Sturminster & Hinton vs Horningsham

12 July 2009

After the eccentricity of playing 80 overs in a constant downpour at home on Saturday, Sunday brought a completely different and more welcome caricature of the English summer. For this was a game set in a picture of an Edwardian village cricket ground: on a hill outside Hinton St. Mary, a panorama of Dorset countryside stretching to the horizon beyond mid wicket, the cover boundary formed by the drive up to the stone gate posts of a country house beyond long off, and a wooden pavilion with a veranda, straight out of a postcard, where we had scones for tea, while the opening bowler's grandfather in a deckchair recalled matches he played for the village fifty years ago.

Sturminster and Hinton are a decent village club that use the TCL as a competition to blood their youngsters, while the senior players turn out in a Dorset Sunday league. For this game, with some regulars unavailable, they had 7 young teenagers, to our 4, and none with the precocious strength and talent of Max Dell-White.

to be cont.