The cold damp weather resulted in disappointing attendances at the 112th Scarborough Cricket Festival.

This was particularly hard on the organisers, especially Scarborough Cricket Club's chief executive Cec Snell, because the programme was more competitive and the games more enjoyable than for a long while.

Three-day festival matches are now a thing of the past, partly because players haven't the time or the inclination to play in these games which are of limited interest to the public, and partly because it is almost impossible to find a major sponsor over so long a period.

But Snell had got together a tough bunch of Australians for the curtain-raiser against the Yorkshiremen and you just knew that nothing less than a win would be satisfactory for the likes of David Boon, Michael Slater, Tom Moody and Darren Lehmann.

Under the guise of festival president Tim Rice's International XI the Aussies made it by five wickets with five balls to spare in a tough match which the Yorkshiremen did not wish to lose either.

Spectators also enjoyed a battle within a battle for both Darren Gough and Chris Silverwood were desperate to claim the wicket of their Yorkshire team-mate Lehmann who obviously did not wish to fall to either of them.

They both gave him a rough time before Silverwood jubiliantly had him caught behind, leaving Lehmann to reflect that there could be several similar tussles coming up this winter if all of the trio are involved in the battle for the Ashes down under.

Tim Rice's XI also played some good cricket on Monday against Yorkshire, who scraped home on a faster scoring rate in a rain-hit contest, but once again the attendance was poor.

The best supported festival game was on the Saturday when Yorkshire retained the Northern Electric Trophy in their annual clash with Durham, but there was plenty of interest, also, in the England v Australia women's one-day international on the following day.

Unfortunately, this game experienced the worst weather of all but it still generated a lot of interest and cricket followers in Scarborough were genuinely wanting England to succeed.

England's women cricketers are well trained and disciplined and I hope that the weather improves for their remaining two one-day internationals and for the three-match Test series against Australia, the second game being scheduled for St George's Road, Harrogate, on August 11-14.

Because of the World Cup, next year's festival is moved back to its more traditional time of year and the provisional dates are August 27-September 5.

The schools will still be broken up then and hopefully more families will be attracted to the festival which needs greater numbers of young people taking an interest in it if it is to survive and thrive in the next century.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.