Beers And Cricket In York....

I spent a splendid few hours last Sunday watching some County Championship cricket at York's beautiful ground in lovely warm sunshine. Needless to say, a few beers were involved at both the cricket and later on in the city itself....

Cricket and beer are an ideal combination, seemingly symbiotically entwined like bacon and eggs, fish and chips, Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Anderson and Broad. I could go on. Ying and Yang. Watching cricket on a sunny day with a few beers is a fine way to pass the time. But no, I had not gone to York Sports Club to drink beer specifically but to watch some of the County Championship Division One game between Yorkshire and Essex which was one of several games allocated to this lovely ground this season. Any beer consumed was purely coincidental....

York has emerged on to the county cricket circuit in the past few years in a reversal of a trend that had seen first-class cricket no longer being played at several other grounds across the county, such as Bradford, Harrogate, Middlesbrough, and Sheffield (a pattern which has also been seen with other counties too), which has left just Headingly in Leeds and Scarborough as active locations used by Yorkshire over the past few decades. But as Scarborough has had some difficulties in recent years with its once-formidable club side folding, York has now appeared as a viable additional location for first-class cricket in the county.

Situated in the leafy suburb of Clifton, the home of York CC is situated within something of a sporting campus, with a rugby ground, squash club, and another cricket ground, the home of current Yorkshire League North champions, Clifton Alliance, beyond the rugby ground. It is a beautiful ground with trees behind one end, a large temporary stand down one side, with a large and substantial clubhouse on the roadside. There was an open marquee at one end, whilst many spectators had brought their own folding chairs and had set them up around the boundary perimeter. The warm summer air was punctuated by the murmur of conversation, the snap of an opening sandwich box, the thwack of willow on leather, the odd shout from the field, the overhead cry of a passing bird. Every now and again a ripple of applause would break out, such as when as the ball crashed over the boundary rope for a four. There were a couple of burger and sandwich vans, an ice-cream van,  a Greene King-branded van dispensing beer, with a bar at the side of the afore-mentioned marquee, and a merch stand which I availed myself of fairly soon after I got there as, with the sun beating down under bright blue skies with just the odd wisp of fluffy white cloud, I needed to get myself something to protect my head, having been unable to find anything remotely like a sun hat at home.

I'd arrived just after the start, Essex having won the toss and elected to bat. After a circuit of the ground and stopping at a few points to watch as I walked around, I settled on sitting at one of a large number of white folding chairs set out in front of the marquee, with a decent view over the action, bar the odd head getting in the way from time to time. I pulled one of my sandwiches out from the depths of my bag, along with a can of Polly's which I'd found lurking in the back of my fridge. A short while later I heard a familiar voice, and looked up and it was Dave, a friend who I'd only been talking to the day before over a pint at the Grayston Unity in Halifax, neither of us aware of each other's plan to come to the cricket. So he pulled up a chair and we chatted away as we watched the cricket. 

Dave is someone I have known for a long time and is one of the few people I see regularly who actually went to the same school as me (although we weren't in the same year), grew up in the same area,  likewise enjoys good music, and has been cursed by following the same football club aka Halifax Town. So particularly with the football we have a lot of common experiences and shared pain, although I have to admit my memory is not what it was, and Dave recalls long-forgotten people some of who I can recall at a stretch but others who I don't think I ever knew! But then again....

The morning passed and it got to lunch, Essex had batted solidly and finished the session on  89 for one, with South African opener Dean Elgar and captain Tom Westley batting diligently after losing their only wicket with 24 runs on the board. Not long after I'd got sat down I'd overheard a conversation between a couple of guys seated  nearby that suggested that Taylor's Landlord was on in the club house, so we went over there to check it out, after stopping for a short chat on the way there with a fellow Town fan who was sat nearby.

York Sports Club is not a particularly attractive building and is somewhat at odds with the rest of the rather attractive arena in which it sits. It is a modern brick building split in to two halves with a glass-fronted upper level with a balcony, with the bar located on the ground floor of the left hand half of the club, with seating at picnic tables with umbrellas out the front overlooking the pitch. Inside, the bar is to the left beyond a front lounge area and when we arrived we were met by a post-Covid style linear queue - why on earth do people feel they need to do this?

