BRIGG CRICKETING TRENDSETTERS

Brigg Town cricketers became trendsetters, but we'd better not tell Prime Minister Boris Johnson what this involved!
The PM is now supporting the return of club cricket matches across England this month, having earlier declined to do so because the ball (handled by fielders) was seen as a potential "vector for disease" and he then expressed concerns over sit-down communal teas and the use of changing rooms by the players.
So he might have been less than impressed with the indoor cricket league matches played by Brigg Town in a small Scunthorpe sports hall during the 1970s and 1980s, without any sort of distancing being possible.
These enjoyable games were six-a-side, and Brigg fielded two teams in one of the UK's most successful leagues in the UK.
The Scunthorpe Indoor League, and others at that time, pioneered the use of white cricket balls - now used across the world for floodlit matches, including internationals. Red ones (seen above) are used in outdoor club matches.
Crafty slow bowlers at Scunthorpe's High Ridge Sports Hall in the 1970s and 1980s soon realised that by tossing the ball up with plenty of flight or loop, the batsmen lost sight of it in the array of lights at the far end of the sports hall.
With the ball pinging off the walls, these games were exciting but not much fun for the umpires who were in the firing line - especially those standing at the striker's end of the wicket, near square leg.
Matches were played in the winter and many players felt they offered better preparation for the season ahead than indoor practice nets.
Bryan Simpson, pictured below - a real stalwart of Broughton Cricket Club - was one of the the organisers of the local indoor league. Sadly, we lost him a couple of years ago.