The Beamer

Has there ever been as many centuries scored in a season as there was in 2014? In league cricket alone, on 47 occasions batsmen raised their bats, doffed their caps and lapped up the applause of their team-mates after reaching three figures; surely this is a record? The amount of players scoring hundreds has definitely increased over the years. Back in the late 80’s when I started my senior career with Kilgetty they were as rare as a Lamphey victory, unless of course your name was Peter Hall or Barry Wood then it was unlikely you would ever reach that milestone. That’s an unfair assessment to make of course but the names of people who raised their bats back then didn’t exactly roll of the tongue. I remember once when news filtered through that Bomber John had scored a century for Burton against someone, Kilgetty were playing them (him) the following week and we entered the game with trepidation thinking that he must have been in such good form to get one that surely we’d b...

Simon Cole - One of the county's finest It’s the holy grail of all Pembrokeshire cricketers. To play in one is an honour. To play in more a blessing, to score a century in the Harrison-Allen final is as close to cricketing utopia as you can get and only five men have ever done it. Last year, in front of the Sky TV cameras, two achieved it. Neyland’s Ashley Sutton managed it in the first innings before Llangwm’s William Beresford  did it in the second, as he single headedly did his best to prise the trophy from Neyland’s hands. His efforts failed on that occasion yet he can console himself in the knowledge that his score of 114 remains the highest of all five. Prior to this record breaking knock, the highest score in a Harrison-Allen final belonged to Cresselly’s Simon Cole who raised his bat six years earlier in an epic win over Haverfordwest with a second innings knock of 103. Stephen Phillips, Geoff Cullen and Sutton scored 102 apiece. In the first innings of the...

Who will win the division one title this season? It’s a question that was asked before the first game and it’s a question that is still being asked now. Neyland are in the box seat, 26 points of Haverfordwest yet it’s still not over and with Carew to play away from home this weekend, it may not be until the final ball is bowled of 2014. Form would suggest that Neyland will win that game although Carew, denied a win by the rain last Saturday will not go down without a fight and will doubly motivated to win given they lost a club stalwart when Beryl Marsh, the daughter of one of the club’s founder members, tragically died while on her way to watch them take on St Ishmaels. A few miles up the road in Cresselly, second placed Haverfordwest will be the visitors. A batsman’s paradise, will the Town’s big guns come to the fore or will the home side, third in the league no less, show them how the game should be played? It promises to be an intriguing weekend. If Carew and Ha...

It’s a well held belief that cricket in the shire is strong particularly among the more parochial of us but how do we stack up against the best clubs in the South Wales Premier League? Believe it or not, I was going to write about this subject this week when by sheer coincidence an e-mail is circulated among clubs by county secretary Steve Blowes asking that any clubs wishing to compete in the Premier League (among other bits and pieces of information)  contact him or Tony Scourfield by August 14 th . So, how many takers would there be? My guess is not many due to the distances involved and the players they would come up against. Consider this before you make any decisions. Bridgend, one of the best teams in the Premier league have an opening attack that is quicker than most first class teams in the UK. At one end you have Simon Jones and at the other you have up and coming Glamorgan all-rounder Ruaidhri (Rory) Smith. Both bowl at over 90 mph when conditions suit. ...

It’s only natural for people to reminisce be they good times or bad. In popular society the trend is to look back 20 years to see how times have changed with the fashions for those eras sometimes coming back into fruition. During the last decade it was the 80’s that came into dominance and now the 90’s are having their time again. Forgive me for not knowing the exact date of the record but as the 80’s turned into the 90’s a chap called Rick Astley had a big hit called ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. Astley was a bit of a dude of the time, a reticent star but a star nonetheless with a penchant for swaying his hips as though they were on puppet strings. He certainly stood out, as did his big quiff. He was singing about love in the song, I’ve no idea who about but a few decades later, in 2013 to be precise, legendary Aussie fast bowler Glen McGrath used a similar phrase when presenting the baggy green to an unknown spinner from Western Australia called Ashton Agar. As he han...

I’m no Dylan Thomas expert but when the famed Welsh poet described Swansea as an “ugly, lovely town” I’m sure he was describing it with great reverence. It was his home after all, yet somehow you can’t help but feel he hated and loved the place all at once. A contradiction in terms that may well be but I feel the same about cricket, this stupid little game that fascinates and frustrates at the same time. One minute you feel you have conquered it, the next, well, it conquers you. A bad workman should never blame his tools yet with the tools God gave me to play the game I feel justified in blaming them. In other words, why can’t I be consistent? The power of the mind dominates in all sports and God gave me an inconsistent one. Thanks to him/her (depending on your point of view) God gave me the cricketing equivalent of bipolar disorder, not helped by the fact I suffer with diabetes. Unless it’s kept in check, diabetes can have a debilitating effect on your game as the lev...

Apologies for not posting a team of the week for the past fortnight, it’s a poor excuse but I was away in France appeasing my poor cricket widow of a wife on a week’s long holiday. We stayed at a Eurocamp site in the South if you really wanted to know and very good it was too. According to the late Harry Thompson, author of Penguins Stopped Play and inventor and editor of Have I Got News For You, there are five stages of a cricket widow. Naturally it starts at stage one, where said wife/girlfriend is keen for you to play, supportive even. She even comes to watch until she realises she knows nothing of the game and finds it as tedious as I do painting walls and doing other DIY nonsense. Suffice it is to say, the stages deteriorate from here on in until it reaches Stage Five where the enthusiasm has evaporated and the only encouraging words she can muster is “You and your fucking cricket” as you walk out the door hopeful of success with bat or ball. This begs the question, ...