Shady haven: club cricket continues to thrive at places such as Mitcham, with its famous old Cricket Green in between busy main roads
Club cricket looks and sounds very different from the game I played in Croydon in the ’50s and ’60s. Competitive leagues, short forms of the game, red ball and white ball, coloured kit, loads of shouted encouragement on the pitch, and even matches streamed live on YouTube. Addiscombe, Beddington and Mitcham were always prominent local clubs back in the day, for different reasons, and they remain so today, through all the many changes.
And how things have changed.
Scoreboard with a difference: the camera at Addiscombe CC’s Sandilands ground livestreams games via YouTube
It’s much more competitive and organised for a start.
The Surrey Cricket Foundation, the charitable body responsible for growing the game and encouraging people to play, combined its main leagues at the end of last season to form the new Surrey Cricket Championship, with many tiers, divisions and plenty of opportunities for promotion and relegation. The county club, Surrey, even publishes weekly reports of all the league action, which helps to promote and encourage the club sides.
Sensibly, the new league structure is overall more geographically aligned, meaning that players and supporters don’t have to sit in south London’s traffic jams for hours travelling to away fixtures.
And like the England and Wales Cricket Board with its Hundred, the Foundation in Surrey is pioneering different, quicker forms of cricket to hook younger players with shorter attention spans than their predecessors.
Girls are being drawn into playing the beautiful game and it’s obvious that many clubs are being kept alive by the enthusiasm for cricket among south Asian families.
Addiscombe Cricket Club is just a couple of tram stops from East Croydon at Sandilands, and they play in Division Two of the new Surrey pyramid. The club fields five league teams on a Saturday and, like many clubs, they enjoyed a surge in membership after covid: cricket was one of the easier sports to play while socially distanced.
They share their excellent ground with a tennis, hockey and running clubs, as well as being the home to the Croydon Male Voice Choir. The cricket club has generous sponsors.
End of the innings: batsmen head for the pavilion at Beddington Park
Club chairman David Roche says this helps them get over the barrier of economic hardship in parts of Croydon: “If some people are struggling financially but still want to play cricket, we always try to find a solution, whether through reduced subs or letting players do some coaching which we offset against membership costs.
“We always like to give back to the community, so why should finance be a barrier to participation?”
Addiscombe is one of the early adopters of YouTube streaming of home games, with a camera attached to the scorebox which can beam coverage to anyone around the world who has a decent internet connection. Vice-chairman Roger Hurrion, who was helping with the scoring when Inside Croydon visited, told me that their former overseas player enjoys watching his old club from his home in Australia.
Beddington has one of the prettiest grounds in the area, in a corner of Beddington Park which has hosted leisure activities since the 14th Century – originally deer hunting.
Cricket began here in 1863, and the club has produced a number of first-class, even Test cricketers.
Club Cricketer: Huw Turbervill
This season, Beddington’s first XI is playing in Division One of the new club structure, and it fields five teams in the leagues on a Saturday, plus a friendly and under-21 team on Sundays. Most nights of the week during the summer, young players are at the ground developing their skills. Among Beddington’s keen playing squad is Huw Turbervill, the Editor of The Cricketer Magazine.
“We are proud to field five teams on a Saturday but it’s hard work keeping clubs going financially,” Turbervill told Inside Croydon.
“Bar takings are not such a big source of income as in the old days, because many of our players from south Asian backgrounds are tea-totallers, and visiting teams don’t stay as long after games as they used to.”
The club has its sponsors, though, and holds fund-raising social events in the pavilion which it also hires out for birthdays and weddings.
On the club’s website, Turbervill has described 2025 as a “massive milestone” for Beddington, with a women’s team playing their first hardball league match. He quotes 15-year-old Izzy Keith: “I started playing for Beddington at the age of seven and I’ve always thought of it as like a second home.
Club house: Mitcham CC is steeped in the game’s history, but its buildings are under threat
“Without Beddington I wouldn’t love cricket like I do now.”
Mitcham has an even richer cricketing history than Beddington. The famous Mitcham Cricket Green, now flanked on two sides by busy south London through roads, is reputed to be the oldest cricket green in the world.
The pavilion is separated from the green by one of the roads. Watching cricket there is just a magnificent diversion from urban life, but the club’s financial progress is stalled by uncertainty over its unique pavilion. The lease belongs to the property developer who bought the pub next door, the Burn Bullock – named after a former Surrey cricketer and later the pub’s landlord – which was badly damaged by fire in 2024.
Until the re-development plan is settled the future is unclear.
This was a ground that once the home of Surrey’s Second XI, and which has even staged a game for an Australian touring side, with the Burn Bullock providing additional changing rooms and facilities.
Burnet Bullock, to give him his formal name, was among Mitcham’s stellar players from the past, which includes first-class men’s and women’s cricketers.
None of the property uncertainty has affected playing enthusiasm, with four senior teams in the leagues on Saturdays, a Sunday XI and seven junior teams, starting at under-10s.
David Bell, the junior cricket manager and a vice president of Mitcham, is particularly pleased that enough girls have been recruited to field a team in the under-11 league.
“We have a Sunday morning session for girls and they have really flourished. All we want our junior players to do is to enjoy cricket with their mates and come back next week. We don’t expect them to bowl a doosra or reverse sweep at the age of seven.”
Road house: the pavilion at Mitcham, now subject to a developer’s plans
He, too, mentions the importance of shorter forms of the game for those surviving in the London economy, pointing out that some of their Saturday players have to get away early to start night shifts at work.
So grassroots, club cricket in and around Croydon is still thriving in 2025, thanks to the devotion of families, volunteers, coaches, players and umpires at clubs like Addiscombe, Beddington and Mitcham.
In that respect, nothing has changed since the 1960s.
Some previous articles by Neil Bennett:
- Lanfranc air disaster author named in King’s Birthday Honours
- Fond sporting memories played out on Norbury’s fine pitches
- How Stormzy’s football dream is becoming a Mayfield reality
- Surrey makes new pitch for cricket at Croydon sports grounds
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
