Ant Stokes, sibling brother of St Cross Symondians all-rounder Matt, bowls left-arm to Sarisbury Athletic's Tom Nightingale in Guernsey's T20 match. Picture Martin Gray. Cricket has finally been played in the British Isles, with the first game since the coronavirus lockdown was imposed taking place in Guernsey.
Eight weeks after the season should have begun, the KGV Ground in Castel staged a T20 match on Saturday, with Guernsey-based Sparsholt skipper Jeremy Frith keeping an eagle eye on proceedings.
The exhibition game raised money for the Covid-19 appeal and a live stream attracted over 84,000 views on Youtube, a vast proportion from India !
Social distancing had to be observed before, during and after the game between two pick-up island sides, but Guernsey Cricket Board chief executive Mark Latter said it "hadn't made a great deal of difference" to how it was played.
"The guys are obviously not running in and clapping hands, they've been keeping away from each other," he said. "They arrived ready to go, they haven't used the changing rooms as they would normally do. Cricket doesn’t have all the players on the pitch at once, like with football and rugby, so that helps us."
Jealous
Guernsey, like Channel Island rivals Jersey, are associate members of the International Cricket Council and eligible to play T20 international fixtures.
"From what I've heard, speaking to a few guys especially from Jersey, they are quite jealous that we're playing cricket, and of the occasion we've got going on here," said bowler Tom Veillard, who has played in the Southern Premier League.
"Having the live stream is putting Guernsey's name on the map as well."
Who won and who lost did not really matter. The game achieved one very important thing - to give cricket fans hope of plenty more to come later in the summer.
