The Cricketers, Selby

This Sam Smiths pub was a surprise to me, as I had planned my day out in Selby using the CAMRA website, which is still showing it as closed. The very friendly licensee told me it reopened in February, and on checking, when I could eventually look at my phone, I could see that it had been marked as such on this website within days. There's hope that with Humphrey Smith starting to take a back seat the ban on phones and such will be gradually relaxed, and this would be a lovely pub to take a few photos in. The walls are covered with cricket memorabilia and pictures, some of them very good quality drawings, seemingly made by copying old photos, of famous Yorkshire cricketers. I spotted Fred Trueman, Geoffrey Boycott, Len Hutton and Raymond Illingworth and quite a few others that were half-remembered names from leafing through old copies of Wisden. There is Old Brewery Bitter on hand pump available here (£3.60/pint), and my half was better than tolerable, though it's nothing like I remember this beer from 50 years ago, when it was distinctively different from other beers; now it's just ordinary.