Harpenden Dolphins Cricket Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harpenden Dolphins

Full name	Harpenden Dolphins Cricket Club
Founded	1944

Location	Harpenden, England
Ground	Rothamsted park top pitch
President	Roger Gregory
Captain	Graham "Zippy" Downs
League	Herts League 10
Official website
www.harpenden-dolphins.com

Harpenden Dolphins Cricket Club is small friendly old style village cricket team. The club runs just one side and currently competes in the Herts League 10 where they have been since 2001.

1 Facilities
2 History
3 League Status
4 Alumni
5 External Links

[edit] Facilities

The team plays its home matches on the top pitch in Rothamsted park in Harpenden (Access via Orchard Rd). Post match hospitality (an important part of village cricket matches) is held at the Harpenden Cricket Club’s pavilion on Harpenden Common.

[edit] History

Above all else, Harpenden Dolphins is a friendly, family cricket club. For many decades, fathers and sons, brothers, neighbours and friends have played together, either on a long-term basis or in making up the numbers on those days when a team has been hard to come by.

The origins of the club go back to the immediate post-World War II days. In 1944, the Club developed out of the social activities of the Harpenden High Street Methodist Church, which was looking to broaden the base of its thriving Youth Club. Consequently the club started life as the Harpenden Methodist Cricket Club, under the patronage of the Reverend Alan Fletcher, who was the Methodist Minister of the day and the Club’s first President. He was assisted in his Presidential duties by W Ewart North, as the Club Chairman, and by an enthusiastic committee who met regularly to conduct Club business in the Church Parlour. Ewart remained as Chairman and later as President until 1983. 37 years of devoted service from a man who appears never to have played a single game for the Club.

Since the earliest of seasons until the present day, the Club has held its home games on the Top Pitch in Rothamsted park. There are some reports in the 1940s and 50s of home games being played at the Highfield Oval and at what was then the Harpenden Rugby Club, situated on Overstone Road, before it moved to its present home along the Redbourn Road. In the beginning, the Top Pitch in the Park was shared with Ferndale Cricket Club later to be amalgamated with Harpenden Cricket Club. And more recently with Hollybush, Carpenters Arms, Abbey Players and the lower teams of the Harpenden and Wheathampstead Cricket clubs.

In 1959, the Club broke its final links with the Methodist Church and changed its name to the Harpenden Dolphins. There has been much speculation about the derivation of the name but the reality is that it was borrowed from the name of the house in Wood End Lane, where lived Bernard Jones, stalwart player, tireless committee member in many roles and, at that time, Captain of the Club.

For many years, in common with other similar clubs, the Methodists/Dolphins played only on Saturdays. Gradually, the occasional game on the Sunday instead of the Saturday became acceptable and then games on both days of the weekend. For a single-side Club, this last development put much pressure on the regulars to play on both days.

In 2000 to ease the demands of finding regular fixtures with more and more sides schedules being filled out with League games, the club elected to join the Herts cricket league structure. Beginning life in league 11 the club quickly gained promotion in its first season but has since been a mid table finisher of League 10.

Over the years, the club has enjoyed fantastic support from its families and friends and that is a tradition and ethos which remains today. Dolphins teas have been legendary among its players and opponents alike. From the days when they were served commercially at 10d a head by Mrs Rowe, who ran a café in the High Street, to today’s magnificent arrays of sandwiches and sumptuous home-baked cakes. It is certainly true that, like any single-side club, the club has its ups and downs in the quality of the cricket they play. The club has been skittled out for 20 and has successfully chased totals over 250. Opponents have been destroyed similarly low scores and been beaten by the widest of margins. Like the current England team, the club has a lasting reputation of horrendous mid-order collapses but has also enjoyed its fair share of exciting last wicket stands to deliver an unexpected victory or, perhaps more often, just to save the day.