Dales, Bails & Cricket Club Tales

Martin Chandler | 8:40am GMT 25 February 2024

Published: 2023
Pages: 182
Author: Fuller, John
Publisher: Private
Rating: 3 stars

We have met John Fuller before, here, and as the design of the cover shows he hasn’t departed too far from the form and style he chose for All Wickets Great and Small.

The subject matter is broadly similar as well, club cricket in Yorkshire, which does seem to be very different from other parts of the country. Accepting that it is a somewhat imprecise concept I am confident nonetheless that I know what Fuller means when he refers to ‘walking distance’, and writes that there are ten cricket grounds within walking distance of his home. That is, unless you can stretch that definition to forty minutes, ten more than I have access to in the county town of Berkshire.

But despite that Fuller does use his car for the purposes of Dales, Bail & Cricket Club Tales, a collection of writings that have previously appeared on his excellent website, CricketYorkshire.com,

In the course of his essays Fuller travels around the White Rose county, dropping in at a number of varied locations, but always with cricket in mind. There are matches that are described, but they are not full reports as such. Fuller’s writing is much more concerned with the setting he is in, the people who he mixes with and, as important as anything it would seem, the catering, much of which seems to be of a high standard.

I complained in my review of All Wickets Great and Small about the absence of photographs, a criticism I now rather regret. Dales, Bails & Cricket Club Tales is similarly lacking in illustrations, but I realise now that it is only the quality of Fuller’s descriptions that make me want to see what he is talking about. So the choice is that either Fuller produces a coffee table book with a price tag to match, or I google the club that is the subject of, for example, chapter 3, Sewerby, and see for myself that the ground is every bit as stunning as the impression Fuller’s description gives.

And the same goes for the other grounds Fuller visits, and indeed there are some photographs on his website that he has taken himself. So I do not repeat my criticism this time round.

The overall impression that Dales, Bails & Cricket Club Tales leaves on its reader is that recreational cricket in Yorkshire is in a decent state of health and providing pleasure for many. There is the occasional sad story, such as the demise of the Leeds and Wetherby League shortly after celebrating its centenary, but in reality that seems to be more of a rationalisation of the structure of the game in the area rather than anything indicative of a struggle for survival of the constituent clubs.

Of course whether grass roots cricket is doing a good job, or perhaps more pertinently the best job it can, is a much more complex question, and isn’t one that Fuller goes into in any detail although his views on that would certainly be of interest. But that is not what he was trying to achieve.

Dales, Bails & Cricket Club Tales is a thoroughly entertaining read which should, as I am sure was the intention in publishing it, inspire its readers to get out and about and take a look at the cricket clubs in their locality.