Runs on the Board exhibition in Barnsley celebrates older people's contribution to cricket teams in Yorkshire
Test-match cricket is aptly named. It's a test of skill, strength, stamina and character. But cricket is played at many levels, and the second and third teams of amateur club sides harbour those whose ability to bowl fast and sprint between the wickets is a memory as distant as having a full head of brown hair. "They're still respected as elder statesmen because they know how to organise a field, rotate the bowlers and mentor teenagers still learning the game," says Andrew McMillan.
He's not an old cricketer; he's a young poet of 22 who has spent many a weekend afternoon prowling the boundaries of Yorkshire fields, clutching a notebook and jotting down impressions of these gurus of the game. Close by was documentary photographer Anton Want. McMillan's words and Want's pictures have come together for an exhibition called Runs on the Board, at the Civic in Barnsley, McMillan's home town. He is the son of performance poet and radio presenter Ian McMillan, who insists that the commission was "nowt" to do with him.
The Legacy Trust donated �42,000 to cover not only the fees of photographer and poet but also the cost of staging the exhibition and publishing a book as part of imove, Yorkshire's cultural programme for the 2012 Olympics. "The project is an artistic celebration of the character of cricket and the characters that play it," says the man behind it, Graham Roberts, a public art consultant still turning out for Wellington Gold in York at 63. "I felt that the money for the Cultural Olympiad was going mainly to youth and thought: 'Hang on; let's get older people involved as well.'"
Roberts has also organised the Grey Fox Trophy, a tournament between 10 teams of over-50s cricketers, women among them, to be played throughout the summer with a final at Yorkshire's county ground at Headingley, Leeds, on 2 September. Cricket is one of those pursuits allowing those of advanced years to stay active, he maintains. "You have to be alert or you'll get hurt, and you have to be fit enough to run between the wickets. But it doesn't demand circuit training and it almost invariably ends in the pub."
Sometimes it starts there as well, in McMillan's experience. "But being Yorkshire cricketers, they're desperate to win, even if they're in the third team. The old timers take it very seriously to the extent that they're constantly challenging the umpire's decision."
Sometimes, indeed, they're older than the umpire. And sometimes there are three generations of the same family playing for the same club, he says, before adding: "That wouldn't happen in any other sport."
? Runs on the Board is at the Civic, Barnsley, until 31 July. The book of the same name is available from graham@runsontheboard.co.uk for �12.50, including UK postage.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/28/older-cricketers-skills-on-show-barnsley
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