It's heaven and Helmsley (From The Northern Echo)

It's heaven and Helmsley

10:00am Tuesday 9th August 2011 in Backtrack By Mike Amos

Duncombe Park isn't much like the Feversham League at all. Duncombe Park has sight screens, for heaven's sake; Duncombe Park has covers, nets - and not just for keeping larcenous thrushes off the strawbs - even a proper pavilion with a little beehive thing on the roof.

Down yon end there's a structure that at one time might almost have passed as a grandstand but, lest it get above its station, is now known as the scratching shed, instead.

Duncombe Park even has a crowd. The crowd answers to Sid Bonkers and we've encountered him before.

Mr Bonkers, self-styled after Sid and Doris Bonkers who formerly featured in Private Eye, is a genial, grey bearded gentleman who lives in Thornaby, Teesside. Duncombe Park's ground is at the back of the cemetery in Helmsley, North Yorkshire, getting on 40 miles to the south and epicentre of the fabled Feversham.

He has travelled, as always he does, on his vintage Ariel motor cycle, settled patiently into his picnic chair to await the start of play. It's a lovely, languid, evening.

He discovered the Feversham Cricket League, he says, after a motor bike rally at Spout House, in Bilsdale, and decided that cricket on that near-perpendicular pitch was something he just had to see.

Now he rarely misses a game, ambles elsewhere around the Feversham when Spout House are idle. "I never watch cricket on television, am told there's a club in Thornaby but I've never seen them.

"There's just something very special about watching cricket in the Feversham, something that immediately got me hooked."

We are kindred spirits, of course.

An annual event anticipated like a child on a Sunday School outing, the Backtrack column has faithfully followed the Feversham - blessed, blissful, bucolic - for getting on 20 years.

There have been the beauties of Bransdale, only the horse flies suggesting a sting in the tail, the glories of Gillamoor, the daffy delights of High Farndale and the clothes line string across Spout outfield, awaiting the unwary mis-fieldsman.

Duncombe have returned after a ten-year absence, bringing the membership to five and thus slightly lessening the pressure on its tranquil, timeless survival.

In the Feversham League, sledging is something that takes place between wicket and long-on boundary.

Duncombe Park, crowned champions the week previously, are playing High Farndale who need to win the make the top four play-offs. Eighty per cent of the league makes the top four play-offs.

The journey down is no less lyrical: Esk Valley line as far as Grosmont, North Yorkshire Moors Railway thence to Pickering and there met by Charles Allenby, the league's incomparable (and probably irreplaceable) secretary.

Mr Allenby, as probably we have observed previously, bears a marked resemblance to the Big Friendly Giant but is almost certainly a better administrator.

The NYMR whistles off six minutes after the Whitby-bound train arrives. Integrated transport may be considered a thing of the past, too.

The great thing about NYMR trains is that they smell like railways used to do, and that's even before the stonking, stinking, sentimental, sweet-scented steam engine runs merrily around and attaches itself to the right end.

The ticket confirms that I'm neither a bicycle nor a perambulator, which is vaguely comforting. The journey is joyous.

The last attempt, two weeks ago, had been aborted by a summer deluge. Though the forecast's good, the league secretary would probably persuade them to play this one in snorkels and flippers. Happily, there is no need whatever.

A plaque on the pavilion wall notes that the building and the swimming pool behind it were funded in memory of Charles William Slingsby Duncombe DSO, third earl of Feversham, and of Lady Marjorie Beckett, his mother, who died the year after her son in 1964.

Sir Richard Beckett is now league president, though it was five years before anyone remembered to tell him. "He just said ‘Thanks very much'," says Charles.

Sir Richard, clearly a good chap to know - both a QC and a non-executive director of the ever-burgeoning J D Wethersppon pub group - had even turned up for a match at Spout the other evening.

"My grandfather was his grandfather's butler," says Charles.

William Ainslie, whose family have had the Spout House pub and adjoining land for 200 years, is also at Duncombe last Friday. Though happily much improved after a recent illness, William has had to close the pub but remains a Feversham fan.

The other night they'd not got home from a match at Nawton until ten past two after an accident blocked the road.

William pronounces "two" as others pronounce cow "Ten past tow," he repeats, as if still not over the lost shuteye.

Duncombe also have a Saturday side that's top of the York Senior League third division, the Feversham team resurrected at the instigation of Brian Leckenby who's scored five Senior League centuries this season.

His dad, Brian senior, played Feversham, League cricket for 45 years, chiefly for Middle Baxtons which was a farm with a flat - flattish - field and an elderly railway carriage for a pavilion.

The elder Leckenby sits in the scratching shed, reciting former Feversham teams like a long-lost page from a Bradshaw's timetable. Beadlam and Bransdale, Pockley, Low Farndale, Sinnington, Rievaulx, Normanby….

"A lot of us were just farm workers," he says. "There's not so many of them about now, either."

Colin Humpleby, 24 years Duncombe Park's secretary, is delighted to have a team back in the Feversham. "The York Senior's a different level altogether, of course, like comparing Middlesbrough to Chopgate, but this is a way of getting the youngsters a game and keeping them involved."

The skipper had wanted him to play. "I couldn't, I had the beer lines to do," says Colin.

Groudsman Alan Kent, involved for 23 years, admits that the Feversham's only problem is the wickets. "Unfortunately some of them aren't very good.

"Here you have true bounce. The only way you'd get your head knocked off would be if the bowler wanted to knock it off."

The photographer's particularly fascinated - "obsessed," he says - by the scorebox, a cross between a dovecote and one of those clocks from which a weatherman hourly emerges.

High Farndale bat, without need to look where they're stepping. That's another thing that's Duncombe different: no sheep. Come to think, no pesky horse flies, either.

It begins a bit late. "Always does," says Sid Bonkers, affably. Long forgotten on the great majority of cricket grounds, the prevailing sound is not of bat on Willow but of laughter. It's only a grassroots game, after all.

The photographer, a Feversham first-timer, is texting his mate. "I'm on a cricket ground in rural North Yorkshrie on a lovely August evening, bottle of Italian beer in my hand, great pictures and I'm getting paid for it."

Duncombe Park win comfortably, as may be supposed, the match ending the Feversham League season though play-offs and cup finals have yet to be arranged.

Charles Allenby promises to let Sid know the dates. He calls him Derek. Derek Bonkers, presumably.

Afterwards I'm invited to present Duncombe's awards, a real pleasure, High Farndale remaining to a man to salute the new champions. They leave still congratulating one another. This is pure sport; this is heaven and Helmsley.

AND FINALLY...

the eight football teams presently in Leagues One and Two who've bounced back after a spell in the Conference (Backtrack, August 6) are Accrington, Colchester, Exeter, Barnet, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Hereford and Torquay. Aldershot and MK Dons are new clubs.

Neil Mackay in Lanchester, one of those who knew, today invites readers to name four clubs who've twice been relegated from the Football League.

Looking up as always, the column returns on Saturday.