Gloucestershire likes a good festival. There’s the ever popular Cheltenham Literature Festival and the jazz festival which takes place in the heart of the same town. Then there’s the food and drink festivals, the beer festivals – there’s plenty of those! – and the cricket festivals.

Talk about a cricket festival and many people immediately assume you are talking about the Cheltenham Cricket Festival which is played out around this time of year and sees some of the best cricketers in the world show off their talents at the stunning Cheltenham College ground.

But if you’re in the Cotswolds – and Bourton-on-the-Water specifically – and start talking cricket festivals they are very likely to think you are referring to one that is much closer to home.

That’s because this is the time of year that Bourton Vale Cricket Club hold their annual festival – and this year there is an extra sense of anticipation because the MCC are bringing a team to play on Thursday 5th July.

That game gets under way at the club’s picturesque ground off Rissington Road at 10.30am and in the past has featured such luminaries as one-time England captain Mike Gatting.

There is no guarantee that there will be anyone of that calibre playing this time around but as Bourton’s ever agreeable chairman Kevin Langley says: “They will bring a team of very good cricketers, it will be a high quality game.”

The six-day festival starts on Sunday 1st July with a fun six-a-side tournament and Langley is hopeful that Chris Hughes, of Love Island fame, may have a runout.

Hughes, a very decent all-rounder, was a regular for Bourton Vale before his life was turned upside down by his appearance on the reality dating show.

He managed just one game for the club last season when he took seven wickets but has remained in touched and was looking on from the other side of the boundary when the club played at Hatherley and Reddings in a recent West of England League Gloucestershire Division clash.

“We’re hopeful that he’ll play in one of our six-a-side teams,” said Langley. “He’s a good cricketer and a very nice lad. He’s got time for everyone and he’s exactly like he is on TV.”

The sixes tournament precedes three days of more serious cricket against the Gentlemen of Worcester on the Monday, Gloucestershire Gipsies on the Tuesday and Warwickshire Imps on the Wednesday.

The Festival will close with the Sarah Davies Memorial T20 game on Friday evening.

And while there is sure to be plenty of action on the pitch – weather permitting – Langley is hopeful that things go just as well off the pitch.

The club hopes that their new clubhouse would be ready for the start of the season were knocked for six by the very bad weather we had last winter – remember the Beast from the East?

“It was the wettest winter for 32 years and we were trying to build a clubhouse through that,” said Langley.

“We’re two months behind schedule but we hope it will be ready for the start of the festival.

“It’s been a stressful, frustrating time but we’ll look back on it in years to come and realise it was only for a short period.”

Langley is very grateful to the support that the club have received from the village’s football and tennis clubs.

“We’ve had fantastic cooperation,” he said.