Two Decades of
Chilmark Cricket Club History
This is a biography, but it could also be an ode. An ode to a team of cricket enthusiasts, some blindingly talented and some who often times have better things to do.
And it's also a deep and reverent bow to the makers of our Cakes and Teas, those talented and stalwart creators of the delightful sugar rush and rich earthy libations to the Innings Break gods.
It's an exploration, a sweeping reflection. Maybe it's even a worthwhile offering to everyone who treads upon the lush grass of the Sunday Match, the community barbecues, and practices at nets.
I've included an excerpt from the introduction below.
Introduction
If sport throws a shadow, then village cricket exists at the very edge of it. In that strange corona of half-light, wobbling nervously, as if at any moment it will be cast out and everyone will see it for what it really is -
a ball game with catering.
But it is a sport. Like darts and chess and cheese rolling. There are rules, and there is a score, and at the end, weather permitting, one team or the other usually wins. What puts it at the periphery of that sporting shadow, however, is the way the teams go about it, how those teams are assembled in the first place, and whether the ball bouncing twice on its way to the batsman constitutes a legal delivery. Which other sport, for example, can have you fielding for one team, batting for the other, and umpiring against both, all in the course of a single match? Which other sport has a tea break and serves actual cups of tea during it (strap in, for catering will be a major theme in this book)?
Village cricket. Say the word “village” and the mind conjures up images of church spires, cottages named for their 18th-century functions, babbling chalk streams and moss-covered dry stone walls. But use it as an adverb and the word somehow becomes derogatory. It’s unpleasant to be called an idiot, but a village idiot? That truly hurts. Though in fairness it’s not too far from the truth. Village cricket is the special cousin of the professional game, hidden in the shire where he can’t do lasting damage to the family name.
Yes, that’s where you find this fringe sport. And that’s where you find the special kind of (athlete’s not quite right) participant who enjoys it. The cricketer who has never played the game, doesn’t really know the rules, and needs to be home in time to watch Strictly.
Which brings us gently around to our point. This is not a book about village cricket itself. It’s about one village team that plays it, sure, but beneath that, it is about something more. It’s about the wonderful contradictions within the human psyche that give life its rich, complicated texture. How we need the virile excitement of competition, but the civility of rules. How we want to trump our neighbours, but also host and impress them.
Essentially, this is about what happens when you mix sport with cheese and pickle sandwiches, Victoria sponge cake, a flock of sheep and 22 participants of extremely mixed ability. It’s about how you can wind up being the most successful at something, even though you’re clearly not very good at it.
Perhaps the best way to explain this is by way of an example.
The date is the 12th of September 2021. It’s the final game of the season and it hangs in the balance. Braemore need 48 runs to win with seven overs remaining. On strike is a batsman that has dealt with all comers and has his eye in. Chilmark, skippered by Ben Fowles, on whom there will be much more later, are in a bit of a pickle.
A bad back, a thigh strain, a Covid infection and a newborn baby had gutted the pool of players available for the game, and of those who were, all the ‘strike’ bowlers have now reached their quota of overs. Fowles has no choice but to turn to his back-ups. They were always going to come into it, but when he dreamt up how the game might play out earlier in the week, Fowles had imagined using them earlier, after the top order had been removed cheaply and there were plenty of runs to play with. But a swift 89-run partnership before drinks put paid to that.
Bereft of options, Fowles tosses the ball to Darren Lee. And here’s the thing: Lee has taken more wickets than any other Chilmark player before him. This season alone he has taken 12—bettered by only one teammate—at an average of 17. On the surface of it, these statistics sound like Lee is a weapon. But that’s the quirky nature of village cricket.
Lee, you see, is also the only Chilmark cricketer to be hit for six sixes in an over—an event that he is reminded about at every opportunity, not least by Ed Lewis, the teammate that did the hitting. His career average is in the high 20s and his economy rate is close to six an over—not far off what Braemore now need to win.
In the 2021 season alone, some of his teammates came up with a new game: Darren Lee’s Bowling Bingo. The aim was to guess how many deliveries it would take before he had bowled a wide down the leg side, a wide down the off, a double bouncer, a full toss and been hit for six (for reasons you’ll discover shortly, he never bowls a front-foot no-ball). On more than one occasion he coloured all those boxes in the space of a single, very lengthy, over. But of course, he has also taken wickets along the way. It is one of village cricket’s irresistible little quirks.
