Once upon a time there was a cricket club, formed by the old boys from the (now defunct) Henry Thornton secondary school, on the south side of Clapham Common. They were called Old Thorntonians; they also had a second XI, called – with a sad lack of imagination – the Old Thorntonians II. For the most part, they played friendly games against a bunch of nice people with grounds in the south-west of London. In the late 1970s, Old Thorntonians II decided that they would like to enter the club in a League. Not all the members were up for the idea of league cricket, with all that serious, win-or-bust mentality, finding it got in the way of the drinking. So a splinter group took over the existing fixture list, and continued to play friendly games.

Thus the Surrey Cryptics Cricket Club was born, if born is the right word for something so fluid and amorphous. Since its nascence, the club has ridden the roller-coaster of failure and not-quite-failure, occasionally speckled with unalloyed joy (eat your hearts out, Federation of Zionist Youth).

Much of the club’s performance in the 1980s is lost to the twin catastrophes of the Great New York Scorebooks Disaster, when key records were irreplaceably lost to the nation, and of Thatcherism, when many Cryptics were too busy making money to remember what happened in the cricket.

However, throughout its history, the club has retained two vital elements: the enthusiasm and drive of its officials, who continually refuse to roll over and die in the face of world class apathy, and the club’s ability to unearth a bedrock of peripatetic former colonials (can you have a peripatetic bedrock – Ed?). A hard core of Southern Africans and Australasians has sustained the club, and continues to serve it well. Many of these doughty travellers are commemorated in the club’s Hall of Infamy.

The club’s original fixture list focused substantially on an arc of south-west London that straddled the South Circular Road – playing opponents such as Battersea Ironsides, Honor Oak, Spencer and Sutton & District Railway.

This list has evolved over time, and drifted inexorably southwards, as successive fixture secretaries have become upwardly mobile, married and/or bred, and discovered that a terraced, rented place in Earlsfield just doesn’t cut it any more. In 2007 well over half our opponents play at grounds outside the M25; only Putney survives anywhere near the South Circular Road.

New opponents have come and gone – Beddington came back again, and went away yet again – and in the louche, androgynous late 80’s, it was somehow appropriate that we played the Wallington Cottagers. Some of our opponents have fallen in the name of ‘progress’, and had their grounds sold from under them. Charter and Diamond is now allegedly a garden centre; the pitch at Bethlem & Maudsley became unavailable when the psychiatric hospital which housed it closed, forever removing the thrill of unpredictable encounters in the woods surrounding the boundary.

These fixtures have been partly replaced by more bucolic environments; traditional and picturesque rural grounds at Chiddingfold, Crondall, Shackleford. But only partly – as recently as 1988, the fixture list was 28 strong; in 2007 we had 15, and an end-of-season tour. Internal and external trends share the blame for this. Family pressures on an ageing membership mean that playing on Saturday and Sunday is no longer feasible, except for the persuasive and the divorced. And the increasing trend to league cricket means most opponents reserve Saturdays for that format, which is denied to us as a wandering side.

A final word on opponents must be reserved for Headley, long our favourite ground and people. In the heady days of Saturday and Sunday matches, we would play Headley twice in a season, because we enjoyed the experience so much. The Cryptics, not noted for adherence to tradition and its trappings, raised two tables of guests for the Headley Centenary Dinner in 1993 at Lords, where we were enthralled by a lengthy speech from guest of honour Sir Colin Cowdrey.

Our performances over the years have varied substantially, only occasionally related to the talent available to us. But the ability to lose quick wickets and throw away good opening stands remains with us, demonstrating the oft-quoted belief that we’re basically a team of no. 7s, with a couple of decent batsmen for good measure. They know who they are.

However, our general playing strength is good as at 2007, such that 9, 10 and Jack are rarely needed. This year’s transition of club captaincy went so smoothly that we had our most successful season since records began, despite losing six matches to the weather. And although the core membership shows some signs of ageing, home-grown talent is under development, and lately several Cryptic teenagers have joined their fathers on the pitch. As the club breeding programme continues apace, more Cryptics than ever have a youngster waiting in the wings.