No queues now at York Sports Club

We did indeed get a pint of Landlord. the rumours being correct, and once we had been served we went and sat with a few old boys at one of the tables in the lounge area, where the conversation was centred on York Races, the crowd that they had attracted the day before, which artist had played there in the evening (eg. Olly Murs). The beer, considering it was served in plastic glasses because we would be going outside, was in decent nick (NBSS 3), but to be honest at £7 a pint it needed to be! They also had a beer on from the weirdly-named Grilled Saint Brewery, which apparently is a nano-brewery based in Goole which is connected to Old Mill. As the lunch interval drew to a close we got another beer to take out and headed back out into the sunshine. It was more of the same with Essex making steady progress throughout the afternoon, with Yorkshire despite the odd shout and appeal were unable to break down the solid partnership between the two Essex batsman who negotiated a successful session and were 164 for 1 at tea.

I had decided before I had arrived that I would leave at tea and so I bade Dave farewell and got the bus back into the city centre. I had earmarked a pub I had never visited before which has been on the Good Beer Guide quite regularly. The Phoenix Inn is a former J*hn $m!ths house situated on George Street and is just inside the city walls, within striking distance of Clifford's Tower and several other local attractions and landmarks. With an attractive exterior with white painted walls and a red pantile roof it stands on out in the dead-end street leading up to the walls surrounded by housing, with large doors painted in the same brewers duck egg/sage as the rest of the outside woodwork suggesting there may have been stables there at one time.

The Phoenix Inn, York

Inside, there is a Grade ll listed interior in the pub which was built in the 1830's with much of its current layout dating from a refurb in the late 19th century. It consists of a small room to the right as you go in with bench seating, wood panelling, and a cast iron fireplace, a drinking corridor with a wider section with a servery, a larger room beyond at the back of the pub, with a small room beyond that housing a bar billiard table. Out the back is a secluded beer garden which on this warm and sunny afternoon was pretty full.

There was a servery in the first room with five beers on hand pump including Yorkshire-brewed beers from breweries such as Turning Point, Ossett, and Wold Top. I opted for a pint of Pot of Gold, a 3.8% Session Pale from the small Leeds brewery Sunbeam who have quietly been getting on with it since 2011. It was a very pleasant and refreshing beer given the warm afternoon, and was in excellent condition (NBSS 3.5). I sat and enjoyed it at a corner in the bar as more customers came in to enjoy a drink out of the sun's glare, although it was too warm for a couple who were sat at one of the tables in front of the large window, so they asked if they could join me at the other end of my table away from the heat.

Drinking lobby and servery at the Phoenix

I enjoyed my pint and visit to the Phoenix, another new pub crossed off the list, but with time moving on I decided to get an Uber back to the station so I could enjoy a final pre-train pint at the York Tap before heading back to West Yorkshire. My taxi arrived pretty quickly, and whilst it only took a few minutes to get back to the station through the busy streets it would have been at least a 20 minute walk back there which would have limited my time quite severely. 

I got dropped off at the entrance to the Short Stay car park, which is situated in a covered part of the station close to the York Tap. A few of the tables out at the front of the bar, whilst inside it was pretty quiet and I managed to get served quite quickly. I ordered a pint of Market Pale, a 4.2% pale ale from Melton Mowbray-based brewers Round Corner Brewing, whose beers I have always enjoyed on the few occasions I've tried them. This was another one: brewed with New Zealand hops, it was a delicious well-rounded beer with bags of flavour and one of the best pints I have had recently (NBSS 4). 

A great pint at the York Tap

Unfortunately I only had time for one pint here, as with less trains running due to weekend engineering work I decided it was sensible to go for the one I'd planned to catch rather than risking any delays by staying in York longer. As it was my train back to Leeds was pretty busy, so I reckoned I'd done the right thing. It had been a good few hours at the cricket and I'd managed o visit  a couple of good pubs afterwards as well, so despite having got a little burnt in the sun, it had been a good trip to York and I will try and get some more cricket in over the next couple of months....

STOP PRESS: Yorkshire managed to pull off a sensational 10 wicket victory having had the upper hand in the remaining 3 days!

Yorkshire 459 all out (131.2) and 41-0 (9.0)

Essex 368 all out (136.0) and 131 all out (59.1)

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