A Day for Sport To Hang Its Head In Shame My local cricket team, Burley-In-Wharfedale CC 1st, this week achieved promotion to the top division of the Aire-Wharfe league with two matches still remaining. Led from the front by captain Richard Harrison the team hit a consistently high standard from the very start of the season. There have been excellent bowling performances from the teams two main strike bowlers, the captain and Nick Brook, the captain and overseas player B. Harris also managed a hat trick each. On the batting side there have been great performances from Harris (who managed an undefeated double ton), I Normington, M Harrison, R Brook, I Frost, N Brook and J Davey, it's been a real team effort, apologies if I've missed anyone out. Last week then, when the team got the required points to promotion, it should have been a night of celebration, guaranteed A Division status with two matches to go, but no, because something rather nasty happened after the match. Small teams, like Burley, can be riven by politics just as nasty and divisive as the situations you can read about in the tabloids concerning county sides or Premiership football teams. After the winning match, a 'majority' of the 1st team got together, sharpened their knives, and then announced to the captain their decision to have him sacked, and to install another player as captain. Can you imagine anything designed to be more hurtful and cruel to a winning captain than this ? Can you understand why a team should want to sack a winning leader ? I can't. If memory serves correctly, the 1st team were relegated from the top division last season, this year Harrison turns the team around and leads them right back up, his reward ? A knife in the back. I would have liked to heap superlatives upon the team at this point, to congratulate one and all on a highly successful season, instead I'm left shocked and appalled. The problem with some village cricket clubs is that good 1st team players sometimes come to (mistakenly) believe that they are running the club. Well, it works like this, if some current 1st team members drop out, the club will not cease to exist, somebody else will step up to play. Granted, the team might be weaker, but it will continue. If however, the small core of people that actually run the club stop working, and by this I mean the committee members and volunteers who organise all the matches, umpire, open and staff the bars, prepare the match meals, cut the outfield and prepare the wickets, who organise fund raising dinners, quizzes, social nights, car boots and all the other things that are required to keep a club running. If these few people stop working, if they stop dedicating their time to the club, then we're in trouble. There are all sorts of things I wanted to say about the 1st team at this point, but I've scrapped the lot, for those of you that were involved in last weeks meeting, your callow and underhand betrayal of your captain puts you all to shame.