Home British baseball GB National Team versus Trescothick’s Bangers

GB National Team versus Trescothick’s Bangers

by Joe Gray

If you are a regular visitor to the site and don’t live too far from the South-West of the country, then the date Saturday 4 October should already be in your diary, in your Outlook calendar, on the back of your hand, or wherever else it is you keep things organized.

As brought to the attention of BaseballGB readers by Matt back in March, this is the date of the game between the Great Britain National Baseball Team and a squad of top cricketers, which is part of Marcus Trescothick’s benefit year and will take place at the County Ground in Taunton (a cricket pitch that will be transformed into a baseball field for the event). There are now some more details available.

First of all, the 9-inning game is scheduled to start at 2pm, although the entertainment will commence before then, with batting practice and the other traditional pre-game sights to be taken in. Tickets are £10 for adults and £5 for under-16s and can be purchased by phoning 0845 337 1875. On the Sunday, an all-day youth clinic will be run by the GB team.

The current squad of cricketers, which will be captained by Trescothick, is billed as including Graeme Hick, Alec Stewart, Robert Croft, Simon Jones, Geraint Jones, and the King of Spain, Ashley Giles. So that’s four members of the England team who won the Ashes series in 2005 (MT, SJ, GJ, AG), the leading run scorer in Test cricket in the 1990s (AS), and one player with over 40,000 runs to his name in first-class cricket (GH) and another with over 1000 wicktes (RC). The names are provisional at the moment, but there could well be more rather than fewer big names signed up by the time the day arrives. There can be few people with sufficient hand-eye coordination to make a living in cricket who could refuse the opportunity to see if they can launch one out of the park.

There is also a competition being run by Subway to win tickets and the opportunity to throw out the first pitch. If you are interested in this, the instructions I have say to send a self-addressed envelope with your name, address, email and phone number to Marcus Trescothick Bangers Baseball Competition, Subway Regional Head Quarters, 256 Southmead Road, Bristol, BS7 9AF.

This match may well lead to a bit more cricket-themed content on BaseballGB over the coming weeks, but not at the expense of baseball. There’s plenty of room for both great sports in this world.

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5 comments

Joe Gray September 2, 2008 - 12:12 pm

Although Hick will be retiring from cricket at the end of this summer, I suspect that he will be particularly keen to play at Taunton, as this is the ground where he compiled his career-high knock of 405 not out back in 1988.

http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/england/content/current/story/367336.html

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Joe Gray September 3, 2008 - 2:56 pm

More details on the youth clinic have now been published:

http://www.britishbaseball.org/gen_insert.php?from_level3=Articles&db_story=2725

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Joe Gray September 18, 2008 - 10:24 am

Hopefully, Hick can recover from a recent injury to play in the match:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article4769519.ece

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BaseballGB » Blog Archive » Beautiful weather is not wasted thanks to innovative baseball club September 21, 2008 - 1:21 pm

[…] to come in 2008. There is the match between the GB national team and a squad of top cricketers already mentionedon this site, which is taking place on Saturday 4 October in Taunton. Furthermore, I have heard that […]

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BaseballGB » Blog Archive » An Autumn Classic: Great Britain versus the Bangers October 2, 2008 - 11:45 pm

[…] attention should be given to the players in the Great Britain squad. So, having previously taken a brief look at the cricketers named in the publicity material, I will here run through the composition of Great […]

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