Kmflett's Blog

Test and County cricket is currently paused as the franchise based The Hundred and the red ball One Day Cup takes place. The Commonwealth Games aside there is not much sporting competition. Yet its not the heavily promoted Hundred (every match gets TV and radio coverage) that is the cricket story making the headlines.

In fact its match that took place between Saltburn Second |X1 and Norton in the North Yorkshire and South Durham league last Saturday that is in the news.

Its alleged that a Saltburn player Company Secretary and opening bat Brian Devine can be seen, in a recording of the match, clicking his fingers as a ball is bowled. The sound is alleged to replicate that of snicking a ball to the wicket keeper. An appeal was made and the Umpire gave the batter out, though in fact they had not hit the ball.

Devine has already suffered serious consequences, being dropped as a sponsor by his local Indian restuarant.

The affair has cause the Mail to produce a double page spread (above) and Jonathan Agnew has opined on the BBC TV news.

As Aggers underlined while gambling and cricket are closely related, match fixing is not. There have been scandals in cricket relating to ball tampering, sandpapering balls and much else. These examples come from professional cricket where big money can be at stake.

By contrast the Saltburn game consisted of amateur cricketers. It is possible, although not suggested, that betting was taking place on games but otherwise while the apparent transgression should merit disciplinary action calling it ‘corruption’ (Mail) is hyperbolic.

It is however what used to be known as the ‘silly season’ when schools are on holiday and Parliament is in recess.

I used to live in Saltburn as a student 50 years ago and it is a well worth a visit- a relatively unspoilt North Yorkshire seaside town. Its a short train ride from Middlesbrough

The Times Obituary of Bill Oddie who has died aged 85 is above. It refers to him as an ‘eternally scruffy anarchist’ although this is specifically a reference to his Goodies character. The Telegraph’s appreciation refers to him as bearded. The Guardian’s obit (link below) gives a much better appreciation of him.

Nothing so far on another aspect of his life, his principled anti-fascism. I’ll post further on that.

Obituaries are one of the first drafts of history so its always interesting to see what perspective are and are not present.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jul/27/bill-oddie-obituary?CMP=share_btn_url

John Cleese is reported in the Telegraph to be an admirer of Rupert Lowe the leader of Restore, a party which seems to attract number of far right and fascist supporters (Lowe says he planning to get rid of them…). Cleese who once did broadcasts for the Liberal Democrats had slid to the right and now goes on about immigration and Islam.

Perhaps its time for Cleese to revisit the Monty Python sketch he wrote with Michael Palin on the North Minehead By-Election

A wildfire burns near Cestas in Gironde province in south-west France. Photograph: Julien Soulard/EPA Guardian

The opening line of Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto noted that a spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism (hobgoblin in Helen Macfarlane’s 1850 translation for the Chartist Red Republican paper)

The spectre of wild fires in France and Spain (with lesser but significant wild fires in Scotland, Wales,Suffolk, the New Forest & the West Midlands) is also people driven. Climate Change is seeing a heating planet due to human activity and as with the Communist Manifesto its also human activity that can kerb it.

Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are firmly in the profit before people lobby. Andy Burnham might not be, but only if pressure from without, that is outside Parliament is organised. His plan to discourage disposable barbecues is really not addressing the scale of the crisis. Refusing to act, reportedly, on union demands to implement a maximum workplace temperature suggest a lack of will that needs to be addressed. Unite bus drivers in North East London strike on Friday over unbearably hot working conditions in their cabs. Action on the impact of climate change is needed now, not just possible future policies

2026 marks the start of the Hundred Mk2. The teams are now owned by very wealthy franchisers who mostly also own T20 teams elsewhere around the globe (sometimes with the same players).

The teams have in some cases been renamed- MI London at the Oval for example (MI stands for Mumbai Indians an IPL francise) new kit has appeared and in most cases new teams as well with the arrival of an auction.

The womens and mens games Ive looked at are packed full of cricket stars from around the globe and look a lot like exhibition matches. Sometimes entertaining to watch but not something to inspire loyalty (where it existed).

The hype of The Hundred Mk1 on the BBC and Sky has mostly gone. Perhaps because the hype is now the property of the franchisers.

