WE last wrote of Littletown Cricket Club in March 2013, on the eve of its resurrection. “Littletown’s a misnomer,” the column began. “It’s not even that big.”

In their comeback season, the first team was promoted from the North East Durham League second division; in the next they failed narrowly to win the top division.

Next month they’ll be in the Readers Durham Cricket League, little big time, a club anxious to disprove the notion that village cricket is dying.

Littletown’s a few miles east of Durham, a former pit village but a microdot of a place these days. Started in the 1880s, the cricket club had twice folded before again being kicked out of the long grass.

Now they have three senior sides, a junior academy with six ECB-qualified coaches and new facilities including a permanent net installed a couple of weeks back, sight screens and dome covers.

“We want to leave a legacy for the next generation of Littletown cricketers,” says club official Greg Arundel.

“We’ve been down to have a look and were very impressed,” says Durham Cricket League chairman John Irvine.

Tomorrow they stage a sportsman’s evening at the Lakeside Sports Club in Sunderland with Julio Arca, possibly the best player in the Sunderland Sunday League second division.

Now 34, the former Argentine Under-20s captain made 167 Sunderland appearances and 180 for Middlesbrough before injury ended his professional career. He now pays £4 a week subs to play for the Willow Pond pub, but gets a pint when he’s man of the match. Big fish, Willow Pond.

THE other good news from the world of cricket is that the uniquely delightful Feversham League is to continue in 2015. All four North Yorkshire-based clubs – Gillamoor, High Farndale, Slingsby and Spout House – agreed to carry on at last week’s annual meeting. “There had been negative forecasts,” admits league secretary Charles Allenby. They’ll play one another three times, contest several cups and the arcane end of season play-offs. More of all that come the summer.

ON Saturday to Ryton and Crawcrook Albion, where club secretary Stevie Carter had just discovered that the Northern League is also a right-wing political group in Italy. (Worse, its head lad is Signor Bossi.)

Stevie’s impressed. “We’ve had the Northern Alliance taking on the Taliban and now the Northern League fighting in Italy. All we need is for the Wearside League to declare war on North Korea and we’ve completed the set.”

Nine months to go, it’s probably the quote of the year already.

ASPIRANT as always, last week’s column confessed to never having heard of Aitches Sparkling Ales, as advertised in a Crook Town programme from 1952-53. David Walsh in East Cleveland satisfies the search for knowledge.

Aitchison’s Brewery was a Scottish concern which early in the 20th century took over the Victoria Bottling Company in South Shields and a number of pubs in the Tyneside area.

The company was in turn bought out by Hammonds in 1959. Aitches were dropped for ever.

MENTION last week of the North East Christian Fellowship League recalled the almost-familiar graffiti “Jesus saves, but Keegan scores from the rebound” – and, says Tony Ford in Northallerton, identified the wrong goal grabber.

It wasn’t Keegan – “much blessed though he was” – but Ian St John, says Tony: “Jesus saves but St John scores from the rebound.”

Many, he adds, pronounce the name “Sinjun” as in Stevas. Tony used to work with a chap called Martin St John Byrne. Honest.

LAUNCHED hereabouts five weeks ago, the story of Squadron Leader George Bennions continues to have wings. John Mason sends a picture of the Colburn football team in which they played together in the early 1950s.

George Bennions, it may be recalled, was the Battle of Britain pilot who lost an eye and suffered other serious injuries in an enemy attack but returned both to flying and to football. He also became captain of Catterick Golf Club.

John – who also played for Shildon, Darlington Reserves, West Auckland and Witton Park – recalls that his team mate got away with many a dodgy tackle by pleading to the referee that he’d been caught on his blind side.

Still sporting his RAF moustache, still looking like a man you wouldn’t want to meet in a dogfight, George is on the extreme left at the back. John Mason’s fourth left. Others at the back are B Willis, D Davey, G Coulson and D Read and, at the front, A Copeland, N Clark, G Stranks, L Smith and J Smith.

...and finally, the five goalkeepers who’ve scored in Premier League matches (Backtrack, March 12) are Peter Schmeichel, Brad Friedel, Paul Robinson, Tim Howard and Asimir Begovic.

As these things are again upon us, readers are today invited to name the cubs who contested the first FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

Itself on the Railroad to Wembley, the column returns next week.