After 400 years, history is made next to the A323

Mitcham and Hambledon, rivals to title of game's oldest club, finally face each other on the pitch in Golden Jubilee Challenge Match

Deep in the mists of time, so long ago it even pre-dates Lancashire's last Championship, an English-French dictionary listed the verb crosser: to play cricket. Nearly 400 years later, the players of the two clubs who claim to be the oldest in the world gave the term a fresh twist yesterday.

Mitcham, whose origins stretch back to 1685, and Hambledon, the Hampshire village team who became known as "the cradle of cricket" after their formation a century later, met in a Golden Jubilee Challenge Match. Despite all Hambledon's history, the occasion marked the first time their batsmen had ever had to cross a busy urban road on their walk to and from the pavilion.

Mitcham Green has been in continual use as a cricket venue for 317 years, yet it is safe to assume that the A323 which separates the dressing-room from the ground has never been more congested. As if the trudge from the wicket were not bad enough, visitors had to weave between the juggernauts, motorbikes and buses making their way between London and Croydon.

Given that they boast a combined age of more than 500 not out, the fact that Mitcham and Hambledon had never previously crossed paths (or roads) was surprising indeed. There were references to the game in Guildford, barely 30 miles from Mitcham, as Henry VIII worked his way through his middle-order wives around the halfway point in the 16th century.

Come the English Civil War, 100 years later, cricket became popular among Royalists who were keeping their heads down on their country estates, where it was already played by the labouring classes. The first recorded formal game came at Croxheath, Kent, in 1646, and it is known that matches were played at Smithfield in London in the 1660s, when heavy betting took place.

Soon afterwards, cricket began in earnest at Mitcham with the formation of the original MCC, 102 years before its world-famous equivalent. The 19th-century Australian tourists would stay at The Cricketers pub and practice on the Green before coming up against W G Grace. Between 1880 and 1920, Mitcham produced three England players -- Tom Richardson, a fast bowler who reputedly kept fit with a daily four-mile walk to The Oval; Herbert Strudwick, a wicketkeeper with 1,500 victims; and Andy Sandham, who hit 107 first-class centuries.

The lines between history and mythology are blurred in Hambledon's case. The way the romantics tell it, conjuring images of strapping yokels wielding a bat like a scythe at one end and the squire building an innings at the other, a village team beat England. Not just once, but 29 times in more than 50 matches, one of which, in 1772, drew 20,000 spectators to their ground at Broadhalfpenny Down.

There were farmworker-cricketers -- the Hambledon player credited with inventing off-spin was a shepherd -- though in truth the club was formed by old boys of Westminster School, who shrewdly tapped into the talent of the rural labourers. The "England" sides they faced were often professionals assembled by a patron such as the Duke of Dorset.

Hambledon's status as the game's spiritual home in its formative years, the place where the rules of cricket were framed, is beyond dispute. For four decades, the Bat & Ball pub, which still stands although the current club no longer play on the adjoining land, was an 18th-century Lord's.

The beginning of the end came when Lord Winchilsea led a group of Hambledonians back to London in 1787. They set up in St John's Wood and took on the Marylebone name, leaving their old club to falter before folding in 1825. But their successors in the re-formed club are still treated as if they were Test players by some opponents.

"Everybody wants to say they've played against Hambledon," sighed John Burdekin, a sales manager for BMW. "So we're often facing other clubs' First XIs when we can't always raise our strongest team." It looked as if it had happened again yesterday when Paul Brighton, a night-club DJ known as "Rocky", had his stumps shattered by an IT specialist called Gavin Piper with the fourth ball of the day, starting a mini-procession across the road.

At around two o'clock, with Hambledon on 41 for 6 after an hour's play, the game became a two-innings-per-side affair. As the Mitcham chairman, Lindsay Bashford, pointed out, they were determined it would be in pro-gress at 5.30 when Ian Botham put in a guest appearance bearing the Queen's Jubilee Baton.

Botham's presence was appropriate as the most obvious descendant of the Cavalier batsmen of 350 years ago. Hambledon, limping to 84 all out, could certainly have used a swashbuckling knock from him. Mitcham replied with 214 for 4 and forfeited their second innings, and the visitors finished on 126 for 6, leaving the game drawn. They will meet again at HGV-free Hambledon next month, intent on making up for lost time.