The Sunday Times (26th July) has reported early crowd numbers

The opening games at the Oval, Utilita Bowl, Lords, Edgbaston & Headingley got a total crowd of 77,617 compared to 98,317 in 2025 a 21% decline. These are figures for the men’s game. Attendance for women’s games which are double headers with the men are also down, although tickets cover both.

Writing about the London Spirit at Lords Marc Roller on cricinfo noted that the attendance for the first game was 26,013 while in 2025 it was 23,847. This is put down to marketing moving from the ECB to the franchisers but as Test Match Special has pointed out in most venues ticket prices are up. If a family of four is going that can be quite a hike.

However to prove Bob Dylan’s dialectical conundrum, the slow one now will later be first, the first game at Sophia Gardens was sold out (not something that has previously happened). The Welsh Fire have done well in early games both men and women. In the case of the men’s team only 2 players have survived from the 2025 team. Significantly prices at Sofia Gdns £5/24 are lower.

Early days yet but in the words of Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, there is something happening here

This is the first poll to show a Labour lead since Andy Burnham became PM.

A Burnham Bounce is to be expected as well the continued stories about Reform’s dodgy donations having an impact.

That said it is a More in Common poll who do seem to have a practice of producing polls that fit current news agendas. As YouGov have demonstrated the poll result you get depends on the questions you do or do not ask and how you ask them

As the socialist historian E P Thompson noted as far back as 1959

A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the ‘Observer’ or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it

New Reasoner, Autumn 1959

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has paid tribute to Bill Oddie who has died aged 85.

Bill Oddie had a long and varied career as a writer and performer of comedy including the Goodies and as an early presenter of Springwatch. He was also a supporter of the Green Party and politically active on environmental issue

The campaigners say that Bill Oddie has long been recognised for his fully organic beard. Though not as lengthy as those worn by two members of ZZ Top his follicles synched with his concern for the natural world.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Bill Oddie was a great ambassador for the hirsute over many yeard, underlining the positive impact that beards can have on public life

Bill Oddie – Wikipedia

Telegraph tribute 27th July

as the short, bearded, right-on member of the anarchic television comedy trio known as The Goodies, struck many as the most irritating. A notoriously grumpy ornithologist 

I was unaware of the yearly Bass brewery day trips to seaside resorts until recently. They were designed to give workers at the Burton Brewery a day out and ran from the 1860s to just before the start of the First World War. There was no right to paid holidays until the 1930s so the excursions which visited such locations as Great Yarmouth, Blackpool and Scarborough were special occasions. It was a large scale event. As many as seventeen trains were used and 7-10,000 brewery workers got a day out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bass_Excursions#:~:text=The%20Bass%20Excursions%20were%20a%20series%20of%20works%20outings%20laid#:~:text=The%20Bass%20Excursions%20were%20a%20series%20of%20works%20outings%20laid

Details of that last 1914 trip are here:

Scarborough was the choice for the summer of 1914 in what would turn out to be the last of the company seaside trips. The trip made headlines in the Scarborough Post, suggesting that over 7000 people would be coming to town. The first train left Burton Railway Station at 3.40am, arriving at Scarborough at 7.30am. It was filled with the company blacksmiths, coppersmiths, painters, platelayers, plumbers, tailors, cloggers and wheelwrights. Trains were timetabled every 10 minutes with later departures filled with joiners, the workers from the railway department and clerks, as well the gardeners and farm workers from the Bass family estate at Rangemore. The latest train was reserved for Mr Walters and friends. William Walters was the company Railway Traffic Manager and the mastermind behind the trips.

Power in Britain remains overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of a very narrow group of people, according to Friedman’s research. He points out that pupils of the nine most exclusive private schools are still, today, 52 times more likely to reach elite positions than those who go to any other type of school. Oxbridge graduates born in the 1960s and early 1970s – Burnham was born in 1970 and went to Cambridge – were more than 250 times more likely to reach the British elite than their peers who did not go to university.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/26/burnham-oxbridge-cabinet-social-mobility-class?CMP=share_btn_url

Material being determines consciousness and the point made above about class, education and life chances remains very relevant. Every cook can govern, but not in the current Cabinet.

Of course matters can be nuanced and refracted. Starmer’s Cabinet was by qualification and education much more working class than Burnham’s Cabinet. Other factors need to be taken into account.

And yes btw I have a PhD from UCL and have never had any aspirations to be in the Cabinet.