| There was no escape for professional cricketers from the turmoil, with a number stopped by the police on suspicion of being a flying picket – as, so the story goes, was the unlikely figure of Christopher Martin-Jenkins on his way to a commentary stint. Geoff Miller has spoken about the unfortunate timing of his benefit season. “It was a bit of a challenge holding a benefit in Derbyshire back then. Not a lot of money made by the end of it, and understandably so. Lots of people were out of work because of pit closures.” Jim Beachill is the chairman and president of Elsecar CC, which sits in a village between Barnsley and Rotherham. “Elsecar was the spark that ignited the strike,” he says. “Elsecar Main had closed in 1983 and many of the men moved to Cortonwood, which was then to be closed with little notice.” Having been promised five years work, the men walked out on 5 March 1984, and the NUM called a national strike a week later. “I was brought up in the day when everyone worked at the pit or in the workshop, when you could see black-faced miners walking through the town, and hear the noise of the winding wheel taking the miners down,” says Beachill. “When the pit closed, everything changed. The pit maintained the cricket ground along with the council but of course that went too. “When people are on strike, all the normal things you can do, buy in the shops, you can’t do anymore. You’ve got to beg and borrow, it was a very sombre place, in fact one of the few things people could do was play sport and watch village cricket. “People from Elsecar were involved in the Battle of Orgreave. The feeling was that the miners were a community together, the strike affected not just the miners but the children, the shops, the families, there was a lot of determination to prevent the pits closing down.” With the eventual defeat of the strike and the loss of the mines went much of the cultural, sporting and musical infrastructure that had existed alongside. It wasn’t just at Elsecar that the National Coal Board, and the miners themselves, had put money into cricket clubs. Some clubs didn’t survive the subsequent hollowing out of the villages. Others, like Elsecar, have lived to tell the tale, with one of the buildings on the ground that Beachill describes as “one of the most picturesque in South Yorkshire” put up by contributions from the colliery in the 1950s. The cricket club runs three senior teams and five junior, and the village too has been resilient. Beachill describes “a thriving community, where a heritage centre stands where the workshops used to be. “If you ask young people, would you like a job where you won’t see daylight in the winter, digging underground, and you might get killed – they would laugh at you. When our generation goes, people won’t even know what a lump of coal is.” But the former pit villages that continue to play cricket carry the history of industry around not only in their names, but in their heritage. Quote of the week “The plan was to just tap the ball and run to the other end. Imad was telling me to remain easy and just put bat on ball. I don’t have words to describe my feelings. I’m so happy” – The 20-year-old Hunain Shah of Islamabad United, who came in at No 9 in the Pakistan Super League final, with one ball left and scores level. He hit four. Farewell Duncan Fearnley It seems only last week that it was impossible to flick through a cricket magazine without seeing a photo of Duncan Fearnley. There he’d stand, in his sensible red V-neck jumper, staring down the blade of a 405, a young Graeme Hick at his shoulder.* So it was jolt to read this month about Fearnley’s death, at the age of 83. A gregarious man, he was so much more than a bat manufacturer – though at one stage his company, based in Worcester, made more cricket bats than any other in the world. Born in Pudsey in 1940, son of a woodwork teacher and grandson of a cabinet maker, Fearnley grew up amongst linseed and lathes. He started making bats when he was in his teens, continuing to learn his trade in the winter while playing for Worcestershire during the summer. He retired after six years of cricket and in 1968 set up a company that would hit the big time, its memorable black, three-stump logo adorning the bats of Sunil Gavaskar, Basil D’Oliveira, Viv Richards and countless others. But the most famous Duncan Fearnley user of them all was Ian Botham, who Fearnley signed for £150 a year, shortly before he became one of the most famous cricketers on the planet. | 