Contacts:
Graham Lewis Chairman Tel: 01725 517523
glewis@maytime86.freeserve.co.uk
Alan Cousins Club Captain Tel: 01425 655694
aland@cousins86.freeserve.co.uk
Neil Fotheringham Vice Captain Tel: 01425 650810
please contact one of the above to find out more
Learning to live with beauty and the beasts
Village people by Alan Lee
“When new teams come here, it sometimes gets embarrassing,” Alan Cousins, the captain, said. Only with prima donnas, surely? For most visiting sides, the primitive element is richly compensated by playing in a ruggedly beautiful setting against unpretentious optimists. Just how most of us still fondly imagine village cricket to be.
Certainly, that was the attitude adopted by Easton and Martyr Worthy on Sunday. Probably the best village club in Hampshire, they travelled from Winchester expecting to have fun and to win their second-round tie in the npower Village Cup. They achieved both, though Godshill at least fared better than the 37 all out they mustered against the same club in the same round of the inaugural competition 32 years ago.
Godshill is aptly named. It is in the New Forest, approached over cattle grids and past idyllic thatched cottages and signposts that warn of animals on the road. The village used to play on the green outside The Fighting Cocks pub but, since 1951, home has been a patch of open forestry land, cleared of gorse but not wildlife.
It is achingly lovely but painfully impractical. Outside the pavilion, a board details the Forestry Commission bylaws that outlaw everything, from setting up beehives to delivering a sermon. Expressly prohibited in clause XXIV is “to play or practise any game or sport in such a manner as to disturb the peaceful use of such land or endanger the public or animals”.
Survival here is a constant battle, progress almost impossible. Pavilion extensions are routinely blocked — if not by the Forestry Commission then by the council, the commoners or the verderers. There are no sightscreens, no pitch covers, just rudimentary railings to keep the animals off the square. The lack of modern facilities persuades youngsters to go elsewhere. “We only have one team and even filling that can be a struggle,” Cousins said. “It was mid-morning before I found our eleventh man today.”
Nearby clubs have given up on such struggles. Fordingbridge no longer has a cricket side and Downton, the nearest village club, folded a year ago, donating to Godshill their motorised roller.
Until then, rolling the square had required weekly volunteers, inevitably corralled by Cousins, the heroic figure every such club must have. The manager of a DIY store in Salisbury, he is captain, treasurer, fixture secretary and groundsman. The club secretary is his wife, Helen, whose mother, Daisy, has made the teas for almost 40 years, since her own husband, Reg, carried the club as his son-in-law does now.
Reg Horsburgh is 84 now and walks with a stick. “But I’d have played today if they were short,” he said, improbably. “I played regular till I was 70.” It was the wartime dream of Horsburgh, while serving in Germany, to establish his village club on this site. He cleared the land himself, then helped to build the pavilion. “We only got it because a pal of mine won the football pools,” he chuckled.
Godshill enter the Village Cup every year, acknowledging that they will probably depart the strong Hampshire group early. One year they reached the fourth round, by dint of a bye, a forfeit and a washout decided by a toss. A local radio station, unaware of the circumstances, sent a reporter to ask Cousins their secret. “I said it was all down to the cow manure,” he recalls. “It didn’t work, though — we eventually had to play a game.”
Godshill are eight divisions below Easton in the Hampshire League, so the game was the equivalent of Arsenal against Tiverton Town. Easton have three times reached the last eight; Lord’s is a realistic aim. They arrived wearing their sponsored kit, carrying cases that could barely fit in the pavilion.
There were eight ponies on the field when play began, including two saving a single at extra cover. Gradually, though, they lost interest. It was a contest for a while, but Easton farmed 98 off the last ten overs to reach 220 and Godshill looked pensive over Daisy’s home-made sponge cake.
Their best batsman was out third ball and only Cousins, who not only prepares the ground but takes root on it, delayed the inevitable. The captain scored 36, the rest managed 7, 0, 4, 1, 0, 2, 0, 4 and 0 and were grateful for the extras column. Still, 75 was a good bit better than 37. “Never mind,” Cousins said brightly, “the pub’s only down the road. Come on boys, let’s get these fences up, the ponies are coming back.”
