Hundreds vote Castle’s home as county’s best

Uncertainty may surround the 2020 season across all levels of the game, but a popular podcast – which focuses on the fortunes of cricket clubs in the county – brought entertainment and debate with their inaugural competition.

Sixteen clubs entered the contest, which was designed to rank clubs' appearance and general matchday experience, and Shropshire County League Division Four side Bishop's Castle came out on top in Sunday's final against Division Two Lilleshall.

The online competition, the brainchild of Cow Corner Podcast lead host James Hearle, ran throughout last week and gathered tens of thousands of votes – with Bishop's Castle successful with 67 per cent of 1,655 votes in the final.

Such was the popularity of the virtual event it received votes and reaction from former England star Darren Gough and darts ace Wayne Mardle.

Podcast host Hearle even said a prominent BBC commentator got in touch to show his support but could not make his vote public due to inpartiality.

He said: "We ended up with more than 1,600 votes in the final, it's pretty crazy how it went, we've been amazed at the people getting in contact.

"We did it to help promote Shropshire cricket, to include smaller clubs and not just bigger clubs like Wellington, Quatt and Shrewsbury, and the smaller teams that went all the way through to the end absolutely loved it.

"It did get competitive, especially with the bigger clubs involved in the first round. We were amazed at how much everyone got stuck in."

South Shropshire market town club Bishop's Castle's route to the virtual trophy saw them overcome Frankton in round one, Willey in the last eight, Knockin & Kinnerley in the semi-final before their success against Lilleshall – gaining more than 3,000 online votes on the way.

"When the first round draw had Bishop's Castle and Frankton together I thought the winner of that would be hard to beat," Hearle added.

The host, who presents the podcast alongside three colleagues, explained how the idea to start a show discussing his club, Alberbury, has blossomed into just shy of 1,000 online followers in around a year – with the help of a Jack Leach and Ben Stokes coronavirus analogy.

"It started off just me talking about my team but I realised after two episodes I was getting more listeners from other clubs," Hearle said.

"From there it's grown from strength to strength. With no cricket at the moment the most important thing is keeping spirit high."

Cow Corner Podcast gained more than 3,000 retweets last month after posting: 'Just think of it this way...We are Jack Leach and the NHS is Ben Stokes.

'All we have to do is stay in and assist our partner so they can get us through the battle! Don’t be taking any risky singles though! Lyon might not be able to catch, but you could catch Corona! #StaySafe'

The Cow Corner Podcast is available on Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.