CLIFFE Cricket Club is a few miles west of Darlington, scenically situated near the south bank of the Tees and thus, contentedly, in North Yorkshire. When last we were there, summer of 2015, things were pretty parlous.

Both teams finished bottom of their respective divisions in the Darlington and District League, relegated with three wins between them. The seconds had seven times been unable to raise a side.

The nadir came on the season’s last day when the seconds again conceded and the firsts, patched, watched Haughton total 240-odd and managed 38 in return.

To compound matters, thieves broke into their garage and stole most of the club’s equipment. The headline back then was “Cliffe edge”. It was never going to be “Cliffe top.”

Though too many other village teams still struggle or have folded, though “conceded” remains a lugubriously familiar scorecard summary, at Cliffe there’s been a remarkable step back from the precipice.

Last season the first team won their last seven matches and were promoted back to the A division, the seconds were third in Division C.

New roll-on covers have been bought with the help of a £3,000 ECB grant, new sponsors attracted, new players recruited, new passions stirred.

“Once if we appealed for volunteers we might have got one or two,” says second team captain Chris Sowerby. “Now there are ten or 15.”

On balmy Bank Holiday Monday the seconds are in force at Middleton Tyas while the firsts, home to Barton, have 26 players from whom to choose.

Even 64-year-old Ian Peacock has to take his turn with the twos, though there are those who suggest that provision of Mrs Peacock’s jammy flapjack at tea is alone worth higher things.

Richard Mallender, the club secretary, admits that the future had been “uncertain to say the least.” Now, he says, the selection committee is actually having to do what the name suggests – “rather than just beg anyone who can don whites to make up a team.”

“We really feel,” adds Richard, “that the dark days of 2015 are behind us.”

THE CCG, as they like to call it, is approached up a private road and then across a field where sheep graze with their young, if not quite lambs to the slaughter then heedless of flying cricket balls.

Led by the Earl of Newcastle, Royalists fought a Civil War battle against Puritans here in 1642. Newcastle, unusually, won. Fire’s more friendly now.

The ground’s glorious, the tree at one end said (apocryphally) to have been included in the Guinness Book as the most perfectly formed oak on any English cricket ground.

Another tree, little less handsome, overhangs the field by the pavilion. No matter how high it’s hit, local rules allow just four runs.

The air’s full of spring, a mix of mown grass, oilseed rape and wet paint. Much is the work of groundsman Dickie Adamson, inexplicably known as the Manfield Rickshaw though Cliffe Richard might be more appropriate. Far beyond third man, the spring’s first cuckoo greets the day.

The start’s slightly delayed because James Dykes, the umpire, has nothing on which to count to six except his fingers. It’s the first season that the top division has had neutral umpires, the single official paid £30 a match and obliged to stand at both ends. None supposes that they do it for the money, or that they’ll claim the national minimum wage.

James is 71, former innkeeper and Teesdale councillor, now runs a B&B and is on the committee of Barnard Castle rugby club. The week before he’d played walking rugby.

“They said I’d be all right because there was no tackling. They didn’t mention the falling down,” he says.

Barton bat first. After ten overs they’re 33-3, the wickets all claimed by 21-year-old Tom Sowerby, known as Sowers and more frequently with Darlington II. A dog yelps, excitedly.

“Tom’s not really a bowler at all,” says Chris, his dad.

The following over, Barton’s John Murray, the butcher’s boy, smites the first six in an innings which will bring him 104 runs. The dog yelps, perfidiously.

The boundary’s mostly marked by a wire fence. Younger fielders vault it, their older colleagues straddle it in the manner of an arthritic hippopotamus trying to mount an elderly, acquiescent mate.

The curious thing is that the more young Murray deposits the ball into the sheepfold, the closer the critturs crowd. It’s hard enough teaching cricket to Americans, but to sheep?

THE atmosphere’s terrific. None swears, none dissents, none disputes and none suggests where the linesman might relocate his flag (or whatever is the cricket equivalent.) In the Darlington and District League, sledging’s still something done on plaggy bags in the winter.

The most frequently heard on-field observation is “Good areas.” As in football, I’ve no notion what it means, though there are happy ways in which this is nothing like football at all.

Best of all, these guys are encouragers and not the polar opposite.

On a scorching day, each innings has two drinks breaks. So much is supped that they may have to send for a bowser.

James reports afterwards that one of the younger players had let something slip. The umpire quietly made the “zip it” sign. “Next over he came across and apologised,” says James.

Barton have fielded a team, and a fair few followers, though it’s the day of the village duck race. Though a metropolis compared to Cliffe – no one, next to no one, lives in Cliffe – their players on the wooden veranda talk of shooting, sheep shearing and other country pursuits.

One complains that he’s been told he’s too old to join the Young Farmers’ Club, a second suspects he has worms.

Sam Gibbs, another Barton player, lives getting on 50 miles away in Harrogate. When his car conked out the week previously, he caught the train. They let him off his subs, and gave him a free tea, too.

With three of their 40 overs remaining, Barton are all out for 193 – Paul Simpson claiming two in two balls and five bonus points for Cliffe. The dog’s asleep in the sunshine.

THE tea’s terrific, the talk of how swiftly the wicket has changed from paddy field to dust bowl. A bit too quickly, they reckon.

Tom Sowerby hits 30, Andrew Glover – a journalism lecturer, of all things – adds 24, but the home side shows little sign of ever reaching Barton’s total. They close on 124-8, never what might be supposed a Cliffe hanger but always a greatly enjoyable reminder in the sunshine of the joys of grass roots cricket.

Both teams retire to the pub and raise a glass to it.