WHETHER you're a fan of the blue and red of Somerset, or wave the flag for the dark and light blues of St. George's, there is one thing that diehard supporters from both camps can agree on ¿ the annual Cup Match cricket extravaganza has a strange way of bringing the island together in a united celebration of sport and history.

And a chance find in the basement of an old house in St. George's has enabled two strangers to forge a friendship based on a love for the traditions of the game.

When architect Philip Seaman went down to the basement of his father-in-law's house on Duke of Clarence Street in St. George's, the only thing on his mind was to locate a faulty plumbing valve. What he didn't expect to unearth among the dust and clutter was a ledger detailing the minutes of the St. George's Cricket Club from nearly 70 years ago.

The canvas-bound notebook lists Cup Match teamsheets, accounts and other daily business of the club from 1939 to 1946. The details, penned in ink as fresh today as the days they were written, were compiled by a number of club secretaries who held the post during that seven-year period, including Philip Packwood and Ernest Smith.

"My father-in-law said he hadn't been down the basement since the house was renovated in the 1980s, so I guess this had been laying there for 20 years or more," Mr. Seaman, 43, said.

"It really is in very good condition and the penmanship is remarkable. But it also sparked my interest because I was curious as to how it came to be down there. My in-laws family are the Jennings and I'm trying to find out if there's any family link between the Jennings and Packwoods and Smiths."

Following the discovery, Mr. Seaman met up with renowned sports historian Warrington (Soup) Zuill to find out more about the book's origins.

Mr. Zuill, 77, began attending Cup Match as a young boy in the late 1930s, and the names carefully documented in the tome's yellow pages enabled the lifetime St. George's fan to roll back the years to when he first attended the summer classic.

"Norwood (Brody) Smith ¿ a great all-rounder," Mr. Zuill recalled, reading down the teamsheet for the 1941 St. George's side.

"Edward (Bosun) Swainson ¿ Bosun became the first man to score a century at Cup Match.

"Carlton (Duke) Welch ¿ the Duke was a classic bowler who had his own unique approach to the wicket. At the time he was regarded as a speeder, although now he'd be classed as a medium-pacer."

Mr. Zuill, a retired taxi driver who gave a presentation on the history of Cup Match at Washington's Smithsonian Institute in 2001, can recall a time when the match was played on a concrete wicket and the teams would be decked out in dazzling whites, a bygone era when the game was closely associated with words such as "dignity" and "prestige" .

Referring back to those days, he said: "Cricket was a totally different game back then. The players were role models and a young fella growing up back then would look up to his favourite Cup Match players and emulate them.

"Cup Match itself was far more of an occasion ¿ it was the Utopia of sport. People didn't travel like they do today so if the match was being played in Somerset, it was one of the few times people from the East End would leave St. George's. We always made a great effort to go to Cup Match because it was the highlight of the summer ¿ our one summer holiday.

"The players themselves also made great sacrifices and the fans would throw their favourite players a few shillings. It was also the one time of the year that we would get to eat watermelon ¿ we were too busy hustling throughout the rest of the year to afford any.

"And we didn't have any big marquees back then. In those days, the day before Cup Match, it was the women's job to prepare the food while the men would go down to the ground and try and book a good spot for the family ¿ if you could find a good tree that hadn't been taken you would grab a spot underneath that fella."

Mr. Zuill, who has kept an archive of Cup Match programmes and reports, described the document as "a national treasure" and urged Mr. Seaman to keep it in pristine condition.

Along with the logbook, Mr. Seaman also came across a number of copies of The Royal Gazette from the 1960s. In an August 1961 edition, sharing front-page space with the latest developments in the Cold War, is news of that year's match. 'St. George's Win Again ¿ Cup Match Festival Usual Colourful Spectacle', reads the headline.

"That's what I like to see ¿ the more things change, the more they stay the same," said Mr. Seaman, a view shared by Mr. Zuill.