In his day job, Davies, 41, is senior lecturer in European history at Huddersfield University but his evenings and weekends since 2004 have been dedicated to compiling a picture of every one of the 100 cricket clubs in Calderdale and Kirklees.

Some, lacking perhaps in imagination, would describe his work as an archive. That somehow devalues both the concept and the delivery of a project which provides an ideal template for others to follow and discover the part sport – it does not have to be cricket – has played in the evolution of life in the towns and villages of the region.

Davies would be the first to accept that he has not been alone. For a start he received a £43,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to begin his work, the first time funds from that source had been allocated to a sport-driven project.

Huddersfield University weighed in with an in-kind contribution of £7,000 and he has had valued support from Robert Light, who lives in Pateley Bridge and is working on a PhD in cricket history, students on history and media courses at the university and volunteers through the Calderdale-Kirklees area, somewhere between
300-400 is his estimate.

The aim of the project was to explore and celebrate the cricketing heritage of Kirklees and Calderdale and to appreciate his success in achieving that simple-sounding but far from straightforward goal the quickest route is to access www.ckcricketheritage.org.uk

The process began when Davies, a keen club cricketer, injured his back playing for Birkby Nuffield in the Huddersfield Central League. "I lost confidence in my ability to play after that," he says. "Instead I began spending my Saturday afternoons wandering round the cricket grounds in the area and it gradually came to me that the sub-culture of league cricket in the towns and villages needed a wider profile".

Now all the clubs in the area, from giants of the league game like Lascelles Hall, founded in 1825 and home to many future Yorkshire cricketers, to the most modest of organisations have been featured in exhibitions in their local post office, village hall – or pub.

"We have taken the cricket clubs into their villages to show people how central they are to their community," says Davies. "Sport has long been undervalued in the fabric of our lives and this is something people care about."

His success has brought requests for advice on similar projects from other areas – including Sheffield, Barnsley and South Wales – there has been interest from centres which historically have claimed greater importance in the history of cricket, organisations like the Bradford and Lancashire Leagues. He has responded but intends to concentrate on the part of Yorkshire he has come to know so well as his studies progress.

"I have come to know this area like the back of my hand," he says. "I feel rooted here and can't imagine living anywhere else."

His next targets are the clubs in Kirklees and Calderdale which no longer exist. "There must be about 1,500 of them," he suggests. "Every village would have had three of four clubs and my ambition now is to get inside those old clubs, dig up the memories using old scorebooks, committee minutes, photographs, talking to people, all the things we did with the existing clubs".

Other themes he and colleagues are pursuing include the impact of Asian and Afro-Caribbean cricketers on the league cricket scene and the influence and involvement of women in the game, not just in their traditional role as tea-ladies but as players, umpires, scorers, secretaries and even chairpersons of clubs.


Care free and able to be England scrum-half

AS a scrum-half himself in his playing days with Fylde, Orrell and Lancashire, Brian Ashton was good enough to earn a place on an England tour and so knows the qualities required to reach the highest level in one of rugby's pivotal positions.

He is also not afraid to take a chance as his addition of Danny Care to the national squad preparing for the game in Scotland on Saturday after only a handful of games in the Harlequins' first XV proved.

Care is the closest thing English rugby has seen to another son of Otley who went on to captain his country before having his career ruined by a series of injuries. Nigel Melville went to the now defunct Aireborough GS, Care to the still thriving Prince Henry's GS on the banks of the Wharfe but, schooling apart, the pair have much in common.

Melville's potential was spotted in his schooldays, principally by officials at the Otley club and the late Ronnie Leigh, an influential figure within the England Schools' Rugby Football Union, and prospered after leaving his native heath for the delights of working in London and playing for Wasps. Now, after spells as director of rugby at Wasps and Gloucester, he is in charge of rugby development in the United States.

Care, whose first love was football, was taken on board by the Leeds academy but allowed to leave when the club suffered relegation.

He chose Harlequins as his second club and has gradually honed his game with them and the England sevens squad to such a degree that when Andy Gomersall, Quins' first-choice scrum-half, was required by England this season he rose to the chance superbly.

Like Melville, young Care is quick in three key areas: the hands, the feet and the brain. He is, if anything, quicker over the ground than his illustrious predecessor but, equally as important in these days of inflated egos, he remains the lad he was when learning the game at PHGS. He will not let England down when his chance comes; it might even be the start of a great international career.