BEYOND THE BOUNDARY with John Riley: Fretful times at North Marine Road
As all Scarborians know, our town can on occasions be immune from the very high temperatures witnessed recently in Europe because of the strange weather phenomenon known locally as a sea fret.
Further south down the Holderness coast this can be known as a sea roke while the Scots refer to the foggy conditions as a ‘haar’.
The frets develop through a condensation process when a pocket of warm moist air moves over a much colder sea surface and the chilly fog is blown inland or moves with the tide.
The last two matches seen by me, namely the Yorkshire v Somerset Women’s T20 and the friendly fundraiser against Scarborough Athletic FC were affected by this weird weather.
While the sun was cracking the flags in 30 degrees at Seamer, the ghostly mists in Scarborough restricted the temperature to a coolish 18 degrees and certainly affected the attendances at both fixtures.
With its coastal position, the North Marine Road ground is susceptible to such conditions and as all experienced Scarborough players will know, when a sea fret rolls in the normally flat pitches can green up and the ball will suddenly start swinging like a flower stalk in a gale.
Back in the day, experienced Scarborough captains would consult the tide tables before deciding what to do on winning the toss and the most extreme example of this is when Scarborough’s greatest ever bowler, Bill Foord, took 9 for against Hanging Heaton when bowling them out in a Yorkshire Council Final.
The shell-shocked and sea-fretted visitors were dismissed for a paltry 21 all out and the game was over in just over an hour.
Physics was not my strongest subject at the Boys’ High School but it did become more interesting when on the back of Foord’s performance, some fellow schoolboy cricketers got our Physics teachers ‘Zener’ Potts and ‘Digger Speight’ to explain the fluid dynamics and asymmetrical air pressure involved in a swinging cricket ball.
I’m afraid they lost me on that one…
However, I didn’t see too much evidence of the white ball swinging extravagantly in the Ladies’ match and once the fog lifted in the game against the footballers, the only swing visible was with the willow as batters on both sides were able to dispatch the ball to all parts and the Ryan Blott/Jimmy Beadle partnership was very entertaining.
This match was played in a great spirit and further cemented the relationship between our clubs.