AFTER around 170 years at the crease, cricket at Spout House – the world’s most improbable cricket ground, and among the most wonderful – faces what may be its final uphill struggle.

Backtrack has oft waxed whimsical about the vertiginous Valhalla, off the road between Stokesley and Helmsley in North Yorkshire. “There may no ground closer to heaven, unless St Peter himself takes guard,” the column once observed.

Prince Harry played there twice, in 2007 and 2009, even did his stint as club umpire – the pebbles he used as counters framed in the humble hut.

Identified on the score card as Spike W, he went unrecognised by William Ainsley, long-time keeper of the Sun Inn on the boundary and club secretary for more than 60 years. “Oh, does he play for Spout as well,” said William, when told the identity of the stranger in his homely bar.

With Spout’s uncertain future is inextricably linked that of the Feversham League, with which the column has also been long smitten. For the last two summers it has operated with just three teams – Spout, the similarly but less steeply precipitous High Farndale and Slingsby, they of the Flat Earth Society.

At a meeting last Thursday, described by Feversham League secretary Charles Allenby as “rather combative”, High Farndale and Slingsby expressed interest in continuing but Spout were unable to commit.

The club’s annual meeting has been brought forward from February to November 26, when a final decision will be taken. If Spout run dry, it will be impossible for the league to continue.

“We’re trying hard but it’s getting difficult to get young players to play on grounds like Spout,” says club secretary Harry Mead. “We’re facing as honestly as we can the decline of local cricket everywhere.”

CRICKET'S been played at Spout House since around 1850, the late William Ainsley secretary for more than 60 years and his grandfather for 72 before that.

Like midges, local rules abound. “If it ‘its’ en’ ‘ouse it’s fower, but you can keep on running and try for five,” explained William, who died in 2012.

Hitting a passing motor cyclist might be a six, hitting Madge Ainsley’s clothes line – well within the boundary – counted for nothing.

Chiefly, however, the Spout ground is known for its gradients – plunging like a Baywatch neckline, the column once said, and (more improbably) angled like the square on the hypotenuse – and for its rural dual purpose.

Once it was pasture for William’s cows, more recently for sheep. Complaints weren’t countenanced. “If it lands in’t cow plat for one, it lands in’t cow plat for t’other,” said William, phlegmatically. “People complained about sheep shit but they complained even more when it was cows.”

The sheep, sadly, proved inefficient grass cutters, the outfield often overgrown. “Shergar might be discovered grazing amid it all and harnessed to the concrete roller,” we supposed.

Charles Allenby’s certain that the club doesn’t want to fold – “they’re very conscious of the heritage” – but admits that the Feversham is “on the proverbial life support machine.”

Harry hopes that the players themselves will make the decision on November 26. “We haven’t always been able to turn out a team this past season and I can’t see it getting any better.

“Times have changed since the heyday of cricket in Bilsdale and elsewhere. It’s getting harder to attract players, particularly since there’s another evening league in Ryedale.

“For the past five seasons it’s been our mission to keep the club going in memory of William. We’d very much regret the demise of the Feversham League, and there’s nowhere else that Spout House could play, but local cricket is under great stress everywhere.

“I just don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re swimming against the tide.”