THE author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, was a famous author and a truly dire cricketer, but he adored the game and played in at least three "celebrity" games at Broadway in Worcestershire.

Barrie even penned the pamphlet, "The Allahakbarrie Book of Broadway Cricket" (1899), which is an amusing, whimsical account of his cricketing endeavours in the Cotswolds.

He wrote: "The name Broadway is of Roman origin...Here Caesar probably played many fine innings of a Saturday afternoon. But all this was long ago, in the days of top hats and underhand bowling."

It might therefore be pleasant for the audience at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire, on June 19, for an open-air production of 'Peter Pan', to reflect fondly that Barrie himself was a regular visitor to neighbouring Worcestershire, and other famous people of the late Victorian day followed in his wake.

These included some of the UK's most famous writers including A. A. Milne, P. G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome and Arthur Conan Doyle, because these men were regulars in Barrie's amateur cricket team from 1890 to 1913.

According to a recent book, 'Peter Pan's First XI: The extraordinary story of J.M. Barrie's cricket team', by author Kevin Kelfer, the Broadway years for matches were 1897,1898 and 1899, and it all must have been pretty intense.

Barrie himself wrote: "Rivalry ran at its noblest when the Allahakbarries (Barrie's team) had their bouts with Broadway in Worcestershire."

He named his team after the Islamic exhortation, "God is the Greatest", because he believed the team was in great need of divine help, due to the monumental scale of its defeats.

But whether the team deserved divine favour is another question entirely.

The games might indeed have been intense, but the general standard of cricket was, by most accounts, pretty awful.

In a Cotswold Homes article, the writer Matt Dicks says: "Well over a hundred years ago, the celebrities of the day began concentrating in a small Worcestershire village to do little more than play a few ridiculous games of cricket.

"The short, slight Barrie may have been no great shakes at the game itself, but this didn't stop him from assembling and captaining his own crack team of celebrity chums. Barrie made the every Allahakbarrie game a big production of which he was the director."

Sadly, he was also perhaps the very worst player on the field.

His cricketing pamphlet is dedicated "To Our Dear Enemy, Mary de Navarro", the American actress whom Barrie was much taken with and who had retired to Broadway.

She played cricket herself, and once she was able to bowl out the hapless Barrie for a duck, presumably to guffaws of laughter from their mutual celebrity friends.

Barrie knew he was a bad player. One one level, his cricketing book is a long, amusing account of his lack of success at the crease.

Other celebrity players were apparently more successful, with a former acquaintance recalling that Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, was Barrie′s "chief tower of strength" when it came to competitive cricket.

This should not come as a surprise, for Conan Doyle actually played in a number of cricket matches for the M.C.C.

What he made of Barrie's elementary cricketing skills is not on record, although - of course - it might be deduced.

Further details concerning the Eastnor Castle performance of Peter Pan are on 01531 633160.