The wrong Hambledon

Hambledon Cricket Club “circa 1750”, according to the club signs, is a couple of miles from the rural Hampshire village and a bit tricky to find, mainly because the directions tend to come at the turn-off and we’re too busy avoiding the on-coming traffic to notice. Sadly, there’s no game on the dome-shaped field when we arrive and the clubhouse windows are boarded off, preventing a peek at any historic memorabilia from an area which has had a significant impact on the modern game. Or so I thought.

A pint at The Bat and Ball Inn was also on the to-do list but we couldn’t find it along the narrow lanes, even though everyone says it’s right beside the ground. No reason to feel suspicious: we were miles from nowhere and there was a cricket club there called Hambledon. It couldn’t be anywhere else, could it? A day after the trip I learn there are two clubs in Hambledon and we’ve picked the wrong one. (Please don’t tell my wife, the driver, about this. She didn’t even want to go to this ground.)

Back in the 18th century the original club was a mix of well-off locals and rich visitors, and its legacy was a hefty contribution to the game’s rules. A straight bat was developed here to replace the curled ones, the width of the bat was restricted to four-and-a-quarter inches and soon they were calling for a third stump to sit in the middle. What their modern team-mates don’t do is give prominent directions to their ground.

There were four of us in the car and nobody spotted the historic site, unlike the Romsey Abbey and Winchester Cathedral, stubborn and spectacular buildings which dominate their towns in beautiful parts of the county. On the way there was a morning with Thomas the Tank Engine and some of his friends. We called it a training session.