The first known reference in print to ‘Long Ditton Cricket Club’ appeared in a local newspaper in 1888. There were continuities of personnel between that team and the subsequent Ditton Hill Cricket Club, founded a decade later. In the early twentieth century, Ditton Hill CC played at a field made available by the rector of Long Ditton St. Mary’s Church, eventually moving by the 1920s to a ground on the current site of Long Ditton Cemetery. Photographs from the period suggest a rustic setting, with a lightly mown outfield and sheet sightscreens held up on poles. The club’s current logo, featuring a hog, and its nickname, ‘The Hogs,’ commemorate this ground, which stood adjacent to an often-pungent pig farm.
After the Second World War, displaced by the new cemetery, Ditton Hill CC relocated to a cricket ground on Sugden Road, which had itself been vacated by Surbiton Cricket Club in 1940 when many of that club’s members were mobilized into military service. Ditton Hill agreed to a ground-share arrangement with Surbiton Hockey Club, which was the principal leasee. Within a few years, Hinchley Wood CC had joined the arrangement. But the pressures of accommodating the fixtures of three summer sports clubs soon told, and in the mid-1950s, the hockey club decided not to renew Ditton Hill CC’s sublease on the ground. Controversy ensued, because Ditton Hill members felt that they had contributed to the post-war development in the investment in the Sugden Road site. Esher Council were keen to effect a resolution, which eventually took the form of the 1959 merger of the Ditton Hill and Hinchley Wood clubs into Long Ditton CC. The new club continued to play at Sugden Road, where it hosted benefit matches for Surrey and England cricketers Ken Barrington (1964) and Jack Richards (1988). A junior section was established at the club in 1987.
But the increasing success of Surbiton Hockey Club coupled with the game’s transition to artificial surfaces prompted new developments at Sugden Road, and in 1992 Long Ditton CC was forced to leave a ground that had been its home for over forty years. The club’s future looked uncertain. Unable to meet league ground requirements, it was reduced to playing friendly fixtures only at a variety of sites around Kingston and Elmbridge. For a time, the club hosted games at the Milk Marketing Board’s facility in Thames Ditton.
But its members were resilient, applying for and receiving permission to develop a new, permanent ground on Stokes Field, and thereafter for awards from the Foundation for Sports and the Arts and from the National Lottery Sports Fund to help level the field and build the clubhouse. In June 2001 it welcomed hundreds of spectators to the new ground to watch a benefit match, this time to raise money for Long Ditton CC itself, featuring England cricketeers Mike Gatting and Graham Gooch, England World Cup hero, Geoff Hurst, and celebrities Tim Rice, Ainsley Harriott and David Essex (who played frequently for the club’s Sunday team). In 2002 Les Bond, our current Club President (and local legend) was named Club Cricket Conference Cricketer of the Year.
The club celebrated 10 years at the new ground in 2011, where we continued to focus heavily on junior teams. In 2019 we did something no other team has ever done before or sense, winning our very own Treble: the Fullers Premier Division League Title, Fullers T20 Cup Competition and the Fullers League Cup Competition. What a year!
Long Ditton CC prides itself on being a club rooted in its local community, as it has been for over 125 years. It offers opportunities to play to new and experienced cricketeers alike, from All-Stars and Dynamos programmes aimed at infant and junior school children, through age-group cricket from U11s to U17s, into three adult sides. We recently fielded our first all-girls league side and are looking to develop our provision in girls and women’s cricket in collaboration with the Surrey Cricket Foundation. In 2024 we opened two new state-of-the art outdoor practice nets, thanks to an Elmbridge Council grant and a generous private donor. The club also maintains a long tradition of hosting social events, dating back to its first annual dinner at the Plough and Harrow in Long Ditton in 1899 and musical concerts at Long Ditton Parish Hall in the early 1900s, with regular comedy and quiz nights and a music festival. Our clubhouse, including kitchen, bar, dancefloor and patio, is available for event hire.
We’re tucked away next to Stokes Field Nature Reserve. Once you find us, you won’t want to leave our little paradise.
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