About Us

The historical dining club attached to the Hambledon Cricket Club was revived in 1999, 90 years after the memorial stone was set on Broadhalfpenny Down – read the full story here.

The Hambledon Club now holds bi-annual meetings at the Bat & Ball Inn, in the form of a luncheon with a guest speaker from the cricket world. Records of each meeting are held in our Newsletters section, starting with the first modern luncheon in April 1999.

Past Speakers

Mark Curtin, Richard Clarke, Dave Allen (returned), Jonathan Agnew, Dennis Amis MBE, Lord MacLaurin OBE, Isabelle Duncan, Vic Marks, John Barclay, Alan Rayment (& Dave Allen, returned), Jo Rice, Stephen Chalke (returned), Tom Rodwell, Mike Griffith, Andrew Renshaw, David Frith, Robin Brodhurst, MJK Smith OBE, Murray Hedgcock, Bob Barber, Roger Knight OBE, Peter Walker, John Stern, Roger Packham, Stephen Green, Nick Bailey, Rod Bransgrove, Keith & Jennifer Booth, Stephen Saunders, Jocelyn Galsworthy, Dave Allen, David Rayvern Allen, Douglas Miller, Lord Alexander, Alastair McLennan, Peter Baxter, Roy Clark, Stephen Chalke, Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

Bat & Ball Inn, Broadhalfpenny Down, Nr Hambledon, Hampshire, UK. Venue website: www.batandballclanfield.co.uk

“In what year Nyren migrated to Hambledon and began to teach the local cricketers the technique of ‘the London Game’ we do not know, but it must have been round-about the time of Powlett’s appointment to Itchen Abbas, for in 1782 the former is thanking the public ‘for favours he has received during the last twenty years’. At one time as landlord of the Bat and Ball Inn, which overlooks the ground at Broadhalfpenny, he later rented the George Inn in the village. It was there that the meetings of the club and the annual club dinner took place – convivial occasions we may fairly assume from an entry in the accounts: ‘A wet day, only three gentlemen present, nine bottles of wine’.

“…To-day the Bat and Ball Inn, recently enriched without by a splendid cricket inn sign, and within by a collection of cricket prints and scores on permanent loan from the M.C.C, looks out on a substantially simpler setting than that which greeted the Hambledon players at the top of their steady trudge up from the village – or their later reinforcements from Surrey and Sussex, at the end of their ride from much further afield – or which saw the team embark in the ‘machine’, or caravan that carried them to their away matches. True, the larks still soar and sing overhead and the cloud shadows still chase each other over Chidden Down but gone is the ‘lodge’ built by the club’s own wicket-keeper, the refreshment booths that purveyed that famous ‘ale that would flare like turpentine, genuine Bonifact’, and the tent where the ladies could be ‘as much at their ease as if they were in their own Dressing Room’.”

Extracts from ‘Hambledon Cricket and the Bat and Ball Inn’ – Diana Rait Kerr (curator of the MCC Museum from 1945–68).

Harry Altham, John Arlott, F. S. Ashley-Cooper, James Aylward (1724–1827), Lord Frederick Beauclerk, ‘Silver Billy’ Beldham, Tom Brett, Desmond Eagar, C. B. Fry, David Harris, Arthur Haygarth, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, Gilbert Jessop, Brian Johnston, E. V. Lucas, John Nyren, Cecil Paris, Rev J Pycroft, John Small (Jnr), John Small (Snr), E. M. Sprot, ‘Lumpy’ Stevens, Tom Sueter, Wilf Wadham, Edward Whalley-Tooker, W. R. Wright, Colin Barrett, J. M. Barrie, Lord Alexander of Weedon QC.