Runs on the Board exhibition in Barnsley celebrates older people's contribution to cricket teams in Yorkshire
Test-match cricket is aptly named. It's a test of skill, strength,
stamina and character. But cricket is played at many levels, and the
second and third teams of amateur club sides harbour those whose ability
to bowl fast and sprint between the wickets is a memory as distant as
having a full head of brown hair. "They're still respected as elder
statesmen because they know how to organise a field, rotate the bowlers
and mentor teenagers still learning the game," says Andrew McMillan.
He's
not an old cricketer; he's a young poet of 22 who has spent many a
weekend afternoon prowling the boundaries of Yorkshire fields, clutching
a notebook and jotting down impressions of these gurus of the game.
Close by was documentary photographer Anton Want. McMillan's words and
Want's pictures have come together for an exhibition called Runs on the
Board, at the Civic in Barnsley, McMillan's home town. He is the son of
performance poet and radio presenter Ian McMillan, who insists that the
commission was "nowt" to do with him.
The Legacy Trust donated
£42,000 to cover not only the fees of photographer and poet but also the
cost of staging the exhibition and publishing a book as part of imove,
Yorkshire's cultural programme for the 2012 Olympics. "The project is an
artistic celebration of the character of cricket and the characters
that play it," says the man behind it, Graham Roberts, a public art
consultant still turning out for Wellington Gold in York at 63. "I felt
that the money for the Cultural Olympiad was going mainly to youth and thought: 'Hang on; let's get older people involved as well.'"
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