About Us
Abingdon Vale Cricket Club is a thriving community cricket club based close to Abingdon town centre, playing at our picturesque Hales Meadow ground located adjacent to the River Thames.
We currently field 4 Senior Teams who compete across various levels of the Cherwell Cricket League on Saturday afternoons and we also play a selection of midweek T20's throughout the season.
We have a thriving Junior Cricket Section, which is run by volunteers, with teams from All Stars (Ages 5-7) right through to Under 17's.
In 2022, the club launched a Women’s Team and the club have hosted a soft-ball cricket tournament at our Hales Meadow ground.
We hold regular Social Events throughout the season and players, opposition, officials, friends, family and dogs are all welcome to enjoy a Saturday evening at the club bar in a friendly atmosphere.
We welcome any new players or returning players and if AVCC looks like the club for you, then please feel free to Contact Us.
Club Officials
The day-to-day running of the cricket club is undertaken by the Management Committee and details of the respective roles for the 2024 season are shown in the below table.
Should you wish to contact any of the trustees, management committee or cricket captains, please feel free to do so using the Contact Us section of this website.
History of Cricket in Abingdon
A little bit of history – Abingdon C.C
On the 17th May 1861 at a meeting help on board “The Neptune”, it was proposed that a cricket club be established in Abingdon. Subscriptions were to be a half-guinea and matches would be played at Waste Court (now part of Abingdon School). The club’s original headquarters were based at the Queens Hotel but the club was unable to establish a permanent home ground.
From 1866 to 1914, the club played matches in and around Abingdon-Oxford area but had virtually disappeared by the Second World War. It was a meeting at the Saxton Arms in 1947 that saw the rejuvenation of the town’s cricket team under the name of Abingdon Wanderers. The club took over the fixtures of the MG cricket team and used the ground at Culham College as its home base.
In 1953, a 99-year old lease of Hales Meadow was negotiated with Abingdon Borough Council and for approximately six years, the newly formed Abingdon Sports Club prepared the ground for cricket, rugby and hockey, The first full cricket season at Hales Meadow was in 1959.
The cricket club’s Centenary was celebrated in 1961 with a match Abingdon and the MCC and in the same year Oxford University began a 20-year association with Abingdon C.C. bringing their side with such players as the Nawab of Pataudi and Imran Khan.
In 1967 the cricket section became the sole leaseholders of the ground and connections with Warwickshire CCC, established in 1968, continued until 1982 with nine “benefit” matches being staged at Hales Meadow. Beneficiaries included Bob Willis, Dennis Amiss and Alvin Kallicharran. A Memorial match for Gerald Smithson (Yorkshire, England and later Abingdon) also brought Len Hutton and Denis Compton to play at the club. League Cricket was introduced to Abingdon in 1974, as Abingdon CC became founder members of the then Cherwell League.
North Abingdon C.C
Elsewhere in the town, other cricketers stirred. North Abingdon was originally formed as “The Ox C.C.” in 1949. Like many other cricket teams in Abingdon at that time, it had no permanent facilities and relied on the pub as a meeting place and for player recruitment. As time went by, the club rented land at Northcourt for cricket. Although early records are scarce, 1950 season was a good one recording 21 wins out of 28 matches.
In 1961, the cricket club was renamed North Abingdon C.C. and the newly named club soon confirmed its growing status by purchasing the Northcourt ground and improving the standard of fixtures played.
This policy was paying dividends when in 1976, North moved into fielding two Saturday and Sunday sides. Some traditions started with The Ox were kept up, most noticeably the “Dutch Tour”.
In 1976, fixtures between North and “the Town” resumed after a gap of some 15 years; it may be said that the first seeds of our merger were sown at this time, although both clubs at this time were thriving.
As League Cricket was the future for both clubs and North became founder members of the Trinity League formed in 1978.
Abingdon Vale Cricket Club - 1990’s to Present Day
The new club’s history is very much intertwined with that of the Cherwell Cricket League (CCL), as in the first season of Abingdon Vale CC was 1993 and the first season of the CCL after the merger with the Trinity League was a year later. For the first two seasons of the club’s existence, there was no opportunity for having third eleven league cricket and the CCL had yet to include a 3rd XI division and there wasn’t an option to play in the Oxfordshire Cricket Association (OCA), as they would not accept Cherwell clubs. For these two seasons, the third eleven played Saturday afternoon friendlies at the Northcourt ground. For the 1995 season, the third eleven entered the inaugural season of the CCL’s 3rd XI division, as the club had a separate home ground available, they could play more home games than away. Northcourt was never a long-term option, and by 1997, the club had started to work on a second ground at the Culham Road site, where the rugby club played up to a decade before. An artificial pitch was installed at this ground and the first league games were played at the new ground in 1998. A fire in the Northcourt pavilion the previous winter fastened this process.
The winter of 1999-2000 was a particularly turbulent time for the club, three senior 1st XI players left the club at the end of the 1999 season, including then Club Chairman, Graham Scott. This lead to a process of re-building under established batsman Ben Humpage and left-arm opening bowler Dan Hartley and the evergreen Robin Newman. Over the next couple of seasons, some of the club’s former junior players as they entered their early 20’s began to establish themselves. These included batsmen Paul Lemon and Mark Edwards, wicket keeper/batsman, Paul Edwards, all-rounder James Cook and spin bowler Paul White. This was enhanced from experienced signings such as Lee Whincup and Deane Rockall. We played two competitive benefit games against Essex CCC, through professional links of our President at the time, Paul Gildersleeves, and Essex CCC's Mark Ilott Throughout the mid-2000s, the club could not get over the line and actually win a league division with the 1st XI seemingly stuck in CCL2 and the second eleven cemented in CCL6. The biggest regret that the club had was that in 2005, we bought over Matt Latham, a top order batsman and leg-spin bowler, from Perth to shore up the top of the order, but although he scored over 600 runs in that season, early that season our pivotal all-rounder Michael Cook was injured at the start of the season and we missed him for the summer.
In 2007, the runs of captain Paul Edwards and assistance from Deane Rockall and David Ward ensured that the 2nd XI were promoted and a year later, we took the plunge to enter a fourth eleven in the Cherwell League, finishing second in Division 9a in the first year. It was around this time that the club’s officials first spoke with Graham Charlesworth about him joining the club. It was not until 2010, that he did come to the club, he started with a bit of a bang taking 100 wickets in his first two seasons. It was at this time that the club installed an artificial pitch on the main Hales Meadow ground and was starting to bring together a very talented junior section that would individually become heaped with honours. In the elder echelons of this group, we had future Oxfordshire players, Joe Butcher, Samantha Moore and Helen Webster. Sam Moore became Oxfordshire captain in the late-2010s. In the group below them we had Ben & Luke Charlesworth, Tom & Ollie Price and Harrison Ward, all are now professional cricketers. Also in this collection, were future Oxfordshire CCC players Alex Chapman and Luke Maslen. A couple of years down the line, we also had Sussex professional Zach Lion-Cachet growing up through the club.
The first eleven were finally promoted from CCL2 in 2016 under the leadership of Jonathan Jenkinson and held their own in CCL1 for three years up to 2020. In the period since, the OCA teams have joined the CCL and our respective teams are spread out across the 8 CCL divisions.
In 2023, the cricket club trustees agreed an extension to their lease with the Vale of White Horse District Council which secures the cricket clubs future at the current ground for a further 75 years.
Many thanks to Alec Inns and Paul White for their contributions towards the ‘History of Cricket in Abingdon’ section.
