Pen Portrait of Elizabeth Coles
I started scoring on an ad hoc basis at Masham in the Dales round about the early 1990s having been dropped in it to do half a match when my team was a man short for a game late on in the season. They had asked the young lad who was doing the book to put on some “whites” because they really wanted to win that day. Some-one in the tea room said “Who is going to do our book?” and some-one else (my husband) said “She will”. That was my very first experience of doing any scoring and I did not know anything at all about it then. A few years later I started doing it regularly when the young lad left to do a more profitable Saturday job with a view to it being full time. After doing the book for a few more seasons I decided I needed to know more than I already did and enrolled in some postal courses then I found out about the Umpires’ group at Hull Zingari ground and joined them with a view to doing the exam which I passed. The umpires of the ERCUSA made me feel very welcome. I continued to score for my team at Masham in the Dales until the end of the 2011 season when I had to resign for various reasons. My husband and I had enjoyed many seasons travelling through to Masham and other clubs in the Nidderdale League until he passed away. I continued travelling by public transport for another 5 years but it became very tiring and accommodation dried up so I felt it was time to call it a day.