IT USED to be known as something of a "gentlemen's club" for local professional men . . .

But Bolton Cricket Club - 150 not out this year - greets the millennium a much more egalitarian establishment.

A thriving membership of about 250 enjoy the cricket, crown green bowling, tennis, rounders, and a social scene featuring regular Thursday jazz nights and Tuesday line dancing.

At weekends, the club becomes a focal point for the community with lettings for wedding receptions and other functions.

Bolton CC's story is a success story but one which, president Vince Fielding warns, should not be taken for granted.

"It is incumbent on the membership to provide the personnel to fill the official positions and not rely on the same persons to bear the burden of office year after year," he tells members in a commemorative booklet.

Certainly the club has a remarkable history.

The game of cricket is believed to take its name from the Anglo-Saxon "cricc", meaning shepherd's crook, and began among the shepherds of south-east England who used the wicket gates and bails of the sheep pens as targets for bowlers, their crooks as bats.

Records show the game was played in Guildford as far back as 1550, but it was a long time before Boltonians took much notice.

Bolton Cricket Club as we know it started in 1846 as successor to Bradford CC of Bolton-le-Moors, 1840. That earlier club imposed draconian penalties on its miscreants - failure to attend incurred a 6d fine, and "any member going or coming over the hedges, except after the ball, shall pay a fine of 2/6d for each offense". Strong stuff. Bolton CC arranged with a local butcher, Thomas Halliwell, to lease "a certain field near Tonge Fold" - though players had to agree to share their pitch with Mr Halliwell's cattle, should he so desire to turn the beasts into the pasture.

Not until 1875 did the club change to, as it then was, George Green Lane, the funds for the change raised by a spectacularly successful bazaar at Bolton's newly completed Town Hall.

Three years later the name of WG Grace appeared on the scorecard when Bolton played a three-day game game against United South and the great man captained the visitors.

By the 1920s Bolton, like most clubs, employed professionals - who changed in an out-building while the amateurs (gentlemen) changed in the pavilion.

The club, in turn, provided its share of county and even national players, the first being RG Barlow who played, aged 12, in Mr Halliwell's field and went on to play 249 matches for Lancashire and 17 tests for England.

Like Botham years later, RG was also a fine footballer and refereed the 1887 FA Cup match when Preston beat Hyde by a record 26-0.

The local club's fortunes have fluctuated wildly; one May Sunday in 1952 thousands of spectators (estimates vary between 3,500 and 5,000) massed at Green Lane to watch Bolton CC take on the West Indians in a guest match.

Fans were delighted by Frank Worrell, and visitors were delighted by the state of the host pitch.

But by the mid 'sixties the club was on the brink of closure, its pavilion in a poor state and enthusiasm at a low ebb.

Businessman Roger Doxsey turned the tide with his own enthusiasm and turned the Badminton Dance Hall into a much more prestigious club room.

Now the club are leaving the Manchester Association and joining the Liverpool Competition, another twist to a story which has been 150 years in the telling and still has a long way to go.

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