{"id":412505,"date":"2026-02-07T06:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T06:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/412505\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T06:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T06:51:08","slug":"around-the-leagues-marske-cc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/412505\/","title":{"rendered":"Around The Leagues: Marske CC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske\u2019s first team, who achieved promotion back to the NYSD Premier League late last summer.<\/p>\n

Safe to say, it\u2019s been an interesting few months down at Marske Cricket Club.<\/p>\n

Their first team are basking in the glory of promotion as well as celebrating some personal success for their hard-hitting batter Faraaz Noor, who was a star of the recent BBC hit series, The Traitors.<\/p>\n

For those who watched the January series, they will have been hooked as Faithfuls and Traitors battled it out for a near \u00a3100,000 prize.<\/p>\n

For those who didn\u2019t, the basic premise of the show is that four Traitors have to remain undetected through to the final and avoid being voted out.<\/p>\n

Noor was a Faithful who reached the final, but the show was eventually won by two Traitors, who shared the prize pot.<\/p>\n

It is essentially a game of truths and lies, which begs a crucial question for Chris Nicholls, who looks after cricket at the North Yorkshire South Durham Premier League club.<\/p>\n

Is Faraaz, or Faz for short, a walker?<\/p>\n

Nicholls laughs: \u201cThat\u2019s a good question, you know. I don\u2019t think he is, no!\u201d<\/p>\n

We will talk more about Noor from The Traitors and Noor the cricketer in a while.<\/p>\n

Firstly, though, we must talk about the achievement of promotion for Marske\u2019s first team in 2025, with them finishing second in Division One of the NYSD pyramid behind Darlington.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Picture by Leigh Austin Photography: Faraaz Noor in action for Marske\u2019s first team. He has just gained fame through the BBC hit series The Traitors.<\/p>\n

Captained by Jack English, they will play in this summer\u2019s Premier League alongside the likes of champions Barnard Castle and long time powerhouses Richmondshire.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a fantastic last season,\u201d beamed Nicholls. \u201cAbsolutely superb.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a bit of a plan, to be fair.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got relegated four years ago now, I think it was, from the Premier League, and we\u2019ve had to rebuild things quite a bit since then.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve rebuilt the first-team around a core of players that we already had, and we\u2019ve added some good players to that group. It just culminated in things all coming together for us last season. We deserved it at the end of the day because we were one of the best teams in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marske were promoted during the final day of their summer in mid-September, when their clash away at Richmondshire seconds was washed out.<\/p>\n

They gained six points from that and finished four ahead of third-placed Billingham Synthonia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe beat Wolviston at our place in the second to last game, and we knew that we need three points I think it was to go up on the last day,\u201d recalled Nicholls. \u201cWith the points available to you \u2013 25 for a win \u2013 it\u2019s not hard to get three points in the NYSD. But we still had to get them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, we were rained off. We got them by default in a way, but we deserved it as I said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to the challenge of Premier League cricket in 2026, the North Yorkshire club are excited but realistic.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske director of cricket Chris Nicholls.<\/p>\n

Nicholls said: \u201cWe know where we are \u2013 fresh out of the first division.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve only got something like four players who\u2019ve played Premier League cricket before, though we do have a couple who we think are Premier League quality players but are untested at that level.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re actively trying to recruit players with Premier League experience at the moment to help us out.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, we want to stay in the division ultimately, but we want to do more than just survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facilities we\u2019ve got scream out to you that we\u2019re a Premier League club. We have fantastic wickets to play on, a lovely bar, a nice pavilion, good practice facilities.\u00a0We feel we\u2019re a Premier League club, and we want to stay there and compete as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Away from the first team, Nicholls says the club \u201ccovers all bases\u201d.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cWe have three senior teams \u2013 two play on a Saturday, one on a Sunday \u2013 and we have junior representative teams from Under 9s all the way through to Under 19s.\u00a0So, that\u2019s 9s, 11s, 13s, 15s, 17s and 19s.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last 12 months, we\u2019ve started to pull together a girls team. That\u2019s at Under 13s, and we have about 10 girls who are part of that. They haven\u2019t played a competitive game yet but will do this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe club\u2019s heading in the right direction from a cricket point of view \u2013 the juniors are thriving, the senior teams are competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next step for us is to get our second team up into a higher level (currently Division Four, of five) and also to get our third team (Conference South, effectively second division of that structure) into the next level as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske Cricket Club.<\/p>\n

Another thing Marske would like to do is host some Yorkshire second-team fixtures once again, something they last did back in 2019. There was a friendly match scheduled to be played there against Durham in 2020, though Covid put paid to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a massive supporter of Yorkshire \u2013 it\u2019s our county \u2013 and we\u2019d love to do more,\u201d said Nicholls. \u201cWe think we\u2019ve got the facilities for it. Fingers crossed that will happen once again in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, back to Traitors star Faz, the 22-year-old internal auditor from Middlesbrough.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a very nice cricketer,\u201d said Nicholls. \u201cHe came to us from Middlesbrough, and he was one of the first signings we made when we went into Division One.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a left-handed attacking batter whose been up and down the order a bit. He scores runs, and he scores them quickly. He\u2019s a very, very good slip fielder as well. He\u2019s taken some great catches for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s also a really, really nice bloke \u2013 very popular here. He\u2019s certainly not a Traitor, put it that way!<\/p>\n

\u201cHis dad, Babs, is also an umpire in the NYSD as well, and we\u2019re quite close to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicholls revealed that the club have had a number on enquiries for photos and autographs, which they have passed on.<\/p>\n

\u201cFaz has got some people looking after him from a PR perspective now,\u201d he said. \u201cHis notoriety has certainly increased, and he\u2019s snowed under with the things he\u2019s got on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually had a message from him the other night about getting him down to winter nets, because we\u2019ve started those now. He said, \u2018Chris, I\u2019m unbelievably busy, you wouldn\u2019t believe it. I\u2019m getting asked to do all sorts, but getting to nets is on my list of things to do\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Faraaz<\/p>\n

Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Faraaz Noor bats for Marske.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing he has said is that he will do anything for the club, and we\u2019re in discussions with him about doing a Traitors quiz night that he\u2019ll perhaps be the quizmaster of and bring some memorabilia along that he\u2019s got.\u201d<\/p>\n

The particular Traitors series in question was filmed last summer in Scotland, meaning Faz had to miss a good chunk of cricket around July time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe actually gave myself and the captain this kind of cryptic message. He said, \u2018By the way, I\u2019m unavailable for the next four weeks. I\u2019m away with work, with absolutely no mobile phone signal\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cMyself and Jack said, \u2018That\u2019s a bit strange isn\u2019t it. What do we think the story is?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyway one of the lads turned around and just said, \u2018He\u2019s definitely going on The Traitors\u2019. We didn\u2019t believe it, but it all came out afterwards that he had been.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he got back, the lads kept pushing him on it in the dressing room.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, basically, the long and short of it was that he\u2019d dealt with the deceit on the show much better than he had in the Marske dressing room?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, he can\u2019t lie to us,\u201d chuckled Nicholls. \u201cThe lads had an inkling that\u2019s where he\u2019d been.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, it was great, and we\u2019re all very proud of him. He deserves everything that comes his way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske\u2019s first team, who achieved promotion back to the NYSD Premier League late…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-412505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}