When the current Halifax Sunday League champions arrived at Triangle’s bucolic postage stamp of a ground, evocatively named Grassy Bottom, for their first game of the season, little did they know that the game would be overshadowed by a controversial cricketing curiosity.

Batting first on a crisp day, Lightcliffe 3rd XI's young opening pair of Will Leach and Isaac Morley put on a solid 46. When Leach was bowled for a cultured 30, number three Bradley Atkinson pushed the accelerator with a clean hitting 68 featuring four sixes and shots all round the wicket.

All the while young Isaac was going about his business accumulating nicely, gaining valuable experience as a 13 year old playing senior cricket. But then, possibly misjudging the slow pace of the bowler's run-up, Isaac left his ground at the non-striker’s end a fraction early. At this point, the bowler removed the bails at the non-striker’s end, and appealed for a “Mankad”. The crowd booed mildly at first, fully expecting the appeal to be withdrawn and a quiet and avuncular warning to be given to young Isaac. But no, astonishingly Triangle's experienced bowler insisted the appeal should stand, and the umpire was left with no choice but to raise his index finger. Your correspondent can only think that perhaps the bowler was keen to secure the fielding mark?!?

As Isaac slumped off the pitch disconsolate, the reaction of both home and away supporters was one of complete bemusement that this, the most ungentlemanly of dismissals, had been forced on a junior cricketer in a genteel Sunday afternoon game.

Lightcliffe can take two great positives from this misadventure. The first is that Isaac showed great maturity in coping with the incident, and on reflection will learn a valuable lesson which may save his wicket in a far more important game in the future. Second, the restraint of the rest of the Lightcliffe side in getting on with the game and rising above the incident was a credit to them all.

So as the game moved on Lightcliffe let their cricket do the talking and built a formidable 40 over total of 257 for 9, spurred on by magnificent lower order six hitting by Conor Butterworth and Leo Flanagan.

In Triangle’s reply, Redford Holdsworth opened the bowling on his senior LCC debut. His quick away swingers quickly brought the reward of the uprooted middle stump of opener Robertshaw in an impressive spell of 5-3-11-1. Thereafter wickets fell regularly in and among the inevitable slogged sixes. The most successful bowler was Butterworth, who took three wickets. These included plucking Triangle's captain's middle pole from the ground with a rapid nip-backer to the general delight of the crowd.

Despite a late charge, Triangle ended up 19 runs shy, and the 16 match points secured by LCC places them second in the table after one game.

Scorecard here

Editor: In the sport of cricket, Mankading (named after Indian international Vinoo Mankad) is the informal name given to running out the non-striking batter whilst they are backing up, which is when they begin to leave the crease while the bowler is in their final delivery stride. The situation is analogous to the sport of baseball where a player will take a lead off, which risks the pitcher performing a pickoff to throw the ball to a baseman to tag the runner out.

This kind of run-out is part of the Laws of Cricket, but unlike the baseball pickoff, there is a long term unspoken rule regarding the spirit of the game. This unspoken rule suggests that the bowler or team should warn a player first before performing the run out attempt. This warning could be given verbally, or the bowler can perform the run out before withdrawing the appeal. Dismissals of this type can be controversial, particularly when no warning was given, and often involve the umpires having discussions between themselves and the captain of the bowling side in order to confirm if the captain wishes to continue with the appeal even though these dismissals are simple to adjudicate.

The first batsman to be dismissed this way in a Test match was Bill Brown by Vinoo Mankad, playing for Australia v India in Sydney in 1947–48 - hence the term "Mankading.".

Dismissals of this type remain rare thankfully in the game of cricket, and long may this continue, especially when there is no attempt to gain an unfair advantage. I would like to think that should there be exceptional circumstances and an opponent was seeking to gain an unfair advantage, a Lightcliffe player or captain would do the gentlemanly thing and issue a warning to the opponent. Thereafter, I hope we would not consider running out an opponent in a manner which rails against the spirit of cricket, issuing further warnings if required. But I fear how long such Corinthian values can last in a world of win at all costs and instant gratification.