CRICKET


Jake Cheeseman, very much the club’s all-rounder. Its soon-to-be electrified pavilion in the background


home of Anne Boleyn. Penshurst Place Estate these days belongs to the De L’Isle family, whose 18th century ancestors inherited them through the Sidney family’s female line. The 2,500- acre estate is open all year round, but the house and its celebrated Elizabethan walled gardens, much like it was in Sir Philip Sidney’s day, can only be visited between Easter and October. There is a full calendar of year round events that also bring thousands of visitors here annually. At summer weekends, you can also see village cricket at its best. Penshurst Park is a busy cricket club to say the least. It has two Saturday league teams and a Sunday side with a full fixture list of friendlies. More than fifty games are played each season in what was once part


of Sir Philip Sidney’s back garden. A pretty decent standard of cricket is played here because the club has enjoyed an unbroken spell in the top division of Kent’s County Village League since 1996, with a hat trick of titles in 2012, 2013 and 2014. It is easy to imagine a balmy summer afternoon of cricket in this setting. But today is anything but a cricket day. A chill wind and sleet stinging your face every now and then does test the imagination more than a little. One constant that surely is there during the playing season is the sound of baaing sheep grazing beyond the boundary fence, more of which later.


Another reliable constant, at what is said to be the oldest privately-owned cricket venue in the country, is the aforementioned Jake. The club’s 10-strip square had its first


Rolling, rolling ... maybe not. The club’s 70s roller stays put on this damp winter Sunday


cut since the autumn a couple of weeks earlier and he’s there with half a mind on a first rolling of the year. The surface is too wet though, so he turns his mind to other things, puts on his ‘club secretary hat’ and chats to me out of the wind in the visitors’ changing room. “Cricket was first played on this ground in 1724, and though it’s not clear when the club itself first got started, records show there have definitely been matches against visiting sides here since 1752,” he says. No arguing, it’s well and truly been home to generations of cricketers, a lot more than virtually any other club.


As well as his secretarial and groundcare duties, Jake is club fixtures secretary and its Sunday captain. As a player, he bats and bowls. A 99 at rival club Southborough was


Dramatic skies: dramatic backdrop. A village cricket setting second to none 100 PC February/March 2019


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