Yorkshire's batting loss proves Glaisdale's gain

It's an exact quote. Darren Harland's fairly good average was 314.50. Others might regard it as a mean feat.

He went 11 times to the crease, scored 629 runs and was out twice - caught on the boundary at Castleton, lbw at Sleights.

"I always remember when I'm out," says Darren, 21. "Another foot higher at Castleton and my average would have been 629."

Glaisdale's near Whitby, its cricketers in the Esk Valley Midweek League.

Darren, who lives in the village with his parents, represented Yorkshire from under 15 to under 19 level and this summer was Scarborough's player of the year, average 33, in the Yorkshire League.

"The standard's don't compare, but I concentrate 101 per cent whatever level of cricket I'm playing," he says.

Darren was throwing a ball around Glaisdale cricket field as soon as he could walk, played for the club's juniors at seven and has remained loyal to the village team.

"He's always looked good, but I suppose the Esk Valley League is just a bit of relaxation for him," says the skipper.

"Basically it's for old men like me and kids coming out of the juniors."

Darren, who runs a Whitby rock shop and tea stall for his father, made the 154-mile round trip to Headingley every Saturday and Sunday but is no longer on the county books.

"It just fizzled out," he says. "All things equal they like their youngsters to be closer to Leeds. I still think I have the ability, but I'm happy to enjoy club cricket now."

Apart from the batting trophy - sponsored and handed over by his father - the club plans no other acknowledgement of his triple ton up.

"The boundary fence has all been washed away in the floods," says John. "We're going to have to concentrate on that."

It may be little surprise that the highest seasonal average in English first-class cricket was achieved by Don Bradman - 115.66 over 26 innings in 1938.

The great Bradman would have had a three-figure average from his 52 Tests, too, but for a duck in his last innings which reduced it to a paltry 99.94.

Now 92, Sir Don still reports to Adelaide cricket ground at 10 o'clock each morning to attend the daily deluge of requests for information and autographs - every one acknowledged, it's reckoned, and in the steady hand of his youth.

The only Englishman to achieve a three-figure seasonal average was another Yorkshire lad - Master Boycott - with 102.53 from 20 innings in 1979.

"I bet" says the Bearded Wonder (to whom thanks as ever) "that he remembers every one."

What of club cricket? In an attempt to discover whether any player has topped 314.50 at season's end, the column turned to John Briggs, grey eminence of Cockerton II.

John, the sort of bloke who could make the Internet bowl reverse swing, arrived last week in Cleveland, Ohio, from where he pleads something akin to the Fifth Amendment.

The last train from Darlington to Kings Cross took eight overnight hours, the shuttle to Gatwick occupied two hours instead of 30 minutes, the flight was another eight hours, his beloved Sunderland could only scrape a home draw with Southampton and his Guinness Book of Cricket Records is at home.

"Besides," adds his e-mailed response, "the problem with searching for batting records on the Net is that it turns up all this damn baseball stuff."

Cockerton's own Bryan Dale averaged 180 earlier in the summer, until a mention in Backtrack put the mockers on it.

So can anyone improve on 314.50? It would be fairly good to know.

Thornton Watlass CC's batting award went on Friday night to Chris Nicholson, his 41 a relatively humble average but a club record 1,335 runs and an undefeated 154.

Thornton Watlass is near Bedale, in North Yorkshire, more Nics than a tail-end Charlie with a charmed life.

It's they who staged a floodlit day/night match to mark the Millennium, who'll play on Boxing Day whatever the global warm-up dumps on them and who discovered that laying underground cables meant putting an incongruous pylon at square leg.

The column, happily, had some part in its removal, though further problems with the Leccy Board meant that the awards dinner at the Buck Inn - part of the boundary - became a generator game.

The club dates back to the 1880s, and does things traditionally. There's always English beef, always reports from sundry officials, always a guest appearance from the Lincolnshire Stragglers (or Strugglers, or some such) who pitch up at Watlass every summer.

This year, however, the vegetable soup had become leek and potato. They'd a committee meeting about it, it's reckoned.

Though narrowly missing promotion from the Nidderdale League division six, they'd won the Wath Knock Out Cup and lost in the final of the Towler.

"Less said about that the better," murmured skipper and bowling award winner Alan Singleton, formerly with Darlington and Northallerton.

It was a good night, and a late one, Thornton Watlass's last bus (11 52pm) was away before we were. Only the guest speaker was rubbish.

So it was well turned midnight when we got home and awaiting, timed at 11 35pm, an answering machine message from Vince Kirkup, the Midnight Cowboy of Stanley United.

They're having their own presentation night, last season's, on December 2.

"The way things went, we weren't in any great hurry," said Vincey.

Next day at the Tow Law v Whitley Bay match we bumped into former Newcastle United goal scorer Alan Shoulder, 47, who still occasionally helps out Stanley.

"You'll never guess who got me out of bed at half past 11 last night," said Alan.

Yes, we said, we probably would.

An irregular order, we bought a copy on Sunday of the News of the You's Know Whats.

For reasons unknown, the story about which we had been tipped off five days earlier - and which substantially had been confirmed - failed to appear.

So who was the North-East Premiership footballer who in the early hours of the previous Sunday drove a young lady back from Newcastle Quayside to Tow Law, discovered that his car's computerised navigation system didn't even include that blessed spot and had to grope his way back via Crook?

Why wait for future disclosures when the Backtrack column can reveal all: Tow Law is on the A68, between Darlington and Corbridge.

Scotland on Sunday, meanwhile, reports more shenanigans at Morton, where unlamented former Darlington chief executive Mike Peden is in day-to-day charge (Backtrack, November 3) and said to be negotiating a take-over.

The home match with Raith Rovers was close to being abandoned, SoS reports, when stewards threatened to withdraw in the second half unless the club settled a non-payment grievance.

The game was completed, Morton lost. They are now bottom of the Scottish first division.

It was Ally McCoist (Backtrack, November 10) who scored Scotland's only goal in Euro 1996.

Sub-titled "The ultimate trivia challenge", a new sports quiz book by snooker ace John Parrott has arrived - inviting, among much else, the identities of the four football managers since 1985 who've managed the FA Cup winners having first played in an FA Cup winning team for the same side.

Sporting Questions Parrott Fashion is published by Robson Books at £6 99.