Not out YET!
Two England captains join fight to save the 118-year-old village cricket club under threat from compensation culture and Nimby neighbours
are many more for whom this is simply a quintesement quintessential element of what being g English is all about.
Emotions ns are certainly running high gh in the village.
‘The whole ole thing’s absurd. How can people le move in next to a cricket ground ound and then stop it?’ says a middle- ddle-aged man walking his dog.
He tells me that he has played for the club many times, as has his son, and that it is the cricket which binds the whole place together. He won’t give me his name because, he says, the whole thing has become toxic enough already.
However, it has reached the point where he almost feels sorry for the neighbours who kickstarted this saga. ‘ They probably had no idea that it would go this far. I just can’t think thi k why h they th had to start talking about lawyers.’
Near Boundary Drive, I meet Alan Coombes and his wife Sheila. They have lived by the ground for more than 50 years and can’t imagine Colehill without cricket.
‘ We can watch it from our bedroom,’ says Sheila.
Locals tell me how the surrounding homeowners always leave their gates open during the summer so that players can run in i to t retrieve a ball. When I drop in at the clubhouse after dark, the bar is busy but the locals politely decline to comment. One explains to me that everyone is full square behind the cricketers but they don’t want to inflame things any further.
One of the alleged complainants is a former mayor of nearby Wimborne, Kelly Webb, who, according to club members, has since offered to contribute towards the cost of the th netting. There The is no one in when wh I call at her home. h When approached approach by email, she says that th she is not trying to stop cricket and been the victim victi of media ‘lies’ and even death dea threats. She has since issued a statement saying that she is not no ‘petitioning the club to stop playing playi cricket’. Ih head df for the th new houses h on the boundary. The occupant of one of them declines to comment when I press the intercom at the gate (we may be deep in Thomas Hardy country but there are an awful lot of intercoms and electric gates around here).
Next door, the other brand-new home is still being completed. One of the builders tells me that he has little sympathy for the cricketers. ‘We had twelve tiles broken by balls last summer and we had to repair them at our own expense,’ he says (the club say it was nothing like that number).
Further round, I meet a very different sort of neighbour. If all the residents were like Phil Lewis, there wouldn’t be a problem. Having retired here with his wife 16 years ago, Phil soon realised that summertime brought the odd flying ball. He didn’t complain.
Instead, he applied for planning permission and put up some temporary poles and netting at his own expense. The cricketers come round to help him put it up at the start of the season and take it down at the end.
‘We love living next to the ground. It’s part of country life,’ says Phil, who even loves the sound of Carl the groundsman mowing the pitch. ‘It’s the sound of summer — and Carl’s become a good friend.’
OVER the road, I meet a pensioner who declines to give her name but she has lived here for 30 years and would hate to see the cricket stop. ‘A ball once landed on my car but it was only a little dent,’ she says. ‘What do you expect if you live next to a lovely cricket pitch?’
As of last night comes further news. ‘I’ve just heard that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are now coming to meet us next week,’ says Shane Blackley, who wants to thank the media for transforming the club’s fortunes.
‘Given where this all started, I really don’t think things could be any better now.’
So, for now, the cautionary tale of Colehill cricket seems to be heading for a happy ending.
If not, one of the club stalwarts tells me he has an alternative plan. ‘There’s always a Plan B. If the killjoys want to get rid of the cricket, let’s stick in a planning application for affordable housing. Then see how they fancy looking out on to that!’