BEYOND THE BOUNDARY with John Riley - Pavilion renovation unearths historical gems

The amount of memorabilia is staggering and the new committee has been busy sorting out and cataloguing items: some of these items are obviously of value and we have engaged some professional help in assessing them.

We are also employing local help in renovating display items such as the display boards commemorating the club’s successes at Lord’s in our golden era of the 70s and 80s.

There are boxes and boxes of Minutes Books of Board meetings going back to the 1860s, which are all in great condition and scribed in immaculate copperplate.

These make for very interesting reading and I was particularly taken by the entry for the Ground Sub-committee dated 22 January 1926 where the various construction options for the proposed new North Stand were under discussion. Three options were being examined: 1.Timber @£3500, 2.Steel and timber @£4015 and 3. Reinforced concrete@£5020.

The committee ultimately favoured option 3 and as we now know, the shelf life has proved to be exactly 100 years!

Incidentally, we have this week received the good news that the Press Box and Media Centre can be used in Yorkshire’s matches.

I attended the funeral of our opening bat from the glory days, Chris Stephenson, and the music selected for the service brought a few smiles as it consisted of the BBC Grandstand Racing theme, the Soul Limbo Cricket theme tune and the Leeds United song from the 1972 FA Cup Final!

We could have picked a great team from the SCC attendees at the wake at Beverley Town CC, namely Neil Stephenson (son), David Byas (son-in-law),Tony Moor, John Hutton, Phil Hart, Paul Ellis, Phil Woodliffe, Tim Watts, Mel Brown, Gordon Downes, Adrian Dalby, Charlie Burdass and John Riley.

Given the poor state of our finances, the club is looking for new ways to make money and a somewhat bizarre opportunity emerged when we were approached by an Indian film company who wanted the ground to film for a day in June and were willing to pay handsomely for the privilege. Permission was granted.

We are also going to open the Popular Bank bar on the evenings of the 24 Open Air Theatre gigs this summer so that spectators can break the thirsty journey down to Peasholm with a refreshing drink.

The catering facilities at the ground are now looking very appealing and the Tea Room has been totally transformed and spectators at last Saturday’s Yorkshire Women’s match were very appreciative of the fare on sale.

Last Sunday saw the success of our first Under-9s festival at North Marine Road, with almost 50 children between the clubs getting involved and many playing their first ever game of cricket.

Monday saw the Under-13 Superchargers lose by three runs to Wykeham and the Under-13 Vikings beat Staxton by 19 runs.

On Friday night the Under-11 Superchargers beat Wykeham by 39 runs.