Chapman's Magic Patch

The visitors were met at the Sedgefield boundary by a brass band and by banners, led to the Dun Cow where awaited a breakfast of chops, ham, kidneys and sausage and dined again at two o'clock, in a tent on the ground.

Neither the score nor Thornley's means of transport is recorded. However they did it, it would be quicker than the 213.

The great occasion is recalled in a new history of club cricket in Co Durham, compiled over 12 years - he'd thought it would take 12 months - by retired teacher Jack Chapman, from Hebburn.

Jack was head of English, though English master might be more appropriate. His affectionate embrace, unequivocally charming and completely compelling, is a sporting and sociological treasure chest of exquisite riches.

Co Durham it should at once be emphasised, is the area between Tyne and Tees and not some latter day linesmanship devised by a Whitehall wunderkind with O levels in art and geography.

The old county's cricket clubs have included the likes of Cockerton Coffee House and Cornsay Raggy Lads, of Greenside Temperance, Kelloe Zulus - some time after the Battle of Rorke's Drift, apparently - and Shiney Row Blue Ribbon Army.

There was Boldon Mysteries, too. A mystery, says Jack, they remain.

He himself played club cricket for more than 50 years, scored more than anyone else in history for Leslie's in the Tyneside Senior League and yet remains so manifestly modest, so surgically self-effacing and so abashed in his ambition that it's a wonder he ever got the ball off the square.

"The record was only because I played more than anyone else," he says.

Even the back cover, where trumpets traditionally are blown like a heavenly hostess party, describes the author merely as a "batsman of sorts". The book, it adds, is "readable".

He'd thought about having 500 printed, upped extravagantly to 1,000, worries about so grand a design if not so faint an appraisal.

If the budget ran to professional marketing, however, Jack Chapman would leave Harry Potter somewhere among the remainder. We met instead for a couple of sunlit beers, a small bundle of books wrapped in a vintage Adidas bag. "Someone yesterday said he didn't want my book, but he'd give me £30 for the bag," he said.

After Leslie's he played for Blaydon, had a bit of a fall-out - "story there, I'd better shut up" - made new friends at Shotley Bridge and, back at Blaydon, had ten years third-team cricket until he was 64.

Finest hour? "I don't think I ever had a finest hour, but I loved every minute."

A Blaydon history took him nine months and was published in 1991. He thought he might write a Durham club history - "knock it off" - in time for the championship advent the following year.

"I just got the research bug, particularly the early stuff," he says. "I suppose it's a bit like Jimmy's Magic Patch" - only Dandy readers would understand - "I just like going back in time."

The subsequent quest sent him serially browsing to every major library in the county and to several in London, numbered him among the back copies from Blaydon Courier to Teesdale Mercury, found him talking to anyone who'd listen.

"Cricket is a brotherhood and I was a part of it, no matter how insignificant. I just felt that someone had to write it down. It's not much of a tribute, barely scratching the surface, but it's there."

So much marking of score cards has also left him with the habit, like him in Tales From A Long Room, of referring to cricket people by their initials. "I just live 12 minutes drive from the Riverside," he says.

"Every time I go I say a little prayer of thanks for J D Robson."

The book, meantime, records that S H Young's initials entirely reflected his character.

The first recorded match in the county was at Raby Castle in 1751, the first league - "league cricket changed the landscape like a shattering earthquake" - was the Durham Senior in 1891. Two dozen thick files record the line score in every match though statistics, damn statistics, are called upon sparingly, as an occasional Chinaman might be.

The style is almost Stuart Hall - "Coffee Johnny Stevenson cut and pulled with all the subtlety of an axeman on the block" - the intimacy extraordinary, the passion manifest.

There are little gems like the ducks which drowned when rain stopped play at Fishburn, like the batsmen who ran 14 while a dog chased round with the ball in its mouth, like Sacriston professional Wasim Raja, who not only hit a six into a garage but destroyed a Crypton tuner - as Superman himself might almost have - whilst about it.

Hundreds of old friends are there: Jack Watson ("taciturn and generous in turn"), Bobby Orton - 10-20 for Kimblesworth against Coxhoe - Neil Riddell, Bulldog Billy, Alex Coxon of Yorkshire and England, as resolute as a batsman as in his determination never to talk to the column. Alex is 87. The chances of his mellowing probably weren't improved when he broke a wrist at Boldon on Saturday.

