Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske’s first team, who achieved promotion back to the NYSD Premier League late last summer.
Safe to say, it’s been an interesting few months down at Marske Cricket Club.
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.
For those who watched the January series, they will have been hooked as Faithfuls and Traitors battled it out for a near £100,000 prize.
For those who didn’t, the basic premise of the show is that four Traitors have to remain undetected through to the final and avoid being voted out.
Noor was a Faithful who reached the final, but the show was eventually won by two Traitors, who shared the prize pot.
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.
Is Faraaz, or Faz for short, a walker?
Nicholls laughs: “That’s a good question, you know. I don’t think he is, no!”
We will talk more about Noor from The Traitors and Noor the cricketer in a while.
Firstly, though, we must talk about the achievement of promotion for Marske’s first team in 2025, with them finishing second in Division One of the NYSD pyramid behind Darlington.
Picture by Leigh Austin Photography: Faraaz Noor in action for Marske’s first team. He has just gained fame through the BBC hit series The Traitors.
Captained by Jack English, they will play in this summer’s Premier League alongside the likes of champions Barnard Castle and long time powerhouses Richmondshire.
“It was a fantastic last season,” beamed Nicholls. “Absolutely superb.
“It’s been a bit of a plan, to be fair.
“We got relegated four years ago now, I think it was, from the Premier League, and we’ve had to rebuild things quite a bit since then.
“We’ve rebuilt the first-team around a core of players that we already had, and we’ve 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.”
Marske were promoted during the final day of their summer in mid-September, when their clash away at Richmondshire seconds was washed out.
They gained six points from that and finished four ahead of third-placed Billingham Synthonia.
“We 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,” recalled Nicholls. “With the points available to you – 25 for a win – it’s not hard to get three points in the NYSD. But we still had to get them.
“In the end, we were rained off. We got them by default in a way, but we deserved it as I said.”
Looking ahead to the challenge of Premier League cricket in 2026, the North Yorkshire club are excited but realistic.
Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske director of cricket Chris Nicholls.
Nicholls said: “We know where we are – fresh out of the first division.
“We’ve only got something like four players who’ve 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.
“We’re actively trying to recruit players with Premier League experience at the moment to help us out.
“Yes, we want to stay in the division ultimately, but we want to do more than just survive.
“The facilities we’ve got scream out to you that we’re a Premier League club. We have fantastic wickets to play on, a lovely bar, a nice pavilion, good practice facilities. We feel we’re a Premier League club, and we want to stay there and compete as much as we can.”
Away from the first team, Nicholls says the club “covers all bases”.
He continued: “We have three senior teams – two play on a Saturday, one on a Sunday – and we have junior representative teams from Under 9s all the way through to Under 19s. So, that’s 9s, 11s, 13s, 15s, 17s and 19s.
“Over the last 12 months, we’ve started to pull together a girls team. That’s at Under 13s, and we have about 10 girls who are part of that. They haven’t played a competitive game yet but will do this summer.
“The club’s heading in the right direction from a cricket point of view – the juniors are thriving, the senior teams are competitive.
“The 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.”
Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Marske Cricket Club.
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.
“We’re a massive supporter of Yorkshire – it’s our county – and we’d love to do more,” said Nicholls. “We think we’ve got the facilities for it. Fingers crossed that will happen once again in the future.”
So, back to Traitors star Faz, the 22-year-old internal auditor from Middlesbrough.
“He’s a very nice cricketer,” said Nicholls. “He came to us from Middlesbrough, and he was one of the first signings we made when we went into Division One.
“He’s a left-handed attacking batter whose been up and down the order a bit. He scores runs, and he scores them quickly. He’s a very, very good slip fielder as well. He’s taken some great catches for us.
“He’s also a really, really nice bloke – very popular here. He’s certainly not a Traitor, put it that way!
“His dad, Babs, is also an umpire in the NYSD as well, and we’re quite close to him.”
Nicholls revealed that the club have had a number on enquiries for photos and autographs, which they have passed on.
“Faz has got some people looking after him from a PR perspective now,” he said. “His notoriety has certainly increased, and he’s snowed under with the things he’s got on.
“I actually had a message from him the other night about getting him down to winter nets, because we’ve started those now. He said, ‘Chris, I’m unbelievably busy, you wouldn’t believe it. I’m getting asked to do all sorts, but getting to nets is on my list of things to do’.
Picture by Leigh Austin Photography. Faraaz Noor bats for Marske.
“The one thing he has said is that he will do anything for the club, and we’re in discussions with him about doing a Traitors quiz night that he’ll perhaps be the quizmaster of and bring some memorabilia along that he’s got.”
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.
“He actually gave myself and the captain this kind of cryptic message. He said, ‘By the way, I’m unavailable for the next four weeks. I’m away with work, with absolutely no mobile phone signal’.
“Myself and Jack said, ‘That’s a bit strange isn’t it. What do we think the story is?’
“Anyway one of the lads turned around and just said, ‘He’s definitely going on The Traitors’. We didn’t believe it, but it all came out afterwards that he had been.
“When he got back, the lads kept pushing him on it in the dressing room.”
So, basically, the long and short of it was that he’d dealt with the deceit on the show much better than he had in the Marske dressing room?
“Yeah, he can’t lie to us,” chuckled Nicholls. “The lads had an inkling that’s where he’d been.
“Look, it was great, and we’re all very proud of him. He deserves everything that comes his way.”