Cricket - with Christmas in air

THE Christmas decorations may still be up in the more traditional Southport homes but some cricketers do not wait for the end of festivities before having their first nets of the winter.

While it may be a few weeks before Chris Firth reassembles his squad for close-season practice, those S&B members taking a stroll around Trafalgar Road on New Year’s Eve afternoon were heartened to hear cricket being played in the Indoor School.

Further investigations confirmed the presence of the newly-appointed third-team skipper Alan Green and his two sons, Oliver and Charlie, both of whom had forsaken any thought of early Hogmanay celebrations in favour of a couple of hours’ cricket.

It was an encouraging portent for a season in which more hope than usual is being vested in S&B’s young cricketers. Indeed, their development is to be overseen by sages such as Green, whose appointment alongside Firth and Craig Todd as a senior captain was one of the best bits of business done by the club in the autumn.

The keen desire to bring on S&B’s young cricketers strongly informed the engagement of Gary Keedy as playercoach but the club’s new junior coaching programmes embrace very much more than the sessions to be run by the former Lancashire slow left-armer.

A number of long-term initiatives will, it is hoped, encourage a culture of talent development, with young players helped to make the transition through the three senior teams. And while S&B’s junior section enjoyed a very successful 2017 season there is also to be a renewed focus on the Sunday Third Team.

The indoor school may be nearing the end of its useful life but its refurbishment in readiness for winter nets was a first sign that S&B’s members are determined to make the best of all their assets. And on New Year’s Eve, three cricketers of various vintages were grateful for its availability.