a protected species in the UK.

Mark Raine, the chairman of the 226-year-old club, described the scene as looking "like the [aftermarth of the] Battle of the Somme as it is covered in huge holes and mounds of earth".  "We have bought some sonic alarms to try to frighten them away, but they are proving totally inadequate and we are powerless to do anything else" because as it is illegal to kill, injure or disturb badgers or to destroy their dens. 

The badgers are believed to have been attracted to the turf by crane flies, which lay their larvae in the grass.  "Apparently they really like the larvae and they have been tearing up large swabs of the ground in search  of them", says Raine.  The club usually sprays the ground to clear the insects, however, the treatment only works at temperatures between 8 and 12 degrees Celsius and it has been too cold to date this year to conduct that work.

"In the whole history of the club a game has never been cancelled due to badgers before", continued Raine, and "it looks like we will have to re-turf the whole pitch, which will be really expensive".  Club secretary Paul Blackwell estimates it could cost as much as £5,000 ($A7,300) to solve the problem, around £1,000 ($A1,500) having been spent so far.  

However, after last year's wet summer club finances are being rapidly depleted, says Blackwell.  "We are worried our players, who obviously want to play cricket, will go elsewhere. They play on a pay-to-play basis, so we don't have annual subs we can delve into to try and sort it".  "If there's no cricket, there's no bar money either, so we are really stuck at the moment [and as yet] we haven't found another ground where we can play".  

According to Blackwell "The most likely scenario is that we will just have to wait until June when the weather gets warmer and the pitch starts to harden, so they won't be able to get to the bugs".  The club indicated it had been offered so far unspecified help by the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Founded in 1787, the same year as the Marylebone Cricket Club, Rickmansworth hosted the Australian team of 1882 that nine days later beat England at the Oval, a win that gave rise to the Ashes.  The club, which currently has five teams in the Hertfordshire Cricket League, may date back even further than 1787 though as there are records of games it has been involved in as far back as 1760; a time that is well before the founding of most present-day cricketing nations.