Chapter Thirty-Seven Dying Embers So the salad days passed into history. The Bank Holidays still had a role in English cricket but their influence on the Championship was becoming peripheral. Change was gradual but inexorable. May Day enjoyed its share of holiday fixtures and there was a nod in the direction of the past in 1996 when August Bank Holiday Monday was the final day of matches between Nottinghamshire - Surrey, Worcestershire - Warwickshire and Yorkshire - Lancashire. Graeme Archer and Mathew Dowman followed in the footsteps of the Gunns & Co with hundreds at Trent Bridge but there was little play on the Monday owing to bad weather. At Worcester, Ashley Giles and Tim Munton put on 141 for the last Warwickshire wicket and, after mutual declarations, the visitors, desperate for victory to preserve their slim title hopes, set a target on 268 but after a good start Worcestershire called off the chase. At Headingley, rain allowed only 13 overs on the last day after Craig White and Richard Blakey had made White Rose hundreds. There was something of a turning point in 1997; a set of Benson and Hedges Cup matches over the May Day weekend, nothing on Spring Bank Holiday Monday and a full round of fixtures during August Bank Holiday week - including the Roses match and Hampshire-Kent – which started on the Wednesday following the holiday Monday. The sixth and final Ashes Test, scheduled for a Monday finish, ended on the Saturday with Australia spun to defeat by Tufnell. By and large now the holiday Mondays were reserved for one-day games, if, indeed, any were scheduled at all, although there were a few flickers as the new century dawned involving festivals at Swansea and Horsham. Protests were aired. August 2002 saw a round of Championship matches finishing over the weekend and another set beginning on Bank Holiday Tuesday. The Headingley Test ended with a victory for India on the Monday and in the only other scheduled holiday fixture Glamorgan beat Nottinghamshire at Colwyn Bay to move to the top of the Norwich Union 40-over league. A perceptive letter from Angie Tunstall, of Darlington, in the October edition of The Cricketer International , described it as “criminal that on August Bank Holiday Monday only one county match was played.” She urged the ECB, if nothing else, to arrange a full programme of Norwich Union League fixtures for both Bank Holidays, on a system where each county plays one game at home and one game away for each of two Bank Holidays. Organising a full programme on the Bank Holidays during the season would be a way to get children in and hooked on the game, “whilst boosting counties’ revenues with gate money from those of us otherwise left to twiddle our thumbs on these days.” In 2003 the Championship season began on Good Friday, with healthy attendances at the seven county matches, particularly at Bristol for the Gloucestershire-Somerset game. But, with the Lord’s Test against Zimbabwe 192