Kevin Iles thought of Lord's again, as he often did in idle moments. The sun was bright, the grass striped and the ball so big he couldn't help but hit it. His timing was so sweet, his strokes so sure, that he scored only in fours and sixes. And he heard the claps as the crowd stood to cheer his century. If you ever held a bat you must have imagined something similar. But this was a memory, not the dream it seems.

"It is weird," says Iles, "the things you remember." The shots are a blur, the bowlers a muddle. But the little details are still clear; his name on the scorecard, the call of the announcer as he came out to bat. And how, when he scored his hundred, he picked out his father in the crowd and waved his bat towards him.

Around Wiltshire way Iles is a hero. They say he is the greatest player in the history of village cricket, though he scoffs at that. He lives in Goatacre, which is not a village so much as a crossroads on the edge of RAF Lyneham. There is no pub and no shop, but there is a cricket club. That's where you'll find Iles, every Saturday through the summer, and most Sundays too, playing on the ground his grandfather built. It is 200 yards up from the house he was born in, two fields across from the house he lives in now.

There's a marquee there at the moment, ready for the reunion of the team who won the Village Cup in 1988. That match was rained off, relocated from Lord's to Beckenham and restarted the next day. Iles was captain. He took four wickets and a run out, then scored 91. The Cricketer called him "Goatacre's Wellington". Some wiseacre took a stuffed goat along as a mascot. "Putrid thing, smelt absolutely awful. Stunk out the dressing room."

Two years later Goatacre's Wellington had his Waterloo. Iles led them to Lord's again, to play Dunstall. "Truth is, we weren't much of a side," he says. He reckons it was John Turner – JT – who taught them how to win. JT moved to the village in the mid-80s. One day he was leaning over the fence watching the cricket and someone asked him if he could play. "A little." He used to bat for Bucks in the Minor Counties.

On their grand day out Goatacre lost their first wicket off the first ball, their second when the score was 23. JT pushed himself up to No4. He was in no nick at all, but he made fifty. Two balls later JT chipped one to midwicket. Iles is sure he did it on purpose. He walked out to bat, down the stairs to the Long Room, and found JT waiting at the bottom, leaning on a balustrade. "Go on, son," JT said, "go out there and enjoy yourself."

"And I thought: 'OK, I will.'"

A leg-spinner was on, which made Iles groan. That was the one thing he didn't want to face. "He came up and give it a big rip, and it pitched, but it didn't turn. And he did it again, and it still didn't turn, and I thought: 'Well, this is all right.'" He hit him for four sixes in a row. And that was the start of what Wisden called "the finest innings seen at Lord's in many a day".

Iles still can't explain it. "I just hit through the line, and it went out the middle of the bat and that was it." There were seven sixes and six fours, "mainly in the V", according to The Cricketer. "Well," Iles says with a chuckle, "leg-side of the V."

Iles did not think, barely blinked, before he got to 99. And then a wicket fell. "I looked up at the scoreboard, and thought for the first time: 'Oh, Christ. I could get a hundred at Lord's.'" The next man, Andy Dawson, got lost in the pavilion. "He finally got out and said: 'Sorry mate, I went down the wrong stairs.' He was in the bloody basement, and I'm stood in the middle of Lord's on 99."

Iles pushed the next ball back to the bowler, who stooped to scoop it up but let it scoot under his hand. "No," Iles cried. "YES! YES!" The hundred took 45 minutes, and 39 balls. The MCC does not keep exact records, but no one knows of a quicker century scored at Lord's. "Trekking off, I remember thinking: 'This is quite nice, all these old duffers in their ties standing up for me.'"

Iles is 51 now, "an old fart", and his stubble is grey. This may be his last season. He does not know what he will do at the weekends without cricket. He has only missed one match in the Village Cup in the past 37 years. . He has scored more runs, and more centuries, in the competition than anyone else.

Dawson's son, Liam, plays for Hampshire now. Iles watches him and wonders whether he would have been good enough to do that. He had a trial with them when he was a boy. They turned him down. Later, Wiltshire wanted to call him up but the rules meant he would not have been able to play in his beloved Village Cup. He said no.

"I didn't have the heart to do it. I just enjoyed playing with my mates, for fun. I never wanted it to be a job," he says, a little uncertainly. "I've no regrets. I lived every boy's dream."