Cream Teas and Nutty Slack is a social history, too. "Cricketers' attention was deflected in the Spring of '39," he writes, pun pending. "Ironing flannels gave way to more pressing needs." Another beer. Club cricket's collapse has long been foretold, he says, and has mined the archives to prove it.

"Languishing," said the papers in 1880, "dying" in 1962.

Once there was the Deerness League and the Derwent Valley League, the South-East Durham Combination, the Stanley and District and the dear old Mid-Durham Senior.

The number of senior games in the county fell by a fifth in the 1990s, and falls yet.

He is optimistic, nonetheless. "Cricket has been written off many times, but after 250 years we're still here. Perhaps the enormous extent of it will be diluted, perhaps not so many second and third teams, but I'm encouraged by what's happening at the Durham Academy.

"By crikey, there are still a lot of good young players and keen people out there."

His researches also discovered a letter written to the Consett Guardian in August 1953 by someone signing himself Old Timer.

"If records were available and someone could be found to write the history of local cricket I am in confident in saying that a very thrilling story would be unfolded," he wrote.

Jack Chapman has finally written it. "Thrilling or otherwise, he has his story."

* The 236 page Cream Teas and Nutty Slack is available from the author, price £14 95 plus £2 post and packing, at 5 Park Road, Hebburn, Tyne and Wear NE31 2UI. If ever there was a case of buying now while stocks last, this is it.

Bill Aisbitt's funeral was held yesterday. He won last year's Albany Northern League "Unsung Hero" award, and those two words said everything.

"You couldn't be in Bill's company for very long without him mentioning Shildon or football," the minister told an overflowing Methodist church, and might have abbreviated it to "Shildon football."

Bill had been on Shildon's committee for 50 years, much of the time as chairman or groundsman or both.

He was at the ground seven days a week, even on Christmas Day, gave everything and sought nothing whatever in return.

His most memorable moment, perhaps, was when the council quoted £40,000 to repair a dangerous boundary wall at the ground.

Bill found some material, some equipment and some time and did it for nothing.

He was 72, 40 years a welder at the wagon works, and will be much missed, not least at Shildon Football Club.

Had they not moved the goal posts, if cricketers may so do, Middleton St George's achievements on Tuesday night would have overflowed Jack Chapman's next edition.

They played at Cliffe, just over the Tees at Piercebridge, and in the allotted 12 overs hit 341-0 - Gary Jemmerson 210 off 40 balls, including six sixes in an over and seven successive sixes, Paul Rogers 129 off 32 deliveries.

"It was like the Alamo, shots going here, there and everywhere," says MSG secretary John Rogers, Paul's dad.

A qualification, however: it was the Darlington and District League seven-a-side competition, in which fours count (for some reason) as six, and sixes as ten.

Remarkable, notwithstanding. Thus subdued, Cliffe edged to 75 all out in reply.

Back to cricket at Sedgefield, and the game - whilst the column was on holiday - between the Barmy Army and the Sedgefield Booze Boyz.

(Descendants, perhaps, of the Cornsay Raggy Lads).

Improbable, if not quite barmy, the visitors found themselves boosted not just by Sedgefield skipper Mike Ridley but by Dermot Reeve - three tests, 29 one day internationals. The Victorians would have turned band and banners out.

Despite several pre-match refreshers, Reeve struck the first ball into the car park, put on almost 100 with Ridley and helped the Army to 153 off 20 overs.

Sedgefield won with two balls remaining, thanks partly to Reeve being no-balled.

"Everyone was amused except Dermot and the two batsmen at the crease, who received a couple of lively deliveries thereafter," says Sedgefield's Malcolm Dickenson.

It ended happily. The Army now plans an annual encampment.

Jimmy Montgomery, among the North-East's football legends, becomes a first time grandfather any day. More venerable yet, the spring-heeled Monty will be 60 in October.

We mention it because, paternal duties permitting, he will be back between the sticks for the half-time penalty competition in the inaugural Tow Law Town Charity Cup.

It's on Friday July 11, a Lawyers select against a Weardale select - but since this column greatly overflows, more of that nearer the time.

More imminently, Willington FC hold a summer fair, auction and sale of football programmes and memorabilia tomorrow from 10-4pm tomorrow, the sale continuing on Sunday from 11-3pm.

"There are some really nice items," says club chairman John Phelan.

The sport which can only be played right handed (Backtrack, June 24) is polo.

Today back to Jack Chapman's masterwork.

The highest number of league wickets in a Durham season was the 134 claimed by Esh Winning's professional in 1991. Readers are invited to name him.

Another spin on things, the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: ??/??/2003