CRICKET bats again: the North Yorkshire and South Durham League, long a familiar and much admired part of the patio furniture, embarks upon its 125th anniversary season.

“The second oldest cricket league in the world after the Birmingham League,” claims league president Chris West, with whom we have been enjoying a celebratory beer in the Boro.

It was formed on November 3, 1892 at a meeting in the Fleece Hotel in Thirsk, the original (and alphabetical) members Constable Burton, Ironopolis, Middlesbrough, Northallerton, Redcar and Thirsk.

Then it was just the North Yorkshire League. Co Durham clubs, including Darlington, crossed the divide four years later.

The scoring system, says Chris, was “devastatingly simple” – one point for a win, minus one for a defeat and nothing at all for a draw. Ray Baker’s centenary history simply said that drawn games were “ignored.”

A captain or scorer who forgot to mark his card with the minus sign would be fined £1 – the equivalent, Chris supposes, of £1,000 today. Until early retirement he was a long-serving Barclays Bank man: they know about such things.

By 1894, neutral umpires were being paid five shillings a match plus third class train fare. The following season, however, Middlesbrough reported not only that the umpire was so greatly under the influence in their game against Stockton that he was having trouble standing at all but that he’d charged them an extra bob.

The league investigated, the umpire repaid the Queen’s shilling, peace returned to the summer sward.

Constable Burton’s a dot of a village midway between Bedale and Leyburn which, about 25 years ago, really did have a neighbourhood polliss called PC Burton.

J J MacLaren, the league’s first president, was a Constable Burton man, his side – however improbably – the first champions. But how, in 1893, did they get to matches at places like Middlesbrough and Redcar?

“I hadn’t thought of that,” says Chris who, top man, thinks incisively of very much else.

The village railway station was 40 minutes from Northallerton, on the line to Hawes. The 1922 Bradshaw’s timetable, that being the most proximate thing on these shelves, shows just five trains a day in each direction, the last from Northallerton at 7 12pm.

How did they afford the train fare, much less the required professional? The sporting Wyvills, then as now in the big house, may have had something to do with it.

They were winning ways, at any rate, though Redcar were moved to complain that – in both games against them – Constable Burton had played more than the one pro allowed by the rules.

Again the league looked into it. Nothing new under the sun, Chris tells the story in his pre-season presidential address. “Some things just don’t change at all,” he says – and, at the end of 1895, Constable Burton had gone.

CHRIS'S report also recalls that, in 1940, legendary NYSD League secretary Herbert Trenholm – in post for almost 50 years and also a Football League referee – introduced an ordinance that, in the event of an air raid siren, the game should continue until danger actually threatened and resume as soon as the immediate threat had passed. “It puts into perspective,” he notes, “today’s headlong charge to the dressing room at the merest hint of rain.”

The league prospered, prospers yet more greatly as an ECB Premier League, owes much to 27 successive seasons’ sponsorship from the Darlington Building Society. This year there’ll be five divisions, each with promotion and relegation (though it was 1997 before the NYSD could be persuaded to embrace such vicissitudes at all.)

Most clubs have been remarkably loyal, neither membership nor geographical spread much changed down the years. Still “South Durham” edges little further northwards than Bishop and Barney and Blackhall.

Durham’s influence is marked, nonetheless. In the county’s inaugural first class summer, 1992, 60 per cent of home games were played on NYSD grounds while seven of the 22 players had learned their cricket in the league.

It has produced England men like Dick Spooner, Paul Jarvis, Chris Old, Liam Plunkett and D C H Townsend of Norton, the last man to be capped by England without ever having played first class county cricket.

More than 250 first class cricketers and 70 test match men have learned or continued their cricket in the NYSD.

Chris accepts, nonetheless, that cricket both nationally and locally faces the challenge of attracting and retaining youngsters with multiple competing temptations. “Time poor,” he calls them.

Though the presidential address immodestly (and inaccurately) supposes them analogue administrators in a digital age, the NYSD has been at the forefront of innovation and sometimes of revolution.

Long embedded in the internet age, they were the first league to introduce coloured clothing – to the continuing chagrin of the ubiquitous Mr Tony Day – the first to have a 15-over competition (“everyone’s scrambling to introduce one now”) and have glitzy annual Hall of Fame inductions to acknowledge the league’s unsung heroes.

“Without doubt the annual inductions are the most rewarding and fulfilling things that I do,” says Chris.

In his time at the presidential crease, they’ve introduced around 250 rule changes – “everyone of them agreed unanimously” – none more tellingly than a disciplinary code akin to yellow and red cards aimed particularly at tackling offensive language.

“It was the best thing we ever did. Discipline has improved no end” says the president. “You have to accept change, to innovate, otherwise you slowly die. After 125 years, I genuinely believe that this league has never been more alive.”

TOP bloke in every sense, Chris West is also chairman of the Leagues Cricket Conference – whose national inter-league competition the NYSD wins relentlessly – and of the Yorkshire Cricket Board, which represents the grass roots game.

He played successful cricket for Stokesley, ran a sports news service after retiring from the bank, these days just runs and runs.

To mark the 125th season, there’ll be a limited overs match against Yorkshire Vikings – “they’ve promised to send the first team” – another, all day, against an MCC X1. Inevitably there’ll also be a dinner; the NYSD does very good dinners.

In James Dykes, whom I remember as a young man taking over the Three Tuns at Eggleston but who was 70 earlier this month, the league has a new secretary. Darlington-based David Oliver, former Football League assistant referee and Midland Bank man, comes in as umpires’ co-ordinator.

Chris acknowledges that cricket is little like what it was 25 years ago much less 125. “We need to embrace the modern era. want to provide a real opportunity for the ambitious and a safe haven for those who simply want to enjoy their cricket.

“Despite the intensity of competition, I always hope that teams will adhere to the core values of the game that, for the most part, mark cricket out from any other sport and still make it the greatest game on the planet.”