William Ainsley, licensed to retail British and foreign wines, spirits, ale, porter and tobacco had seen nothing like it in his 44 years as secretary of Spout House Cricket Club.

Neither had his father, secretary for 72 years before him, nor his grandfather, in office since eighteen hundred and goodness knows.

Spout House cricket ground - where sledging has nothing to do with mad language but is precipitous, headlong, downhill all the way - had after 150 years at last been awarded the cup final.

It was a bit like the three toed sloth, or whatever poor creature it is that has it away approximately every century and a half, but Sunday was the great glorious day.

"Do you know," said William, laconically, "I was beginning to think that it was never going to happen."

Spout House is in Bilsdale, on the motorbike-menaced road from Stokesley to Helmsley in North Yorkshire but otherwise as close to heaven as a cricket ground will ever approach without St Peter himself taking first guard. Cricket truly in the gods.

A memorial to William's father, died in 1956 aged 81, is in the dry stone wall that marks the high level boundary. Far below, near the adjacent Sun Inn, another stone commemorates Bobby Dowson, both wicket keeper and whipper-in of that parish.

Bobby was born in 1816, died in 1902. The inscription says he kept for Spout "for many years".

Even if he began when he was 34, muses William, they've been cricketing up there since 1850.

Hitting the top wall counts four, clearing it six.

No local rule embraces hitting one of the sheep which graze behind it, but they'd rather hit a motor cyclist, anyway.

It was the Lady Feversham Cup, Harome v High Farndale.

Done well to keep fine, they said. The game started a little early ("well, everyone was here"), the crowd numbered seven, the conversation was of the mobile chip van which would end its weekly round at Spout House but had been "fired" - that is to say, set alight - the previous week.

"Another blow to country life", they agreed.

There are no red carpets in Spout House but they'd swept the hut, placed a couple of seating planks atop some of William's beer crates, sent up to Great Broughton for bed sheets to act as sight screens - the match started before they arrived; everyone else being present - and even put some of those uncertain looking patio chairs up near the Ainsley memorial.

The chairs remained resolutely unoccupied, several hampers short of a picnic.

Other local rules address clearing the barn roof, missing the horse trough and running into Madge Ainsley's clothes posts which for the final - and the final alone - had been declared to be outside the boundary.

"Health and safety," said Dave Westway, the Feversham League chairman,

"It wouldn't do to have someone garroted at the cup final."

Harome batted first. We'd last seen them in the National Village Cup final at Lord's in 1991, unsuccessful against a Glamorgan side called St Fagan's which was pronounced as in cigarette and named after an optimistic Irishman who tried to bring Christianity to the Welsh.

This was more or less a second team, though lads like Dave Greenlay (who sounds like he should be an organic egg farmer, but isn't) play regularly at a higher level.

The hut, where a wren's nest was found when they opened up for the new season, had somehow accommodated both sides. "Showers must be out t'back," said one of the Harome batters.

The cup was late like the sheets, discovered that morning in a locked trophy cabinet behind the bar of the Feathers in Helmsley and forcibly removed when no one could find a key.

"Looks like she's had a bump" said the finder - like sheep, cups and other objects of affection are usually feminine in the dale - the incident recalling the 1932 Durham County Challenge Cup final at Feethams, Darlington, when the young Fred Peart had left the trophy beneath his bed in Crook.

Though Mr Peart later became a Labour Minister of Agriculture., the purpose for which he kept the Durham Challenge Cup beneath his bed was never satisfactorily explained.

The wicket isn't so much pitched as excavated out of the hillside, like one of those Amazonian landing strips upon which the young Biggles earned his wings and probably the only level 22 yards for ten miles in any direction.

The roller has probably done more miles than the average Ford Popular.

There had been a dilemma, however. The final should have been played three weeks previously, a gang mower (if not exactly a gang) borrowed for the unique occasion.

Now the grass had grown again, the outfield not so much slow as full stop.

Should the sheep be allowed to nibble it down a bit? To avoid slip ups (as it were) they remained elsewhere.

Harome hit 126-5 from their 20 overs, Greenlay 69 but High Farndale dropping like flies.

"Bastard" shouted a slippery fingered offender as another fell to earth, whereupon a cock at once crew twice but aborted the third, perhaps for fear of appearing too biblical. Success at this level is catching.

A High Farndale fielder wore what appeared to be a 1930s Newcastle United shirt, an opponent sported a red number nine.

The gradient was maybe 100 feet from top to bottom of the field, the view from the bottom boundary of players sawn off from the waist downwards and of bowlers approaching over the brow of the hill, like the cavalry carrying a cricket ball.

Lost balls are, of course, quite common.

A few weeks earlier, they'd spent three minutes trying to find a lost bail.

That High Farndale made a promising reply was down to openers Brian Leckenby and Kevin Wilson.

Leckenby began his cricket at Bransdale, where even the horse flies are thoroughbreds, moved down a bit when Bransdale, sadly, upped sticks.

The Lady Feversham final had always been at Bransdale, too. Thereafter the league decided to rotate it; for Buggins' turn, read Bilsdale's.

Kevin Wilson looked rather like Giant Haystacks, scratched his bottom between overs and is the only player in memory to have hit a six clean over the Sun Inn chimney stacks and into the car park beyond.

"She was a lovely bat, her" he modestly recalled.

Leckenby hit 51, Haystacks 30. After Greenlay was again let loose, however, they finished on 111-4.

They balanced the cup atop the high roller. Lady Clarissa Collin being unavailable ("openin' a garden party or summat") the column was privileged to present it.

Afterwards they drank deep from the trophy in William's best bar - which is, of course, the only one - talked of late lunch and lambing and of when Spout House might again have the final say.

William, his family almost 200 years behind that bar, remained duly cautious but considered it had been quite a nice day.

The following Wednesday they'd fence around the landing strip and allow the sheep to return for the winter.

After its day in the sun, Spout House would be back to nature, and to its natural order.

The last Darlington footballer to represent England (Backtrack, September 12) was Peter Carr - later of Carlisle, Hartlepool and New England Teamen - in the under 18s. He hits 50 next August.

At the end of a disappointing season, Bill Moore seeks the identity of the only cricketer both to have played first class cricket for Durham and to have featured in a record partnership against them.

We return, for the record, on Tuesday