HILTON CRICKET CLUB Arpil 2007 report

All the signs are there.  The weeds are growing.  The flies are buzzing (the bees have reportedly been zapped by microwaves from all those mobile phones).  Bored boy-racers have left their tyre-prints all over the Green.  Over-eager worms, celebrating an unusually wet winter, have caused the surface of the square to erupt in hundreds of places to such a degree that producers at 20^th Century Fox have their eye on it as perfect film set for a series about the Battle of the Somme.  It's all Mother Nature's way of telling us that Hilton is approaching the new cricket season.

The first few confrontations will be held on opponents' grounds, beginning at Alconbury on 29^th April.  The theatre of conflict transfers to Hilton Village Green from Sunday 3^rd June, by which time our gladiators will already have annihilated five hapless teams.  Such warlike hyperbole, accompanied by images of snarling, unshaven players like Freddie Flintoff and Ricky Ponting, is usually designed to increase ratings on Sky Sports TV.  Cricket as played by Hilton is, in contrast, only a game and although we might have spent the past few months producing enriched uranium on an industrial scale, we can assure everyone that it is entirely for peaceful purposes.

We anticipate an exciting and successful season and we are now able to announce that when our players are finally released in mid-September, they will be permitted to sell their stories to the press or to anyone else bewildered enough to pay for them.