That's how the game should be played
18th September 2023 | Community, Sport
We are told the future of cricket is city franchises. Like Brigadoon, the fabled Scottish village that appears every hundred years, they emerge each season pulsating with artificial colours, canned music and manufactured fun. Then, having achieved maximum monetisation in minimal time at major venues, they revert to the form they take for the other eleven months of the year – a WhatsApp group. At the other end of the permanence scale is Kibworth CC, who played host to the first county game in its 110-year history on Tuesday. This district of Harborough in Leicestershire comprises Kibworth Beauchamp (population 5,433) and Kibworth Harcourt (population 990). It is a place so typical of rural England that in 2010 a BBC history documentary told the story of our entire nation using the narrative arc of Kibworth’s development. In recent years, its growth has been a double-edged sword. As Kibworth’s Wikipedia page stated, ‘new housing continues to be built, causing periodic controversy.’ But it remains a village in feel and outlook if not population.
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