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Cricket in Durham – Thursday 23rd June.
A quick pack up and tidy up and onto the overground/underground to King’s Cross station and the 9:30am train to Durham.
We are there in good time and the platform for the train isn’t yet announced. When it is it is ‘QC’ – that has us foxed until we twig, ‘Queue behind pillar C’.
We sit on the train with two Australian girls. One is teaching, the other is a sales assistant at Toshiba, but has a teaching job starting in September. They chatter on about life in the United Kingdom and teaching there. The money is good and the holidays are plentiful enough to travel with.
Durham looks like a pretty city, but we wait nearly an hour for a taxi, then the driver can’t find Newfield. Chester-le-Street is much further from Durham than we thought, about 20 miles.
Our guest house is typically English with lots of variety in the carpet and wallpaper. Our room could not hold another piece of furniture. It is a standard room with two single beds, a tiny shower and toilet in one corner, a wash basin along another wall and a window out to a playing field and a wind farm beyond.
Our plans for lunch in a local pub before the cricket are thwarted by slow transport and busy roads. Our taxi drops us off at the ground so we have a day of soggy baguettes and tough ‛burger and chips. There is beer or beer to drink and a half hour queue to buy it, so I consume a Pepsi and a Fanta – my quota for about 10 years!
The day is warm, the sky blue with a few clouds in the south west. The crowd is quiet and a soft cool breeze makes sitting in the sun pleasant.
Australian’s have had a poor showing at the cricket to date, so we hope we will not be embarrassed. The Ozzies have already been beaten by England and Bangladesh.
Australia bats first and seem slow to score but notch up 266. Symonds puts a bit of excitement into the game by hitting out and making a good score of 73.
After tea the Australian’s come out to field. They bounce onto the ground, move around a lot, keep the ball moving and generally look very athletic. Two quick wickets put England in a bad position, but the run rate slowly creeps up from 1/over to 2/over to 3/over,… It looks hopeless until David Gough comes to the crease and whacks 46 and saves red faces. Australia wins by 57 runs.
We call into a local pub for a decent beer and wine on the way home. The Chester-le-Street ladies are out to have a good time and the pubs are buzzing. A couple of drinks and we catch a taxi home.
The finale for the evening was being wakened in the early hours of the morning by a man in his knickers, wandering into our room. We sent him on his way, but he came back. We sent him on his way again and locked the door, and he walked into it.
At breakfast next morning one of the other guests, a Scot, told us how he sometimes sleepwalks. Bruce’s answer is ‘yes, we know’!
The scoreboard
ODI # 2253
NatWest Series, 2005, 5th Match
England v Australia
Riverside Ground, Chester-le-Street (day/night)
23 June 2005 (50-over match)
Result: Australia won by 57 runs
Points: Australia 6, England 0
Toss: England
Umpires: Aleem Dar (Pak) and MR Benson
TV Umpire: JW Lloyds
Match Referee: JJ Crowe (NZ)
Man of the Match: A Symonds
Australia innings (50 overs maximum) R M B 4 6 +AC Gilchrist c Jones b Tremlett 18 38 31 2 0 ML Hayden c Jones b Flintoff 39 94 56 5 0 *RT Ponting c Giles b Harmison 27 51 40 4 0 DR Martyn not out 68 118 81 3 0 A Symonds run out (Trescothick) 73 94 81 4 2 MEK Hussey c Collingwood b Flintoff 5 9 10 0 0 SR Watson not out 11 7 7 1 0 Extras (lb 12, w 7, nb 6) 25 Total (5 wickets, 50 overs, 211 mins) 266 DNB: GB Hogg, JN Gillespie, B Lee, GD McGrath. FoW: 1-44 (Gilchrist, 9.1 ov), 2-95 (Ponting, 20.2 ov), 3-96 (Hayden, 21.1 ov), 4-238 (Symonds, 45.2 ov), 5-247 (Hussey, 47.5 ov). Bowling O M R W Gough 10 0 41 0 (3nb) Tremlett 9 0 53 1 (1nb, 1w) Harmison 9 2 44 1 (2nb, 2w) Flintoff 10 0 55 2 (3w) Giles 9 1 44 0 (1w) Collingwood 3 0 17 0 England innings (target: 267 runs from 50 overs) R M B 4 6 *ME Trescothick c Gilchrist b McGrath 0 23 15 0 0 AJ Strauss b Lee 3 17 13 0 0 VS Solanki c Ponting b Hogg 34 87 69 2 0 PD Collingwood b McGrath 0 1 2 0 0 A Flintoff c Gillespie b Hogg 44 90 61 6 0 KP Pietersen c Hussey b Symonds 19 37 28 2 0 +GO Jones c Hayden b Watson 23 45 31 2 0 AF Giles c Symonds b Lee 4 4 3 1 0 CT Tremlett c Hussey b Gillespie 8 25 18 0 0 D Gough not out 46 50 47 7 0 SJ Harmison not out 11 37 17 0 0 Extras (lb 8, w 5, nb 4) 17 Total (9 wickets, 50 overs, 217 mins) 209 FoW: 1-4 (Strauss, 4.3 ov), 2-6 (Trescothick, 5.1 ov), 3-6 (Collingwood, 5.3 ov), 4-85 (Solanki, 24.4 ov), 5-94 (Flintoff, 26.6 ov), 6-123 (Pietersen, 33.4 ov), 7-133 (Giles, 34.5 ov), 8-145 (Jones, 37.6 ov), 9-159 (Tremlett, 40.5 ov). Bowling O M R W Lee 10 2 27 2 (2nb, 3w) McGrath 10 1 31 2 (1nb) Gillespie 9 0 36 1 (1w) Watson 8 0 51 1 (1nb, 1w) Hogg 6 0 19 2 Symonds 7 0 37 1
4th Umpire – NJ Llong
ref: Scorecards – One Day match AUS vs ENG 23 Jun 2005
Chester-le-Street, Durham to Manchester – Friday 24th June
The hire car company muck up and we are an hour late leaving the bed and breakfast. Can anyone find Newfield?
We have a Renault Scenic (Grand Tourer I am told later) – what looks like a medium sized car in Oz is huge in the UK. We are happy with it, can see over hedgerows and it is comfortable to sit in. There are a million hidey holes in backs of seats, under the floor, in the sides,…
We drive to Darlington on the A roads and straight to Cockerton Green where Bruce’s dad Denis grew up. Denis’ father was the local fruiterer and famous for importing exotic fruits
My research has paid off and it is easy to navigate there. It is raining, drizzling, actually – that damp north English air. We can’t really remember the house from our last visit in 1972, but we take lots of photos. The supermarket has replaced the old shops, but I have a good perspective of the village now. We even find the ‘brook at the bottom of the garden’ that Denis so often told Bruce about.
We are running behind so choose to take the M1 (A1(M1)) to Stainsby. The traffic is very heavy and reduces to stop/start for the last 20 miles. (We have about 200 miles to cover today.)
Next stop is Stainsby, just off the M1.
The Stainsby Mill is closed, but we climb a fence and wander around with our cameras. It is very quaint and very damp. We drive around the locale and find Stainsby Village, Stainsby Heath, Stainsby Common and Stainsby Pond. It is all very pretty. The houses are quaint. The cars are expensive. And yes, this is the place where the Stainsby Festival (folk music) is held in July each year.
It is a navigational challenge to reach Manchester via the Snake Pass and home printed maps. Derbyshire is beautiful – green, rolling hills, lovely houses and gardens, quaint winding roads. The traffic is much lighter on these secondary roads and Bruce enjoys the drive far more.
We reach the Snake Pass and are surprised to see so many pine plantations. Don’t remember them! The stark moors no longer look stark, softened by the green pines. Paul and Kay tell us later that there has been some controversy about these pines – they are not local flora and there are plans to remove them and return the moors to their natural state.
It is old stomping ground, through Glossop to Ashton and we find Kay and Paul’s house. I look twice at the miniature Kay standing at the front gate waiting for us, Eleanor is about the same age as Kay was when we arrived in Manchester in 1973. How spooky!
We bundle the Bridge’s into the car and off to Terry’s for dinner of beef and potato pie, which Paul made to his mum’s recipe. By golly it is good!
Terry is just back from 2 weeks in Tenerife and is brown as a berry. Good night of chatter, Terry catching up with Eleanor and we catching up on each other.
We make plans to spend Saturday in Manchester with Kay and Paul while Terry catches up on his washing. Then it is off for a good night’s sleep.
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