There’s evidence in the Parish record of friendly cricket taking place in Steventon as early as 1890, with fixtures that summer against East Hendred, Wantage Town, and East Ilsley. There is then further reference to the formation of “Steventon United Cricket Club” in 1893, and we believe some form of club has been in existence continuously ever since.

For its first 100 years, Steventon played ‘friendly’ cricket, with games of ‘timed cricket’ generally taking place on Sundays. A local newspaper report on a Steventon match from the 1950s features recognizable village family surnames such as Hancock, Collins & Faulkner, and a humourous match report from 1979, of an end-of-season match between the cricket club & the Steventon News management committee, features many more such familiar surnames: Loutit, Hancock again, Whiting, Lovell and more.

In 1991 Steventon joined the Oxfordshire Cricket Association league, playing competitive matches on a Saturday (with Sunday friendlies still continuing), finishing 4th in Division 3, with the squad in this period featuring such stalwart club names as Mike Panting, Gerald Lowes, a youthful Mark Whitehead (now the club chairman!), and Steventon sporting legend (sadly recently departed) Laddie Moody. Around this same time in 1991, David Coates & Ian Royle started up a junior club, for which the author of this piece was lucky enough to play, and which continued for some seven or eight years.

There’ve been many ups and downs for the club over the ensuing 30 years; winning OCA Division 7 in 2004, Sunday friendlies becoming less regular as Saturday league cricket took hold, joining the Wednesday T20 Downs league 10 years ago, and, in 2017 the unprecedented step of adding a 2nd team on Saturdays, an indication of the growing number of enthusiastic local cricketers! In 2019 the club enjoyed a landmark season, with both teams being champions of their respective OCA Divisions (4 and 6). In 2020 a new junior cricket club emerged, with cricket for U13s and U11s, and Allstars cricket available for ages 5-8, and in 2021 girls’ and women’s team were added as well. Also in 2021, the OCA league merged into the Cherwell Cricket League, and at time of writing,

Steventon 1st team have just finished an excellent 1st season in tier 6 of the CCL, with the 2nd team in tier 8.Steventon CC 2021 in numbers: a total of 43 men, 16 women, 33 boys and 16girls, plus 45 All-stars (ages 5-8) and 42 Dynamos (ages 8-11) trained and played at Steventon Cricket club this season, so the future looks bright! 

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Junior Cricket Squad 2020