MY FIRST OPEN DAY

by Andrew Scott, age 10 (Sheffield)

We had arrived very early because we had travelled from Sheffield and my dad had given us a lift. When it was time to enter, the first thing I did was to sign in and find out which group I was in, mine was group 5. We walked in groups to the main stand and we went onto the pitch to see where group five was positioned.

The stumps were set up ready for us to playsricket with the players. The first cricket player to come into our group was Tim Bresnan. We started playing and Tim was behind the stumps. I was fielding at first and then other players started arriving onto the pitch and joining other groups. Then the last man to come out was can you beleive, the England one dat international bowler Darren Gough. I was amazed to see him walking towards our group.

To start off with we only had Tim Bresnan in our group and all the other groups had two players except us, so Darren Gough walked over and joined group five, which was THE GROUP I WAS IN!!!!!!

We started playing again and he joined in. He was fielding almost next to me, this certainly made it more exciting for me. Then it was my turn to bowl and Gough went ti bat. At the time Bresnan was still behind the stumps. I ran in to bowl and Bresnan moved the wickets forward and Gough did his back swing and smacked the wickets over. Everyone started laughing and so did Darren Gough, I thought Bresnan had knocked the wickets himself. Then suddenly Bresnen shouted 'OUT'.

I said 'how?' in a puzzled way and Bresnan shouted back, 'he hit his own wickets!'

It was not long after this that a man in the main stand shouted out 'Its time for the autographs' So we all ran over and lined up.

I took my mini bat to be signed and got a total of 14 signatures. After this we sat down in the stands and had our dinner. We kept looking at our timetable, just to see what was going to happen next.

The first thing we did was guard of honour as the players walked onto the pitch.. Then we watched about15 to 20 minutes of the match, it was Yorkshire Phoenix v Glamorgan Dragons. Then we got told by a friend of ours that it was time to go over to the cricket centre to do some bowling and also somecricket games. When we arrived, 3 of the nets were pulled out for bowlig. One was for the speed monitor competition for the under 11s and the other two nets were for the speed monitor competition for the for the over 12s and the separated part of the hall for the non stop cricket games for those who were not bowling.

When this was all over we went back out to the stands and wathced a bit more of the cricket match.

when the two teams eventually went in for tea unfortunately the rain started to come down and rain certainly stopped play. But this did not worry me because I had sucha brilliant day and couldn't wait to do it all over again. So if someone is wondering if it is a good idea to go to a Yorkshire CC Open day, read this and you will certainly want to join the Junior Vikings and go to these BRILLIANT open days.