There’s nothing quite like the unbridled enthusiasm and the untethered madness of village cricket. I hadn’t visited Redbourn Cricket Club since I was about 11 years old, but their fixture card lured me north promising a clash of the titans: their Sunday 1st XI (in fact their only Sunday XI) versus Preston. But not the city in Lancashire, rather the sleepy hamlet in Hertfordshire. I hoped that in Preston’s dozen houses lived a group of superhuman cricketers with a rare skill for bowling googlies owing to a bizarre genetic mutation. But I was never to find out. The friendly village game was cancelled at the last minute owing to Redbourn’s freak progression in a local knockout tournament; they were to face the far more formidable opponents of Letchworth.

The ground is in a beautiful setting on the village common, with various executive retirement villas overlooking it and a road running right through it; thus during the afternoon a procession of 4×4s and convertibles motored lazily across the outfield. “If the ball hits a car, it’s a four,” explained a spectator. I took a seat in the Sybil Trudgett stand – ok, on the Sybil Trudgett bench, (memorial to a local midwife), and immersed myself in the action.

The pitch had been prepared on the edge of the square, making the ground hilariously lop-sided. When facing deliveries from the pavilion end, the batsmen had to merely flick a ball off their legs to score a six. Attempting the same shot at the other end could result in an all-run six, as squads of panting fielders retrieved the ball in relay from a spot on the distant horizon. Within half an hour I had seen Letchworth’s top order batsmen put a dent in a parked car, scatter a group of people cooking sausages on a mini-barbecue, and mildly inconvenience a cycling toddler whose journey was interrupted by the unusual sound of leather hitting stablisers. Balls disappeared into dense undergrowth and enormous gardens with equal regularity, and as club members were dispatched to ask if they “could have the ball back please”, fresh supplies were thrown out from the pavilion.

At 122-3, a chance went to 2nd slip, and as the ball flew off the outside edge the fielder’s eyes opened wide, fixed in an expression of sheer panic. A fraction of a second later the ball rebounded off his shins, and the fielding side convulsed in giggles. This summed up for me the beauty of this level of cricket – of course Redbourn’s captain would rather his fielder had caught the bloody thing, but he was equally happy knowing that a good anecdote had been secured. Letchworth continued to pile on the runs, and another sustained period of big hitting led a window being broken in the pavilion. The club treasurer, pushing his daughter around the ground in a pram, shook his head sadly. Letchworth had set a target of 278.

Redbourn’s reply was muted, the nippy pace attack keeping them restricted to 24-2 off the first 8 overs. The first ball of the innings was a beautifully conceived beamer, arcing magically through the air and sending the opening batsman crashing to the turf. A dropped slip catch shortly afterwards brought taunts from a loud Welshman fielding at third man; the shamed slip fielder proudly and purposefully dropped his trousers in an attempt to answer his critic. As the 3rd wicket stand picked up some pace, we were treated to the wonderful sight of an ice cream van rolling down the road and across the outfield, and I kept my fingers crossed that deep mid wicket might dig in his pocket and buy a Strawberry Mivvi. (He didn’t.) I started to catalogue the nicknames used by the Letchworth team. “Banger” was doing the majority of the bowling from the pavilion end, and the exuberant Welshman at third man – who appeared to be called “Allsorts” – led the shouts of praise whenever “Banger” let go of the ball, picked up the ball, or allowed the ball to roll past him. “Well bowled, Banger!” came the cry as he was lifted for six across the common. “Is that his name?”, a passer-by asked me. “No, I think it’s his rank,” I replied.

As Redbourn became more desperate to reach a respectable score, the wickets began to tumble, and soon they were 166-8 with little prospect of reaching Letchworth’s total. A left arm spinner with an amusingly robotic action was brought on to bowl, and a fielder in the deep began to assemble himself a small picnic with items of food filched from the picnic baskets of the dozen or so spectators on the boundary. Just as he was about to tuck in the last wicket fell. Letchworth were deserved winners, but none of the Redbourn team seemed put out that they’d been eliminated from the competition. They were probably glad they had avoided the superhuman googly bowlers of Preston.