Another glorious day at Arundel , the woes of Durham and Jack Russell
Five years ago I was at Arundel as the guest of Ivan Conway. In walking around the ground – one of the delights of a day at the Castle ground – we saw an awning under which were the Durham Players. There was Mark Stoneman, Scott Borthwick, Graham Onions, no longer there, all of whom alongside Ben Stokes contributed to Durham winning their third county championship in 5 years. Stokes is still there in name but as well as Keaton Jennings and Mark Wood centrally contracted and in Stokes’ case on lucrative IPL duty.
Durham successfully bid for a Test at their home at Chester Le Street for which they paid the ECB £1m but in May with cold and unreliable weather in the north east in 2015, they made huge losses, were relegated and suffered a points deduction for their financial state after being bailed out by the ECB. A Durham supporter has cause to complain as Glamorgan were bailed out by the local council.
The problem for them is there is minimal interest or coverage of the second division of the championship and their plight therefore gets little exposure.
They lost yesterday on the third day by an innings and sixty four runs in an abject batting display in which on a benign track Sussex took 16 wickets.
Sussex are now in second place and, under new coach Dizzy GIllespie and some bright young talent in Phil Salt and Tom Haines, having something of a red ball rejuvenation.
It was another glorious day in which one felt thankful to be alive.
Again I walked around the ground, chatted to Jack Russell and commented to my fellow pedestrians how much I admire a person that can succeed at two careers as Russell is now a successful painter.
I can’t pretend to be an expert but he has a strong sense of line, colour and composition. His field is still cricket but he has been commissioned to do portraits of the great and good. I remember him best as a wicketkeeper and unorthodox batsman who had a good tour of South Africa in 1995 under Mike Atherton’s captaincy.
A happy day ended unsatisfactorily with a long wait at Ford station. My friends who had come down from Kent had their train first delayed and then cancelled and mine was 15 minutes late. Nothing to do there either unless you know some old lags to visit in the nearby open prison. The problem was “earlier signal problems”. Why are they always “earlier” and why cannot they be put right?
