Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Year Book 2014

25 Sheffield Cricket Lovers’ Society correct answers queried by excited members. Richard was in no mood to go soft and insisted that the given answers were exactly as he required. Once again a different but pleasant evening , our thanks to Richard and Ian for their hard work in the preparation. Monday 25th March Just when we all believed that winter was coming to an end we got another snowy and frosty day resulting in us having to cancel the meeting which was to have been addressed by Harry Pearson the award winning author of many cricketing and sports books, The good news was that Harry was going to join our next meeting on April 4th. Thursday 4th April Our Vice Chairman, Peter Mason, opened the meeting after presentation of cheques, by our Chairman Bev Stokes, to the Society’s chosen charities and a photograph of this is on page 42. Paul Shaw - ECB’s Women’s and Girls’ High Performance Manager talked to us about his role. He explained how Schools, Local Clubs, Universities, Academies and County Cricket Clubs combined to encourage girls to play the game, and how talent is nurtured throughout the system at all ages. All girls displaying talent at an early age are monitored at all stages of development. He ended by giving his opinion of where ladies’ cricket will be in five to ten years. A man very happy in his work; he will certainly assist the development of women’s cricket in the future and we thoroughly enjoyed listening to him. Harry Pearson took over for the second half of the evening . A proud Yorkshire man, Harry had hoped to become a journalist but was rejected because his spelling was not good enough! He still writes regular articles for the Guardian but he has come to be recognised as a prolific author with many books and contributions to his name. Harry enthralled us all with his tales of Lancashire League Cricket, its stars and their foibles. He gave an insight into why it was considered more financially beneficial to play League Cricket rather than County Cricket. He proved to be a first class raconteur and his anecdotes gave pleasure to all - a wonderful evening. See Harry’s contribution to our Year Book on pages 34 and 35. Monday 15th April Charles Hartwell, ACA, Finance Director of YCCC opened our joint evening. He gave us some details of his own background in Finance and stated how delighted he was to have joined the Senior Executive team at Yorkshire CCC. He made no secret if the difficult task ahead to ensure the Club is financially strong and emphasised the importance of Headingley remaining as a Test Match venue. Charles felt that the Club were already recovering and praised the work and www.sheffieldcricketlovers.org.uk