So, Lee goes back to his mark—a spot on the field he identifies once in preparing to bowl and never finds again. He trots in slowly, back slightly bent, as if there’s a chance he still might find his mark, and then begins his delivery stride. This crucial part of the process is in fact the only part he needs bother with: the run-up, given the speed at which the ball leaves his hand, is entirely superfluous.
He plants his right foot down in line with the umpire and hits the bowling crease with his left. The popping crease—all three quarters of a yard his front foot can legally inhabit—goes begging, as he brings his arm over just a little above shoulder height, as if reaching across a bonnet to wipe the windscreen. It swishes past the umpire, nearly knocking off his hat, and the ball is released gently into the anxious autumnal air.
As it makes its journey, a combine harvester that has been humming away in a field the other side of the village falls quiet. The sheep that have been grazing mindlessly next to the game and who occasionally erupt into fits of name calling, pause too. What breeze there is dies down. It’s as if the ball realises that Lee’s efforts alone won’t be enough to propel it the 22 yards to the other end, and so in an act of metaphysical abstruseness sucks all the energy out of the surrounding area to help it get there.
Or it could be that five and half miles from the nearest set of traffic lights, things do occasionally get very quiet out here.
In any case, the ball wobbles angelically to around mid-pitch, pops up invitingly to hittable height, and then, the magic exhausted, dies. The batsman, already committed to his course of action, aims for cow corner, only realising at the last moment that the ball has deceived him. His bat wafts hopelessly through the air.
And then there’s a period of time where the inevitable seems to tease its arrival. It’s enough time for players side-on to the pitch to actually see that the ball has evaded the bat, that it is moving inextricably towards the stumps, and that Jason Stearman behind them hasn’t moved sideways to retrieve it. Enough time for the batsman to turn around and see what is about to happen, but not enough—not quite—for him to do anything about it.
The ball bumps apologetically into the base of the off stump and a bail—just the one—rolls innocently out of its groove, balances for a moment at equilibrium, then falls to the ground.
The breakthrough gives Chilmark an edge in the game. On the sidelines, club chairman Carl Jacobs senses the end is nigh, wheels out the barbecue and tries to start it. But it’s been a while and it doesn’t want to spark. The sound of the ignition switch clicking over and over echoes around the Nadder Valley.
In his next over, Lee appeals for a caught behind, but the umpire doesn’t give it, thinking the sound everyone heard was of the stubborn barbecue refusing to splutter into action. Braemore close in on the total once more.
Needing to reassert control, Fowles does what a good skipper should: he brings himself on to bowl. Earlier in the season, in a remarkable and wholly unexplainable series of events (but one we will attempt to later in this book anyway), Fowles took 5-8 off five overs. But again, and this can’t be stressed enough, it doesn’t explain the whole story. Six of those eight runs came from wides and he hasn’t taken another wicket all season.
Nonetheless, he steps up (literally takes three steps) and rolls his arm over. It’s another half-tracker, met with another lit-eyed batsman, who swings, shanks it abysmally, and pops it gently back up in the air. Fowles, who has already dropped two simple catches that afternoon off other bowlers, gobbles this one up.
Neither bowler takes another wicket. The barbecue still doesn’t start. The new batsman is a sixty-year-old who popped his hamstring while fielding earlier in the day. He comes on with a runner. There is confusion and swinging bats, wides and fluffed run-outs.
When Lee bowls the final over, Braemore need 16 to win. It’s gettable, especially with Lee’s penchant for bingo-winning wides. But even though the final ball sails over the long-on fence, it’s not enough for the visitors and Chilmark win with four runs to spare.
The barbecue sparks into action. Everyone agrees it’s one of the best games of the year and Fowles is congratulated in that unspoken way for manufacturing just the kind of close result that both teams turned up for. He nods as if he meant it.
Next year’s fixture is pencilled in and Jacobs serves up sausages wrapped in buttered bread with a beer on the side for £5 each. The hum of the combine harvester grows over the village once more as a red twilight sky backlights a barn owl’s first hunt of the evening. Another season is consigned to the memories, already seeding myths to be retold.
That is village cricket. That is Chilmark.