Whitby Cricket Club battling against odds to get ground ready for league opener

The North Yorkshire & South Durham Cricket League is scheduled to start this Saturday, having been delayed for a week.

Whitby skipper Kai Morris said: “Hopefully the weather holds off this week and we can get started. The ground’s taken an awful lot of rain these last few weeks and the groundstaff are working really hard to even give us a chance of playing.

"Billingham have just come down from the Premier League last season and they look like they’ve made a few winter signings so we’re expecting them to be pretty strong but we’ve got to play them at some point so catching them early might be a good time to play them.

"We know they’ve got a strong bowling attack and it’ll be a good test for our batsmen early season.

"With all the weather that’s been around lately it’ll no doubt be a good toss to win and try to have a bowl early on so hopefully that goes our way and we can put them under pressure early.

"On the flip side if we bat first and can put a score on the board that’ll give us a good chance as we know their batting isn’t as strong as their bowling so we can try to use scoreboard pressure to our advantage.”

Whitby 2nds are due to start their Division Three season at Sedgefield 2nds on Saturday, while Whitby 3rds are scheduled to be in Sunday Conference South action at Stokesley 3rds on Sunday.