CHAMBER maids, bathing beauties and men in painted aprons and scarlet uniforms were among the colourful company who made up this year’s Victorian cricket match on The Butts in Alton.

It is one of the highlights of the town’s summer season and always attracts a large crowd, for although the players’ dress may not be conventional their cricket is first class and there were some exciting matches.

This year there were nine teams – six regulars, two newcomers and one amalgamated team as a last-minute substitute.

The six regulars were The Harvesters, The Railway Arms, The Market Hotel, The Eight Bells, The French Horn and Warren Powell Richards, along with newcomers Alton Masons and Cane Adam Rollers.

Sadly, St Lawrence Church was forced to withdraw and was replaced by The Comfortable Horse, whose players were drawn from The Castle of Comfort in Medstead and The White Horse in Alton.

All the players wore Victorian dress, with trainers, spiked boots, baseball caps, lycra and other anachronistic items being penalised.

During the matches, The Masons wore hats featuring the Masonic symbol and played, the men that is, with one trouser leg rolled up.

Warren Powell Richards, the estate agents who have sponsored the tournament for some years, fielded a team of four men and one woman dressed as Victorian maids (some of the dresses were subsequently hiked up in ways no Victorian housekeeper would have countenanced).

One woman wore Victorian bathing dress and three men wore scarlet coated military uniforms.

The Harvesters, with a woman captain of unmistakeable authority, wore turquoise neckerchiefs and Cane Adam Rollers wore aprons decorated with paint splashes as befitted their trade as suppliers of paint and tools. The woman member of The Eight Bells team wore a splendid black dress and one of the men a pith helmet.

The scorers, like the players, wore idiosyncratic items of dress as it makes them easier to identify when they’re batting.

In Victorian cricket, there are only two stumps, bowling is underarm and the bats are solid, unsprung pieces of wood. There is a slightly lighter ladies’ bat.

Each team plays two matches against two different opponents and the two teams with the highest aggregate score play each other in the final. The teams consist of nine players and must include at least one player of the opposite sex to the majority of the team.

The play was vigorous and committed. The wicket was demolished twice by players diving to avoid being run out.

Each match consists of only six overs per teams but five teams had aggregate scores of more than 100. In reverse order, The Harvesters scored 105, The French Horn 112, defending champions The Railway Arms 122, The Market Hotel 123, and The Eight Bells 130.

The Comfortable Horse scored 86 runs and Warren Powell Richards scored 69 – eight in their first match and 61 in their second.

Newcomers Cane Adams Rollers and the Alton Masons, scored 57 and 49 respectively and it is hoped they will return next year.

It began to rain for the final between The Eight Bells and The Market Hotel. But undeterred, The Eight Bells, one of the two original teams – the other was the French Horn – beat The Market Hotel by four runs, 53-49.

Alton mayor Matthew Bayliss presented the trophies and medals to the winners and the runners up.

The Barry Perkins Trophy for Sports Personality of the Tournament was presented to the Alton Masons team for their collective sportsmanship. The Bob Evans medal for the Champagne moment was presented to Dan of Warren Powell Richards by the manager of the St Michael’s Hospice Shop in Alton for a spectacular catch.

All the proceeds from the tournament will go to St Michael’s Hospice, and given that the beer tent sold out those proceeds should be quite substantial.