Well, there we were! We few, we happy few, we band of cricket fans – and not so few either.
Around 7pm the gathering started, culminating in around 45 of us.
Familiar and welcome faces, new and equally welcome ones too.
The return of the smiles and greetings we’d missed out on.
In a new venue, too.
Thanks to Simon Foster, we reconvened in Beverley Town CC's clubhouse alongside the pitch and scoreboard – how appropriate.
New venue, new private bar, new meeting day – and miraculously Brian's new confident handling of the PA system. I think he spent the last two years practising!
Same format though, same expectations of a night of cricket talk and the airing of some robust opinions.
Not wrong there, then.
Mr Kevin Howells kicked us off for the new season – one of the voices of cricket. Familiar tones, familiar passion for the game expressed honestly and fluently.
Essentially he dwelt on three themes during the course of the evening: intertwined and revealing of his views.
First came his passion for four-day, red-ball county cricket.
Shropshire-born he has no affiliation for any first-class county, but he loves the highs and lows this format offers above all others.
The raw emotions. 'The stories' involved. The incredible finishes served up on the penultimate and final days of the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
And plenty of others share this passion.
At 4.50pm on the final day of Warwickshire's great escape at Edgbaston, the number of listeners to the BBC Radio commentary leapt to some 42,000 (by comparison an England game attracts c.71,000).
Both figures exclude digital listeners and those glued to the livestream.
Kevin gave us an insight into that dramatic last session too.
After the match, he interviewed a clearly exhausted Liam Norwell. With Hampshire six wickets down, chasing only 139 to wine, Liam was spent. But skipper Will Rhodes has other ideas and tossed him the ball regardless.
As each subsequent wicket fell the commentators were turning to each other wide-eyed in amazement.
A second theme took in the High Performance Review – and his hope, also expressed by new ECB Chair Richard Thompson – that this will be the last such exercise.
Kevin had positive things to say here, but was appalled to find red-ball supporters branded as 'part of the problem, part of what is holding the game back'.
Clearly not an opinion he shares – and an attitude to supporters not shown by comparable sports like rugby union or league.
Alongside this Kevin took in the Hundred, seeing it as a vehicle for attracting a new audience while offering nothing unavailable in the Blast or other T20 competitions around the world.
I was astonished to learn that a 90-strong ECB team was responsible for marketing the Hundred – with just seven working on other competitions. Richard Thompson intends to combine them as a single team working across all formats.
Finally, Kevin covered issues of cricket's accessibility.
What can the game do to involve more parts of the country and a wider range of communities?
Mention of the 'minor counties' (as a Shropshire lad he feels this keenly), greater diversity among players and spectators by involving more schools (not just private ones), communities and leagues, and of course expansion of the women’s game.
Kevin recognises the financial challenges facing the game.
While the greater stories and emotions may lie with red-ball cricket, it’s the Blast and shorter formats that bring in the money.
Ah, yes. Money, and more specifically, the ‘money men’ – those with no real understanding or love of the game: seeing only cold, hard cash attracted by short, intense competitions involving internationally recognised players.
Comparison was drawn with the financial issues currently facing rugby union.
Kevin felt that that the financiers would soon max out their interest in cricket and move on.
I'm not sure though if his view reflects hope rather than expectation.
Linked strongly to his theme of greater access and diversity was a call for us all to help make this happen.
We who love cricket need to talk about it and share it with others – and that includes those who see the game differently.
Kevin painted a vivid picture of watching a Hundred game with his son (aged 14 and playing for Skipton).
While Dad loathed the focus on the crowd when he’d rather concentrate on events in the middle, his son loved seeing the spectators mugging for the cameras.
He talked about meeting a parent at Skipton CC, who'd taken his children to a Hundred game, which they'd enjoyed, then on to the Blast and then an international.
There is more than one door into the game, Kevin stressed, and we should welcome all who join us, however they find their way in.
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First question as always belonged to our chairman.
Why were England finding it so difficult to get a successful opening pair?
Kevin isn't sure what 'Bazball' is, nor if Zac Crawley is an answer to the opening conundrum.
He sees plenty of good openers on the county circuit, but potentially the skills of patience and ability to leave the ball associated with Strauss or Cook simply don’t exist in enough current cricketers.
Is there a risk of wealthy Surrey dominating for some years to come?
Unlikely, largely because any team needs a balance of developing players and experienced ones.
Money matters but if players are playing only for the cash, they stop striving to be the best and teams suffer.
While Surrey can invest into public schools like Whitgift, Essex has adopted a different strategy. They've turned to the local leagues for future talent and have been impressed.
Mention of leagues led Kevin to ponder if August (now problematic for red-ball cricket) could see more people involved by inviting league teams to play at county grounds, or whether some kind of 'feeder' system could see national counties playing 1st-class cricket even if not against 1st-class counties.
Could the High Performance Review have a hidden agenda? Is its real intent to restrict county cricket to clubs with test match grounds, letting the others slide?
Kevin thinks a lot about cricket during miles of motorway driving and feels this is a possible scenario. But fans of county cricket should not accept defeatist or elitist attitudes any more than capitalist ones.
Is Kevin concerned that festival grounds are falling away e.g. Scarborough, Tunbridge Wells?
Definitely so if these grounds should cease to exist. North Marine Road, for example, means a lot to a wider community.
If championship games are cut to ten per season, Scarborough may not get a game and could probably not keep going on the revenue from limited-overs matches only.
But maintaining county cricket at 'out grounds' does have cost implications for the counties.
Is the Hundred trying to involve more areas of the country than what to an outsider seems a clique of 18 counties? asked a fellow 'Stokie'.
Kevin is keen that success and failure alike should have consequences, i.e. promotion, trophies or relegation.
Perhaps a wider group of teams, possibly in three divisions, and maybe including ‘minor’ counties could help achieve this.
Ben Stokes grew up in Cumbria, outside the 1st-class structure. He would probably have been spotted anyway, yet how many other talents are missed.
Still, cricket is not a minority sport.
Nor is county cricket almost a cult, as proved by the compelling last 48 hours of the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Prior to questions, the raffle raised £120 for society coffers.
I saw Brian rub his hands with glee – thanks as always to everyone who contributed.