Success at cricket, as played by the children who lived in and about the Avenue, depended entirely on two things - an intimate foreknowledge of the pitfalls of the ashfalt and the ability to observe an unnatural discipline when batting.

Square cuts and late cuts were strokes not, as yet, attempted for, even if we knew what they were, our fastest bowlers, Joe and Henry Higham, never sent up anything more than a good slow medium. It was most essential, then, with the subduing of our natural hitting-to-leg instincts, to cultivate low, straight drives which trickled past the bowler to the far end of the avenue.

"Stopped it!" shrieked Lily Mars swooping down on the ball with pinafore outspread. Lily Mars was fielding at long-stop.

The avenue was a narrow cul-de-sac of six bow-windowed houses, three on either side, each with its small, neat garden behind a low, green wooden gate. A stretch of ashfalt ran between the gardens ending in a high brick wall and a lamp-post. Providing we did not chip its paintwork with the bat we were allowed the use the lamp-post in place of stumps. To avoid this fatality the crease was measured three bats lengths from its base. This was considered a fair margin of safety for even the most orthodox of batsmen.

With the end of the bat we would then proceed to beat out a hole - it became rougher and deeper as each player took guard - from which we started off our innings.

"Play!" called out Joe Higham, charging moodily down the wicket like a fierce bull.

Surely no cricketer, either amateur or professional, had to contend with a pitch so given to unpredictable wiles and surprises. Its ashfalt surface - crumpled and ridden with holes - defeated even the most quick-witted and intrepid child. The great Jack Hobbs himself, we felt, would have become frustrated into inactivity as we were in our attempts to follow the ball as it bumped, shot away, or finally stopped dead at one of the larger holes on its way to the lamp-post. Sometimes, on very hot days, little blobs of tar would bubble out of the ashfalt which made it necessary for the bowler to either wipe the ball down the side of his trousers or bowl the rest of the over with a tarry hand. "Half a mo," Henry would shout, ' Its all tarry."

The scoring of runs depended on how far one was prepared to leave the safety of the crease and run out to meet the ball before its second bounce - the Avenue teams, at that time, carried only underarm bowlers. And not even Margie Slater, our most prolific scorer, dare do this if our stumper, Queenie Vulcan, chanced to be on guard behind the lamp-post. It was not that Queenie Vulcan was a particularly efficient stumper. She had merely, so to speak, idled into this position by her refusal to field anywhere which necessitated moving about.

She was a fat, lazy little girl with thick, pebble spectacles; she showed a sadistic delight in bringing about, by her own hand, the downfall of a batsman. If the batsman should miss the ball halfway down the pitch, then it needed little exertion on Queenie's part to grab her chance and the ball and pound it three times - hard balls were not allowed in the Avenue - against the the lamp-post.

"Out for a duck!" Queenie's voice was shrill with pleasure. Should another player be told to be stumper, Queenie would sit heavily on a gate and suck a stick of liquorice.

We had no scruples as to who should bat and bowl first. The little boy or girl who owned the bat opened the innings and the owner of the ball, opened the bowling. The owner of the bat became, automatically, the captain. Then, one august afternoon, Joe Higham - who was six - insisted on a more communal method of selection. Standing seven of us against the railings of Number Three he prodded each of our chests in turn with a grimy finger intoning slowly the familiar rhyme beginning 'Eena - meena - mino -mo."

The one whose good fortune it was to be prodded on the last word 'Mo' was pulled out from the rest of the group and set apart to bat first. Joe Higham chose the opening bowler in the same manner. It was perhaps as well that the number of players fluctuated considerably from afternoon to afternoon for nothing would have prevented the avenue cricketers from learning 'Eena  

- meena' by heart and so fighting their way to the propitious place along the fence.

Our technique of batting was, by necessity, reduced to a sober and disciplined style, because the Avenue players had to follow a set of rules drawn up by the owners of the six houses. If the ball was hit into any garden excepting Number Five it was, irrevocably, "OUT!" The garden of Number Five happened to be on the off-side. This was unfortunate as Margie Slater was the only one of us who had mastered the off-drive.

Consequently her run-getting took up a greater part of the evening. "Sixty-seven..." Margie would mutter dreamily, lifting the ball prettily over the railings. The rest of us - experts at swiping the ball into the forbidden gardens on the leg side - would lunge forward with bats straight as a telegraph pole and send the ball stoically on its earthbound course along the ashfalt to the end of the Avenue,where our best fielder, Lily Mars, spent her time of waiting.

Because of the tricks of the ashfalt there was often a barren period between scoring strokes. Then Lily Mars would either twirl round and round on one foot or play a solitary game of hop-scotch, marking out her patch of squares with a piece of orange chalk. If the ball caught her unawares and shot into the road, it was a glorious six; if Lily stopped it, which she often did by swooping down on it with an outspread pinafore, then it was a well deserved three.

Henry Higham was admitted, by every batsman, to be the best bowler. His were the only balls to reach the lamp-post without first bouncing along the ashfalt; thus the problems of batting were considerably lessened even if one had to reach out wildly with the bat to hit 'skiers' which, occasionally were so lofty that they dropped over the wall behind Queenie Vulcan. Henry took a very long run and delivered the ball with the tip of his tongue touching his nose. It was a habit of Henry Highams which became intensified when he was about to do anything calling for ernest application.

Our only left arm bowler - she had a tendency to the 'googly' - was Winifred Cohen who lived above the shop of Mr Ayres, the greengrocer. When Winifred came on to bowl she would do two or three fairy-like little hops up to the pile of jackets which was the bowler's starting point. Then, in a manner more ostentatious than productive, she would half throw the ball in the direction of the lamp-post with a fancy little jerk of the wrist. She wore a thin gold bracelet which slid up her arm with each ball she bowled. No one liked to be batting during her overs; the ball gave no more than a trickle, then rolled absently into the 'London Pride' which bordered the railings of Number Four. Even patient Lily Mars went red with exasperation when Winifred advanced, with s shake of curls.

This, then, was the setting and these the players for those long summer hours of after-school cricket. If we had any spectators they were of the elderly kind. Sometimes Rose and Flora Dobson who lived at Number Five would throw open their drawing room windows and sit smiling at us over their embroidery. Or old Mr Thomas would lean upon his gate to say, "Come on, now, come on, you don't call that hitting, do you?" Mr Thomas read very wise books which he kept in a bookcase as high as the ceiling. Then there was Mrs Surridge who liked to mend her socks in the garden of Number Two. She sat in a rocking chair under an arch of clematis and, on hot evenings, she put on a loose silk kimono which she had once worn as 'Madame Butterfly'.

And, sometimes, as we ran up and down the ashfalt pitch, we heard through the open window, the mother of the children of Number Three singing at the piano. 'As I was strolling Down the Lowther Arcade' or, perhaps:

'I won't play in your yard,

I don't like you anymore'

You'll be sorry when you see me

Swinging on our garden door...'

At nine o'clock she would call out to the four who belonged to her, 'One more innings and then time for bed." When the children of Number Three went indoors they took with them the bat and ball.