On this broad swathe of English turf children released at playtime from the nearby Christ Church Chorleywood school have swooped and yelled and laughed over the course of almost two centuries.

But there is more serious business afoot here this morning, a morning of growing, glorious spring warmth promising an afternoon that will cause the two assembled cricket teams - representing Chorleywood and Old Merchant Taylors' - to quench their thirst with increasing alacrity.

Chorleywood Cricket Club, indeed, have played in sight of the dark, tiled spire for almost as long as the church has existed on a pitch established by none other than the MCC.

And now a large, half-constructed pavilion bears testament to the Club’s continuing ambition.

The old clubhouse seemed fragile even back in the late 1960s. 

My footballing friends and I, having crossed the Common to reach the luxury of the close-cropped grass off season - we also played on the Common’s golf fairways whenever the mood took us - would sometimes venture into the cool, darkened rooms dotted with photographs of teams past.

I would always make for the picture featuring Jim Standen, who started at Chorleywood and went on to win the County Championship with Worcestershire in 1964, when he topped the First Class bowling averages with 52 wickets at 14.42. In the same year he was goalkeeper for the West Ham United team that won the FA Cup and went on to add the European Cup Winners' Cup the year after.

Now, as the new ample vision rises, its wooden joists triangulating above breeze blocks and scaffolding, I wonder what will happen to those old photographs. 

And I reckon that one of the three men watching the teams go through rustily familiar rituals ahead of this pre-season friendly, the first match to be played on this square since last September, will know. I am right.  

The wider windows of the new design will make this a pavilion of splendour, but wall space will be at a premium. The pictures will be accommodated, however; and larger, digitalised versions will also be employed.

Cannily, the new edifice will also include a café, open all year round, to attract strollers on this side of the Common, a long walk away from the Rose and Crown on the far edge.

And so the rituals continue. The umpires have inspected the wicket. Now the fielding team are populating the outfield, stretching and bending, chatting and laughing, flipping a ball around.

As he steps over the blue-rope boundary towards the sweetness of the newly-mown square, a young OMT player says quietly: "Cricket is back! How nice."

The opening batsmen arrive; interlopers. 

The first to receive transmits his feelings about the orientation of the sight screens being wheeled into place by two scampering outfielders, effecting small alterations by waving his bat in the air. Satisfied, he pats the turf in front of him as if confirming its solidity.

At his back the A404 Rickmansworth Road affords a steady flow of traffic access to and from the northbound and southbound M25 turnings half a mile further along, defended from the incursion of a rogue cricket ball only by a foot-high wooden barrier.

One mighty six could cause traffic mayhem. 

I’ve seen a similar thing happen when the football team used to play here with the ball smacking straight into the side of a travelling car after narrowly missing the post.

Ah well. It’s just another Chorleywood Common tradition.

Random clapping and encouragement from the fielding team signals the imminence of action.  After all the preliminaries, the bowling is brisk and business-like.

The knock of ball on willow echoes, as it has so many, many times before, across to the church half hidden by a huge oak. Everybody involved feels that first contact like a familiar caress.

The number three batsman, already strolling restlessly near the trestle table at which some of his compadres are sitting, steps forward to briefly knead the shoulders of one of them. The scorer meanwhile is hunched up, viewing the action intently through binoculars.

Two younger team-members from lower down the batting order are involved in perfecting step-overs with a plastic football alongside team bags sheltered from the sun under temporary awnings.

An overenthusiastic effort sends the ball bouncing towards one of the wide avenues of bracken, birch and budding oak that link the eastern and western ends of this ancient woodland.

Cattle grazing ended soon after the First World War, during which artillery was temporarily housed in the Gun Dell - another favoured footballing haunt after The Big Match had finished on Sunday afternoon.

Neither a player nor a spectator, it is time for me to head back to a car that will be steadily heating up where it is parked behind the new pavilion. 

As I do so I hear the left-arm medium pacer who has delivered an opening maiden over receive hearty encouragement from his captain standing at mid on: "Great start!"

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian.

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