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ENTIRE CRICKET SEASON UNDER THREAT
The indiscriminate weather systems that characterised the 2003 season returned with a vengeance this week as the 2004 Mid Week League season was due to get underway.
The weather, which attacked north cricket grounds in vindictive precision raids beginning on Monday, has been described by league officials as "patently ludicrous". "These weather conditions are patently ludicrous", offered one spokesman. "We were given to expect benign conditions with which to carry on our day to day cricketing existence, but all we've got is chaos".
The weather raids have been so severe, and the on-ground infrastructure put under so much pressure, that cricket chiefs fear the new season could end before it has even begun: "The whole season could be in jeopardy", continued the spokesman. "We can't even move the league to the Caribbean because it's crap there as well."
One former league groundsman, who did not wish to be named, presided over 47 completed cricket matches during his 35 seasons in charge at Cochrane Park, Heaton. He sees the current conditions as indicative of trends in climatic change: "that's global warming for you," he told us.
Indeed, whereas Cochrane Park saw 14 completed cricket matches in 1972, this had tailed off to just one in 2003.
"Aye lads, looks like it's set in," commented the ex-groundsman, before collecting a set of clubs for a round of aqua-golf at Close House.
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