Cricket has been played at Damerham for about 150 years.

Graham Colbourne, who has been DCC Secretary for a full third of that time, has team sheets and subs lists dating from 1870.

Some were in arrears, apparently. Something Graham’s brother, Colin Colbourne, who has been DCC Treasurer for a third of its existence, would never allow today.

Around 100 years ago, the team moved from a site off Cornpits Lane in the South End of the village to its current ground. Graham & Colin’s grandfather laid the original square.

As this website beds in, we’ll collate more of the history, scan some old documents and photographs, and put together a timeline.

League cricket has been played here since the 1950’s. Originally it was the Dorset league, and about a decade ago Damerham joined the Hampshire league.

There are score records going back to the 50’s, and Robert Hammond-Smith, our unofficial statistician, is in the process of compiling averages for everyone who has played for Damerham ‘since records began’.

2007 was, to our knowledge, the most successful year to date, in league terms. We remained unbeaten all season, won the league, and promotion.
In 2009 we clinched promotion again, this time rather less comfortably, winning the last game on the very last ball of the season.

In the early ‘noughties’ a few local people set up a ‘casual’ side, for those who wanted to play a few friendly games of cricket, but were unable or unwilling to sacrifice every summer Saturday. The Casuals is now a regular part of the main club, with half a dozen Sunday games in the summer.

In 2008 we started playing in the Wimborne Evening League.

Both these last two ventures have introduced many new players to the club, as well as giving the keener members still more opportunities to play.

Damerham today is home to 500ish people in 200ish houses, a couple of churches, a village hall, a play trail, a cricket ground, and, crucially, a pub.

The bar at The Compasses is the best part of 80 yards from the pavilion, so it’s a bit of a trek, but we can usually make it in there after a game to talk endless cricket drivel.

What went wrong, what went right. That was never LBW. (No-one is ever out LBW.) What were you thinking, trying to run me out like that? Yeah, for Usain Bolt, maybe. How quick that fast bowler was, how lucky that opening bat was. THAT catch. Man, that was some catch. That sublime late cut. Late what? Oh, you mean that edge. That was no edge, I opened the face and guided it skilfully through the slips- etc.

AND they do us sausages and chips after home games on Wednesday nights.

Damerham is a little New Forest village three or four miles west of Fordingbridge. It is in Hampshire, though only a few miles from the borders with both Dorset and Wiltshire.
 
Although the local authority is the New Forest District Council, it’s not officially within the borders of the New Forest National Park.Though apparently it is part of Cranborne Chase, and falls within the Cranborne and West Wiltshire Downs Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
 
If you’re interested in life in the village, this is a good place to find out more.
 
It’s an old village, mentioned in the Doomsday book, so they tell us, and was once part of the Glastonbury estate.Though we can be pretty certain there have been people here long before that, with an archaeology project recently discovering new evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements.