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From Lads to Lord's: Introduction Biographies
Clubs and venues
Addington Cricket Club |
The Artillery Ground |
Broadhalfpenny Down |
Bromley CC and Bromley Common |
Chertsey CC and Laleham Burway
Dartford CC and Dartford Brent |
Duppas Hill |
Guildford Bason |
Hambledon Club |
Kennington Common |
London Cricket Club
Moulsey Hurst |
Richmond Green |
Slindon Cricket Club |
The Vine Cricket Ground |
The White Conduit Club
International development
Australia and New Zealand |
India |
North America |
South Africa |
The West Indies |
Slavery in the Caribbean
Laws of Cricket
The Laws of Cricket 1744 |
The Laws of Cricket 1774
The game and its times
Cricket and other games in the 17th century |
Cricket at the end of the 17th century |
The 18th century
Talking points
The Origin of Major Cricket |
Wickets |
The First Bowling Revolution |
The Monster Bat Controversy |
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
Addington is about 3 miles south-east of Croydon and its cricket club was based at nearby Addington Hill, though it played some home matches at Croydon's Duppas Hill. The earliest mention of the club was the match on Monday 25 July 1743 when the team played against London at the Artillery Ground. It was an auspicious first mention too because they won the game by an innings and 4 runs. For some years afterwards, Addington was one of the greatest teams in England and, in 1744, it immediately accepted the famous Slindon challenge to play against any parish in England.
Addington's game against Slindon took place at the Artillery Ground on Wed 12 & Thurs 13 September 1744. It was affected by bad weather on the 12th and the result is unknown. It was probably abandoned because of more rain on the second day. At close of play on the first day, each side had completed its first innings and Slindon had a lead of just two runs.
Among Addington's best players were Durling, James and Joe Harris, Tom Faulkner, George Jackson, J Mansfield and Broad. John Frame seems to have played for the club in the early part of his career before he relocated to Dartford.
The club had a top-class fives team and Faulkner in particular was a leading single wicket player. In July 1749, Addington's five of Durling, Faulkner, Joe Harris, John Harris and Jackson challenged any other five players in England to a series of three matches with a stake of fifty guineas a side in the first two games and 100 guineas a side in the decider. But this backfired and they were defeated 2-1 by a strong All-England team.
The last mention of Addington in major cricket is the home match against Dartford on Wed 12 August 1752. The result is unknown but we do know that "our most humble servant George Williams would again provide the usual accommodation and victuals"! The club must lost its great players in the 1750s and then struggled during the Seven Years War due to loss of manpower and investment. By the start of the Hambledon era in the mid-1760s, Addington had suffered the fate of all great little clubs.
The famous Artillery Ground is in Finsbury and was historically stated to lie between Chiswell Street and Bunhill Fields, the latter being a cemetery. The Honourable Artillery Company used it for its own displays, parades, training, etc. but was often willing to allow its use by outside parties wishing to stage other events. From the time of its earliest known major cricket match in 1730, it was for over thirty years the main centre of cricket in London. Incidentally, the ground is still there, although its surroundings have changed somewhat.
As Ashley More says in his splendid account of Broadhalfpenny Down's long and chequered history, it is not where cricket started. The mythology has arisen from the place's nickname as the cradle of cricket. As we saw right at the start of this history, the cradle was rocked by a group of children in the Weald long, long ago in the days before Longshanks, and perhaps even the Conqueror, troubled the world.
We first hear of Broadhalfpenny Down in 1756 because a poor dog got lost there when Hambledon was playing a big match, almost certainly against Dartford. It continued to be the Hambledon Club's chosen venue until 1781 when the members decided it was too remote and that Windmill Down, which is adjacent to Hambledon village, was more suitable.
Broadhalfpenny Down is actually two miles from Hambledon, which is a fair way when most people are on foot and the rest on horseback. And it is uphill. But it did have a good pub opposite. Oddly enough, Windmill Down did not.
The end was inevitable but it took the Duke of Dorset to say it. He commented that the Down was a bleak place to play cricket and indeed he was probably already hankering for a return to London as the game's centre. Others agreed with him, whether they gave his views consideration or not. As a result, the club decided to take action and thought they had staved off the inevitable by the move to Windmill Down. But they had only postponed it for London beckoned and it only needed a suitable metropolitan venue to end the Hambledon adventure.
And that is what happened.
The earliest mention of major cricket in Bromley was a match that did not pass without incident. Kent played London on Bromley Common on Wed 30 July 1735 and won by 10 wickets. The report says that a large crowd attended and "a great deal of mischief was done". It seems that horses panicked and riders were thrown while some members of the crowd were "rode over". One man was "carried off for dead" as the Prince of Wales passed by at the entrance to the Common.
Bromley Common then became a regular venue for major matches and staged the first game known to have featured an All-England Eleven. This was the Kent v All-England match on Mon 9 July 1739 which Kent, described as the Unconquerable County won by "a very few notches". The match was billed as between "eleven gentlemen of that county (i.e., Kent) and eleven gentlemen from any part of England, exclusive of Kent".
The Bromley club, famous for Robert Colchin, made its known bow in major cricket when it played against London at the Artillery Ground on Mon 14 June 1742. The match ended in a tie, only the second known instance of this result after Surrey v London at Richmond Green on Wed 22 July 1741.
Besides Colchin, Bromley had the Bryant brothers, James and John, playing for them through the 1740s. With these three players, Bromley at the time could rival Addington and Slindon. When Slindon issued its famous challenge in September 1744 to play "any parish in England", they received immediate acceptances from Addington and Bromley. Bromley was due to play Slindon at the Artillery Ground on Fri 14 September 1744 but it seems that the game was rained off. Certainly the result is unknown.
The announcement of a match in 1745 gives a precise location for cricket on Bromley Common by stating that the venue was "behind the Bell Inn" while another in 1752 says that the venue was the "White Hart field".
The final mentions of Bromley and its common in major cricket are in 1752. Bromley played home and away against London on Tues 30 June and Wed 15 July 1752. Both games were inconclusive. Like all the great little clubs, Bromley faded due to the loss of its great players and the impact of the times. In Bromley's case, the early death of Colchin in 1750 could have decimated the club. Loss of manpower and investment during the Seven Years War will have played its part and Bromley was gone when the Hambledon era began in the mid-1760s.
Laleham Burway was a famous cricket ground near Chertsey in Surrey and the home of the Chertsey Cricket Club, which is one of the oldest in England. The club's own website dates its founding as 1737 but in fact matches involving a Chertsey team date from 1736. The Burway was a popular venue for major cricket matches throughout the 18th century.
We know of two games that were played by Chertsey before July in the 1736 season. One is Croydon v Chertsey at Duppas Hill in Croydon; the other is Chertsey v Croydon at the Laleham Burway ground in Chertsey. Our knowledge of the games is via an announcement in Read's Weekly Journal dated Saturday 3 July about a deciding game on Richmond Green to be played on Monday 5 July. In each of the two matches, the home team won by a great number of runs. The match at Laleham Burway is the first important one that we know to have been played there.
Numerous major cricket games were played at Laleham Burway during the 18th century. Perhaps the most famous (or infamous) was the one in which Thomas White's huge bat caused a furore that led to a change in the Laws of Cricket. This was the Chertsey v Hambledon game on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 September 1771. The last major cricket game at the ground may have been Chertsey v Coulsdon in June 1784, but there are doubts about the quality of that game. Chertsey did play Berkshire there in 1783 and that was a major cricket match. Laleham Burway continued to be used into the 19th century.
The club played a number of big matches against London and Dartford. In the 1760s, they played matches against the sport's rising power, Hambledon. Chertsey produced several famous players in the 18th century including the great bowler Edward Lumpy Stevens and the noted wicket-keeper batsman William Yalden.
Dartford Brent was a popular Kent venue throughout the 18th century and was probably used for cricket matches in the 17th century. It was an extensive area of common land on the outskirts of Dartford in Kent. Dartford at that time was a rural village. The Brent was noted for the quality of its turf, which was said to be as smooth as a bowling green.
The earliest known important game that took place there was the one on 29 June 1709 described above.
Dartford Cricket Club is one of the oldest in England and its origins go back to the early 18th century, perhaps earlier. The club still plays in the Kent League and its present ground at Hesketh Park is almost all that is left of the old Brent. According to the club's website, an unsuccessful campaign was waged against the Brent's enclosure during the 1870s and the townspeople presented a petition to the Court of Common Council. Among other things, the petition held that a portion of the Brent had been used as the town cricket ground throughout the whole period of living memory; while the whole area had been constantly resorted to for all sorts of past times and has been looked upon as the recreation ground of Dartford. The cricket ground at that time lay near the top of Brent Lane, somewhere across the road which passes alongside Hesketh Park.
Major cricket was played at Dartford Brent all through the 18th century and numerous references have survived from 1709 to 1795.
The All-England v Hampshire match played 27, 28 and 29 August 1795 (Hampshire won by 4 wickets) may have been the last time Dartford Brent was used for a major match. Games in Dartford after 1795 were played at Bowman's Lodge on nearby Dartford Heath.
Dartford players were reckoned by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, writing in his diary in 1723, to lay claim to the greatest excellence among English cricketers.
The club played a number of big matches against the London Cricket Club and, in 1756, they were involved in a tri-series against the sport's rising power, the Hambledon team.
Dartford produced several famous players in the 18th century including cricket's earliest known great player William Bedle. Later players included William Hodsoll, John Bell, John Frame and Edward Gower "Ned" Wenman.
Duppas Hill is a park and surrounding residential area in Waddon, near Croydon in Greater London (and historically in Surrey). It is thought to be named after a family called 'Dubber' or 'Double'.
Duppas Hill has a long history of sport and recreation. It is said that jousting took place there in medieval times and the story goes that Lord William de Warenne was treacherously slain there during a joust in 1286.
Duppas Hill was a cricket venue in the 18th century and is believed to have been used for major matches by the Croydon club as early as 1707 when the Croydon club played the London Club. It was certainly in use in 1731 when it is mentioned in CS and in two subsequent matches between Croydon and London. The last mention is in 1747.
Duppas Hill was the site of the Croydon workhouse from 1726 until 1866 when it was moved to Thornton Heath. There has been a public park at Duppas Hill since 1865, when the Croydon Board of Health bought land from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for £2,000 to create Croydon's first recreation ground. It was laid out with paths, a bandstand, pavilion and an ornate drinking fountain. The ground was used for public celebrations and firework displays. On the eve of the 1926 General Strike, Duppas Hill was the venue of a mass rally of trade unionists and workers. During World War II, Duppas Hill hosted a baseball match between American and Canadian soldiers.
Today the park is still a recreation ground and cricket is still played there.
Guildford is the location for the earliest definite reference to cricket in English history. A 1597 court case proves that a certain plot of land was used by boys who were playing the game in c.1550. Guildford Bason (or Basin) was on Merrow Down near Guildford and some early references are to the Down as venue rather than the Bason, so it is likely that the matches concerned were all played at the same place.
In July 1730, we have a reference to Merrow Down as the venue for a match between Mr Andrews' XI and the Duke of Richmond's XI (effectively a Surrey v Sussex match). In September 1741, Merrow Down is the venue for a famous match between, to quote the Duke of Richmond: poor little Slyndon against almost your whole county of Surrey. Slindon, featuring Richard Newland, won almost in one innings. We then have to fast forward to 1762 for another Guildford reference and, again, it is at Merrow Down with Guildford losing by 2 runs to Chertsey.
The first actual reference to Guildford Bason is the game played 31 July - 1 August 1769 between Caterham and Hambledon. Hambledon won by 4 wickets thanks to the batting of Messrs Small and Bayton.
Sussex lawyer John Baker, a regular spectator at Georgian matches, described some of them in his diary. One is the All-England v Hampshire game in July 1772 which Baker attended with his parson friend, John Woodward. He writes that Hambledon was already batting when they arrived. It was a cheerful scene and the Basin on Merrow Down was ringed by a big crowd of spectators, most of them standing. Indeed, contemporary paintings of matches show no sign of seating accommodation for the ordinary folk. The local publicans were doing good business in their booths, some of them rented by the local nobility and thus the equivalent of the present-day sponsors' tents or boxes. As in our own times, the occupants were often more interested in the food and drink than in the cricket. Guildford had fixed up a small grandstand with benches above one another over his booth below, but it was already full. Baker then talks about finding a small booth where we had a good cold dinner and good cider and ale. He says this was better and cheaper than the one they had on the following day in the White Hart booth.
The last we hear of Guildford Bason is the All-England v Hampshire match in August 1777. This produced a tense finish with Hampshire scoring 162-9 in the last innings to win by 1 wicket. Tom Taylor scored 62 and it required several runs by the last pair (Tom Sueter and Richard Nyren) to secure the win with Lumpy bowling to them.
The Hambledon Club in rural Hampshire had certainly been founded by 1768. Its basis was a local parish cricket team that was in existence before 1750 and had achieved prominence by 1756 when it played a series of three matches versus Dartford, which had itself been a major club for at least 30 years. Hambledon's stature grew over the next 20 years till by the late 1770s it was the foremost cricket club in England.
The Hambledon Club was multi-functional and essentially a social club that organised county cricket matches. It has generally been said that its teams should be termed "Hampshire" but, according to evidence quoted by G B Buckley, "Hampshire & Sussex" was synonymous with "Hambledon Club".
In 1782 the club moved from its original ground at Broadhalfpenny Down to Windmill Down, about half a mile away towards the village of Hambledon.
Hambledon's great days ended in the 1780s when Lord's was established as the home of the new Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787. Membership declined during the 1790s. On 29 August 1796, fifteen people attended a meeting and amongst them, according to the official minutes, was "Mr Thos Pain, Authour of the rights of Man"! It was probably a joke for Thomas Paine was then under sentence of death for treason and exiled in revolutionary Paris. The last meeting was held on 21 September 1796 where the minutes read only that "No Gentlemen were present".
Kennington Common was in south London and it is believed that The Oval occupies part of the original site.
The common was used for all sorts of public events including cricket and prizefighting. John Wesley spoke there in 1739 to an estimated crowd of 30,000.
A number of public executions were held from 1678 to 1799: the common was the south London equivalent of Tyburn (which was where the Marble Arch now stands).
The most famous event at Kennington Common was the Monster Rally organised by the Chartists when they gathered there on 10 April 1848. Soon after this demonstration the common was enclosed and, sponsored by the royals, made into a public park. It is now called Kennington Park but it has mostly been built over. The Oval and Surrey CCC both date from 1845.
The original London Cricket Club, not to be confused with the later London County Cricket Club, was formed by 1722 and was one of the foremost clubs in English cricket over the next four decades. It is closely associated with the Artillery Ground, where it played most of its home matches.
It was founded and organised by members of what is usually termed "the Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Club". In the 1760s, these people decided to re-establish themselves at Hambledon and in the 1780s they formed first the White Conduit Club and then MCC. It seems they left London for Hambledon because the Artillery Ground had fallen into disrepute; twenty years later they had begun to drift back to metropolitan society. There is definitely a thread running from London to MCC via Hambledon.
Their abandonment of the Artillery Ground effectively finished the London club, which seems to have disbanded during the Seven Years War, although a few teams called London were active until the early 1770s.
The glory days of London were the 1730s when it dominated first-class cricket. It faced powerful challenges in the next decade from Slindon, Addington and Bromley. The 1740s were the golden age of single wicket and the London club was to the fore in organising many great contests at the Artillery Ground.
A London Evening Post advertisement in 1726 is the earliest reference we have of cricket being played at Moulsey Hurst. Molesey is in Surrey on the banks of the Thames, opposite Hampton Court. Moulsey Hurst was a famous sporting venue, particularly for prizefighting, in Georgian and Regency times. It is known to have been used for major cricket matches since 1733 but the last record of a first class match there is in 1806. There is a well-known engraving by the artist Richard Wilson (1714 - 1782), entitled Cricket at Moulsey Hurst.
Richmond Green in Richmond, Surrey, England was a popular venue for cricket matches during the 18th century and before.
The earliest reference we have dates from 1666 in a letter by Sir Robert Paston, a resident of Richmond, who refers to a match on Richmond Green.
The earliest definite fixture on the Green was Surrey v Middlesex in June 1730, which is the very first match recorded in Cricket Scores 1730 - 1773 by H T Waghorn. All we know of the outcome is that Surrey won.
Perhaps the most infamous game to be played on the Green took place the following year on 23 August when a Mr Chambers organised an eleven a side game against the Duke of Richmond's team from Sussex. Also recorded in CS, it seems to be the earliest match where team scores are known: Duke of Richmond 79, Mr Chambers 119; Duke of Richmond 72, Mr Chambers 23-5 (approx.). The game ended promptly at a pre-agreed time although Mr Chambers with four or five more to have come in and needing about 8 to 10 notches clearly had the upper hand. The end result caused a fracas among the crowd at Richmond Green who were incensed by the prompt finish because the Duke of Richmond had arrived late and delayed the start of the game. The riot resulted in some of the Sussex players having the shirts torn off their backs; and it was said a law suit would commence about the play.
Croydon played Chertsey in a drawn game on 5 July 1736: Chertsey 88 & 55; Croydon 58 & 24-9. So Croydon just hung on for the draw.
Another notable game was the earliest known tied match on 22 July 1741 when Surrey played the London Cricket Club. The scores were not reported but we are told that the tie occasioned the bets to be drawn on both sides. The teams decided to play again at the Artillery Ground the following Monday but we don't know the outcome of that one.
The first time we hear of a team called "Richmond" playing at Richmond Green is also the last time we hear of the ground as a cricket venue. This was on 4 July 1743 when Richmond & Kingston were beaten by London. The famous Robert Long Robin Colchin, of Bromley, played for London as a given man.
Cricket in the 18th century was funded by gambling interests and some of the wealthier gamblers, acting as patrons, formed whole teams that were representative of several parishes and even of counties. Such a team was "poor little Slyndon (sic) against almost your whole county of Surrey". That quote is taken from a letter written by Slindon's patron, Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond (1701 - 1750) in the 1741 English cricket season. Playing at Merrow Down near Guildford on 1 September, Slindon had just beaten Surrey "almost in one innings".
The Duke of Richmond was certainly the greatest of the sport's early patrons and he did an enormous service to the development of the sport in his native Sussex. He had been active as a player and patron since the 1720s and it seems that he lent his benevolence to the little woodland club near Arundel in the late 1730s when he became aware that its residents included three talented brothers, one of whom was showing signs of greatness, and a number of other decent players. The brothers were the Newlands, among whom Richard Newland (1718 - 29 May 1791), an all-rounder who batted left-handed, was one of the greatest early cricketers and was famous throughout the 1740s. His brothers, about whom little is known, were Adam (born 1714) and John (born 1717). Another good player in the village, although he was an unsavoury one, was the notorious smuggler "Cuddy" whose real name was Edward Aburrow senior. Senior because his son became a regular in the famous Hambledon team of the 1770s.
It is almost certain that Slindon was not just a village team and that it was in fact a Sussex county team, just as Dartford Cricket Club had always formed the nucleus of the Kent team. There can be little doubt that Richmond cast his net wide and that players from elsewhere in Sussex played for Slindon. But Richard Newland was the star and he was definitely local. It seems that Richmond built the team around Newland and so it was perhaps natural that the name of the team, even if it was a Sussex county XI, should be that of Newland's village.
The first written record of the Slindon team is on 15 June 1741 when they played against Portsmouth at Stansted Park, Rowlands Castle, near Havant in Hampshire. Slindon won this match by 9 wickets. It is the earliest report of a match involving Slindon, though the club must have been playing for some time beforehand. The Duke of Richmond in a letter said that "above 5000 people" were present. In a second letter, he gives the result.
On Thursday 9 July 1741, in a letter to her husband, the Duchess of Richmond (1706 - 1751) mentioned a conversation with John Newland re a Slindon v East Dean match at Long Down, near Eartham, a week earlier. This seems to be the first recorded mention of any of the Newland family.
In two subsequent letters to his friend the Duke of Newcastle, a future Prime Minister, Richmond spoke about a game on Tuesday 28 July which resulted in a brawl with "hearty blows and broken heads"! The game was at Portslade between Slindon and unnamed opponents. Apparently, Slindon won the battle but the result of the match is unknown! Richmond had been involved in ruckuses of this sort before and it must not be forgotten that Georgian England was an essentially violent society. As we have seen in Richmond's tolerance of Aburrow, it was quite normal in cricket for the rough to rub shoulders with the smooth.
The "poor little Slyndon" phrase followed the game against Surrey at Merrow Down on 7 September 1741. Richmond in a letter to Newcastle before the game spoke of "poor little Slyndon against almost your whole county of Surrey". Next day he wrote again, saying that "wee (sic) have beat Surrey almost in one innings".
Soon afterwards, Richmond's wife Sarah, a feisty character in her own right, wrote to him and said she "wish’d..... that the Sussex mobb (sic) had thrash’d the Surrey mob". She had "a grudge to those fellows ever since they mob’d you" (apparently a reference to the Richmond Green fiasco in August of the 1731 season). She then said she wished the Duke "had won more of their moneys". So she could hardly be described as an admirer of Surrey....
The fame of Slindon and the Newlands was established after this beating of Surrey. In August 1742, the report of a London v Croydon game at the Artillery Ground says that "the noted bowler from Slendon (sic) assisted Croydon". This was probably Richard Newland although he was a genuine all-rounder, not just a bowler.
In September, the Slindon team came to the Artillery Ground for probably the first time. London Cricket Club was pre-eminent in the game at that time and had dominated the 1730s. In the two matches on 6 and 10 September, London prevailed. They won the first game "with great difficulty" and then, apparently having been assisted by the weather which made the pitch unplayable, they won the second by 184 runs.
The enthusiasm generated by these matches cannot be overstated. Massive crowds attended and fortunes were gambled on the results and on individual performances. A report states that Slindon came to the Artillery Ground "having played 43 games and lost but one". Richard Newland was heavily backed to score 40 runs off his own bat: a feat he failed to accomplish. It should be noted that pitch conditions in those days heavily favoured the bowlers and to score 40 then would be like making a century on a modern "flat track".
A report states: "At the conclusion of the above (i.e., second) match Slindon offered to play another match against London either at Guildford or on the South Downs for £100, but the challenge was not accepted".
All quiet on the Slindon front in 1743 which saw the rise of Addington Cricket Club. Unlike Slindon, Addington beat London by an innings. Slindon, it seems, went away to lick its wounds. The only notable mentions of Slindon in 1743 are of Richard Newland personally for he consolidated his reputation as an outstanding single wicket performer.
The year of the famous Slindon Challenge.
Monday 23 April marked the death of Sir William Gage (1695 - 1744) who was one of the greatest of cricket’s early patrons, especially in his native Sussex, though we do not actually know if he was involved with Slindon. He always enjoyed a friendly rivalry with Richmond and it is possible he did share in Slindon's fortunes.
The London "Daily Advertiser" carried various notices from Thursday 31 May until Sunday 3 June which announced that two untitled sides would play in the Artillery Ground on Saturday 2 June. On 31 May, the paper said that the teams would consist of "four gentlemen from Slindon, one from Eastbourne, two from Hamilton (sic) in Sussex, one from Addington and three from Lingfield in Surrey" against "four gentlemen of London, one from Richmond, one from Reigate, three from Addington in Surrey, one from Bray Wick in Berkshire and one from Arundel in Sussex". This was followed by the usual reminder about no dogs and the need to obtain a pass ticket if leaving the ground during play.
The "Daily Advertiser" changed its notice on Friday 1 June through 2 and 3 June by confusingly announcing the names of the players on each side. However, the names in the paper are not the same as those on the earliest known cricket scorecard kept by the Duke of Richmond. The same (i.e., incorrect) names were also reported on 3 June, the day after the match. The paper announced that the two teams would consist of: Cuddy (i.e., Edward Aburrow senior), Richard Newland, Adam Newland, John Newland, Ridgeway, Green (all of Sussex); William Sawyer, Stevens, Stevens, Collins (all of Surrey); and Norris of London versus Stephen Dingate, John Harris, Joseph Harris, Tom Faulkner, George Jackson, Maynard (all of Surrey); ? Bryant (Bromley), George Smith, ? Bennett, Howlett (all of London); and the famous all-rounder Thomas Waymark, now of Berkshire. No titles were given to the teams.
According to the Duke of Richmond’s papers, which are now in the possession of the West Sussex Records Office, including the recorded scores of this match, the teams were somewhat different from those advertised. The scorecard is currently the earliest known in which individual and team scores are recorded but it lacks details of dismissal.
Slindon: Edward Aburrow (aka Cuddy), ? Bryant, Richard Newland, Adam Newland, - Ridgeway, Joseph Harris, George Jackson, John Harris, - Norris, - Andrews, George Smith.
London: - Howlett, Stephen Dingate, W Sawyer, - Maynard, ? Bennett, Tom Faulkner, Thomas Waymark, - Butler, - Green, - Hodder, - Collins.
We do not know which of the two Bryants or which of the two Bennetts took part. Both the Harris brothers, John and Joseph, were involved; and of the three Newland brothers it was John who did not play. Thomas Waymark was formerly employed by the Duke of Richmond but he is here given as a Berkshire resident and playing for the London XI.
The match included a declaration by the Slindon team in their second innings at 102-6. They made 102 & 102-6d against London’s scores of 79 & 70. Slindon won by 55 runs.
In September, Slindon again played London at the Artillery Ground and won, but details including the margin of victory have not survived. Having now defeated London twice, Slindon felt emboldened enough to issue a challenge whereby it would play any parish in England. London did not accept. Only Addington Cricket Club and Bromley Cricket Club were able to accept.
Matches against both these clubs were arranged at the Artillery Ground: against Addington on 12 and 13 September; and against Bromley on 14 September. We know that rain intervened and no result or match report has survived of either game, even though they are known to have created huge interest. We can only conclude that they were rained off.
The single wicket form of the game became increasingly popular in the latter half of the 1740s and we read much about Richard Newland but little of Slindon after its heroics in 1744.
On 5 July 1745, there was a match at the Artillery Ground between two "best elevens", apparently organised by Robert Colchin and Richard Newland which was advertised rather wordily as Sevenoaks, Bromley & Addington versus Slindon, Horsmonden, Chislehurst & London!
In the 1747 season, Slindon issued challenges in the highly popular (and lucrative) "fives" version of the game. On Monday 6 July 1747, Five of Slindon played Five of Dartford at the Artillery Ground. This was the result of a challenge by Slindon, published in the "Daily Advertiser" on Mon 29 June, to play "five of any parish in England, for their own Sum". The announcement advised interested parties: "If it is accepted of by any, they are desir’d to go to Mr Smith, who has Orders to make Stakes for them". The three Newland brothers all played. "Mr Smith" was George Smith, keeper of the Artillery Ground. On Saturday 4 July, George Smith announced in the same paper that "five of Dartford in Kent, have made Stakes with him, and will play with the above Gentlemen at the Time and Place above mentioned for twenty Pounds". Subsequently more five-a-side challenges took place on Wednesday 8 July against Bromley and then two matches on 10 July and 15 July against the strong Hadlow team from Kent.
The Duke of Richmond died on Wednesday 8 August 1750 and it could be said that Slindon died with him, especially as the Newlands were by now veteran players with their best years behind them. Richmond's death, following that of his friend Sir William Gage in 1744, had a massive impact on the game in Sussex and the game as a whole was affected only a few months later when the Prince of Wales, another key patron, also died. An immediate slump ensued from this loss of patronage and then cricket was badly impacted by the Seven Years War from 1756 to 1763.
The last we read of Slindon, now in reality "poor little Slyndon", is in a match on 21 and 22 June 1754 against Midhurst & Petworth on Bowling Green, Lavington Common. This was clearly a village match only. Slindon apparently lost by eight wickets and the match seems to mark the great little club's swansong for it is not mentioned in the sources thereafter. Sussex cricket as a whole went into decline and, although a number of inter-parish games are reported over the next decade or so, it is not until 1766 that we again find a Sussex team in a major match.
References to the Hambledon Club, particularly those in the works of G B Buckley, strongly suggest that Hambledon was the organiser of matches played not just by a Hampshire county team but by a combined Hampshire-Sussex team. A number of Sussex cricketers are known to have played for Hambledon during its glory days: one of them being Edward "Curry" Aburrow, son of the notorious Slindon smuggler; and another being none other than the club captain Richard Nyren, who was born in Sussex and was the nephew of the three Newland brothers.
The game on 6 September 1734 is the earliest known use of Sevenoaks Vine as a venue. The Vine Cricket Ground is one of the oldest in England. It was given to the town of Sevenoaks in 1773 by John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset (1745 - 1799) and owner of Knole House, where the ground is sited. The land was thought previously to have been used as a vineyard for the Archbishops of Canterbury (hence the name). The weatherboard pavilion is 19th century. The Vine Cricket Club must pay Sevenoaks Town Council a rent of 2 peppercorns per year - one for the ground and one for the pavilion. They, in turn, must pay Lord Sackville (if asked) one cricket ball on the 21st July each year.
The White Conduit Club, although short-lived, was perhaps the most significant club in cricket history for it bridged the gulf between the rural and rustic Hambledon era and the new, modern and metropolitan era of Marylebone Cricket Club and Lord's, the two entities that it spawned.
We do not know for certain when the WCC was founded but it seems to have been after 1780 and certainly by 1784. The famous batsman William Silver Billy Beldham was hired while still a young professional by the WCC in 1785 and he told James Pycroft, author of The Cricket Field (1851) that his farming employer concluded a deal with George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea, to allow Beldham time off his agricultural duties to go to the new cricket ground at White Conduit Fields in Islington, Middlesex and play for Hampshire against All-England. The score of the match has evidently been lost because there is no trace of an All-England v Hampshire game at White Conduit Fields in or about 1785. Beldham's first match in Scores & Biographies was for All-England v WCC at Lord's in 1787; but he was previously recorded as playing for Berkshire against Essex in 1785 (see DC).
Although his match cannot be traced, it is interesting that Beldham described the ground at White Conduit Fields as new because it was not a new venue, although perhaps a new area of it had been designated for use by the WCC. But even the club was not strictly new.
As we have seen, the WCC had its origin in much earlier gentlemen's clubs. By the 1720s, when cricket was well-established in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, it was also being played and watched, often by large crowds of spectators, in London, where many of its leading advocates and players were members of the aristocracy. One of the earliest recognised London cricket clubs was the Je-ne-sais-quoi, which may have been a precursor of the famous Star and Garter that had its meeting place on Pall Mall and drafted the earliest written Laws of the game in 1744 and again in 1774. In the 1730s and 1740s, the Star and Garter had Frederick, Prince of Wales as its chairman. From that club came the WCC, so-called because it played on White Conduit Fields. Its most prominent members were the likes of the Earl of Winchilsea, Colonel Charles Lennox and Sir Peter Burrell. It was nominally an exclusive club that only gentlemen might play for, but the club did employ professionals and one of these was the bowler Thomas Lord, of whom more later.
White Conduit Club disappeared in the aftermath of MCC's founding and White Conduit Fields also disappeared under increasing urbanisation as London grew and swallowed Islington whole.
For the record, White Conduit Club is known to have played at least eleven matches between 1785 and 1788. The last, ironically, was on 27 June 1788 against MCC at Lord's (Dorset Square). It is recorded in Scores & Biographies on page 83 but it is not a major match as the WCC team contained ten unknown players. MCC won by 83 runs and WCC played no more.
The following made the most appearances for WCC in its seven matches from which the scorecards have survived:
7 - Earl of Winchilsea;
6 - Sir Peter Burrell (Kent), Mr Dampier (WCC);
5 - Mr Gilbert East (Berks);
4 - Mr C Drummond (Surrey), Mr Richard Newman (MCC/Essex/Kent), Mr George Talbot (MCC), Mr J Wyatt (Essex)
3 - Col. Charles Lennox, John Peachey, "Lumpy", Tom Taylor, Thomas Walker
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In 1766, the Royal Society commissioned Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779) to lead an astronomical expedition to the Pacific Ocean for the primary purpose of charting a transit of Venus. He had a second purpose which was to search for a southern continent called Terra Australis, and to establish if this had a connection with the lands visited by Abel Tasman in the 1640s.
Captain Cook left England in 1768. He sailed south and around Cape Horn to reach Tahiti in April 1769, where the astronomical survey was concluded. He then sailed west to try and find New Zealand. He did so and, apart from a few minor errors, mapped the complete coastline. He discovered the Cook Strait between the two main islands, which Tasman had missed.
In April 1770, the expedition sailed westward from New Zealand and they became the first Europeans to reach the east coast of Australia at a place called Point Hicks on the coast of Victoria. Cook sailed northwards, following the coast, and charted some famous landmarks including Botany Bay, which would soon earn notoriety. In June, he encountered, rather than found, the Great Barrier Reef when his ship, HM Bark Endeavour, ran aground on one of its shoals. During repairs near modern Cooktown, his men made contact with Aboriginals and saw kangaroos. Cook continued the voyage around the northeast coast and through the Torres Strait to Batavia before returning to England in 1771.
Cook's voyages were a highly significant precursor to the worldwide spread of cricket. It was to be some years before colonisation of Australia (from 1788) and New Zealand (after 1800) began but cricket soon arrived there too and the first definite reference to the sport in Australia is in 1804 and in New Zealand in 1832.
The story of cricket in India can be said to have begun on Wednesday 31 December 1600, the very last day of the 16th century. Queen Elizabeth I granted a Royal Charter to the Honourable East India Company, often colloquially referred to as John Company, and the means by which cricket was introduced into India.
The Company had established its first factories, or trading posts, in the provinces of Madras and Bombay by the year 1610 and in Surat from 1612. Surat was especially important as the Company's first permanent base. It is certainly possible that cricket was first played on the sub-continent around this time, although the first definite report of the game was much later, in 1721, when English sailors played a game at Cambay, near Baroda.
In 1606, the same year that Willem Jansz sighted Australia, James VI and I chartered the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock corporation for the purpose of trading in and colonizing North America. The following year, the company organised the first permanent settlement at Jamestown. It is believed that cricket was introduced to America at a very early date and may have been played in Jamestown by the 1610s.
The first definite mention of cricket in America comes from 1709, when it was played by William Byrd III of Westover on the James River estates in Virginia, then an English colony.
Given that the first definite reference to the game in Yorkshire is as late as 1751, it is not impossible that cricket reached North America before it reached the north of England!
European colonisation of southern Africa began on Tuesday 6 April 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a settlement called the Cape Colony on Table Bay, near present-day Cape Town.
Cape Colony slowly expanded along the coast and into the hinterland throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. It was originally founded as a victualling station for the Dutch East Indies trade route but soon acquired an importance of its own due to its good farmland and mineral wealth.
There was no significant British interest in South Africa until the colony was seized by British forces in 1795 under General Sir James Craig during the French Revolutionary War, the Netherlands having fallen to Bonaparte in the same year. British policy was to secure the colony against French encroachment in the name of the Dutch Stadtholder Willem V. Under the terms of the short-lived Treaty of Amiens in 1803, Cape Colony was handed back to the Netherlands, or the Batavian Republic as Bonaparte wished it to be known. In 1806, with the Napoleonic War proper now under way, Britain again invaded and seized Cape Colony, this time with permanent designs on it. The whole territory was formally ceded to Great Britain in 1814 by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty and administered as Cape Colony until it joined the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Cricket arrived very quickly once the British had finally taken over with the earliest known reference to the game in South Africa dated 1808.
The English navy seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655 with full colonisation commencing in 1661.
English holdings in the West Indies then included Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, Bahamas, St Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, Antigua and Barbuda. The other West Indies territories come into the story later.
The islands of Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines were initially claimed by France in the 17th century but were all ceded to Great Britain under the terms of the Treaty of Paris 1763 that ended the Seven Years War.
St Lucia was first colonised by France in 1660 but seized by the English in 1663. It was then the subject of no less than 14 separate conflicts between the two before Britain finally secured control in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic War. The group now known as the British Virgin Islands had been settled by the Dutch in 1648 but they were annexed by the English in 1672. Sugar cane was introduced by the English and it soon became the main crop with the inevitable African slaves to work it.
Guyana was first settled by the Dutch, who established three separate colonies at Essequibo (1616), Berbice (1627) and Demerara (1752). The British assumed control in 1796 and, following counter-revolts, the Dutch formally ceded the area in 1814. The three became a single British colony known as British Guiana in 1831. There were major slave revolts in 1763 and 1823. The Guyana plantations were originally coffee and cotton but, as elsewhere in the Caribbean area, sugar eventually superseded them.
Trinidad and Tobago were found by Columbus in 1498. Although Spanish settlement of Trinidad began in the sixteenth century, the population in 1783 was only 2,763 with the majority being Amerindians. In 1783, the proclamation of a Cedula of Population by the Spanish Crown granted 32 acres of land to each Catholic who settled in Trinidad and half as much for each slave that they brought. Uniquely, 16 acres was offered to each Free Coloured or Free Person of Colour and half as much for each slave they brought. In the tumult of the Haitian and French Revolutions, many people migrated from the French islands to Trinidad. This resulted in Trinidad having the unique feature of a large Free Coloured slave-owning class. By the time the island was surrendered to the British in 1797 the population had increased to 17,643: 2,086 whites, 1,082 free people of colour, 1,082 Amerindians, and 10,009 African slaves. Spanish rule over the island, which nominally began in 1498, ended when the final Spanish Governor, Don José Maria Chacón surrendered the island to a British fleet of 18 warships under the command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie on 18 February 1797.
Tobago’s development was similar to other plantation islands in the Lesser Antilles but quite different from that of Trinidad. During the colonial period, French, Dutch, British and Courlanders (Latvians) fought over possession of Tobago and the island changed hands 22 times: more often than any other West Indian island. Tobago was finally ceded to Great Britain in 1814. The two islands were incorporated into a single crown colony in 1888 with Tobago reduced to the status of a Ward of Trinidad.
Slavery has been mentioned several times in connection with British exploitation of the West Indies and a significant population figure is the one quoted above for Jamaica that there were 300,000 slaves to 30,000 white "masters" by 1800. Some slaves were native Amerindians but the vast majority of those peoples died out because they had no immunity to European diseases. Africans were much more resilient and so the slave trade essentially concerned the capture and coercion of black African people, mainly from the western coastal regions, and their transportation to destinations in the Americas where they would be sold like livestock and forced by their "owners" to perform hard labour on the plantations.
Slavery in Britain itself had moreorless disappeared by 1500 but a form of serfdom had continued in some mining areas. Meanwhile, a vogue developed for having black "servants" towards the end of the 18th century and matters came to a head when the legal status of a runaway was decided in a 1772 court case, although it did nothing to actually abolish slavery per se. But the case did make a large number of British people aware of the slavery issue and, by 1783, Britain for the first time had an anti-slavery movement that, ultimately, achieved the abolition of slavery. This happened in stages. The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807. The Act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the British Empire, but the trade continued and captains in danger of being caught by the Royal Navy would often throw slaves into the sea to reduce the fine. In 1827, Britain declared that participation in the slave trade was piracy and punishable by death.
After the 1807 Act, slaves were still held, though not sold, within the British Empire. In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement again became active, this time campaigning against the institution of slavery itself. The Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1823. Many of the campaigners were those who had previously campaigned against the slave trade.
On 23 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery in the British colonies. On 1 August 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838. £20 million was paid in compensation to plantation owners in the Caribbean.
It is very easy for British people to appreciate the brilliant skills of such great players as George Headley, Frank Worrell, Gary Sobers, Malcolm Marshall, Vivian Richards, Curtly Ambrose and Brian Lara but less easy, I would suggest, to appreciate that the reason why these fine players came from the West Indies is that their ancestors were subjected to an unspeakable form of barbarism perpetrated by the British and other "civilised" Europeans.
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Determined by several cricket clubs at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall, the earliest known code of Laws was enacted in 1744 but not actually printed, so far as we know, until 1755:
The Game At Cricket
As settled by the Several Cricket-Clubs,
Particularly that of the Star and Garter In Pall-Mall.
London: 1744
Printed 1755
The Pitching the first Wicket is to be determined by the Toss of a Piece of Money.
When the first Wicket is pitch'd, and the Popping-Crease cut, which must be exactly Three Feet Ten Inches from the Wicket, the other Wicket is to be pitch'd directly opposite, at Twenty-Two Yards Distance, and the other Popping-Crease cut Three Feet and Ten Inches before it.
The Bowling-Crease must be cut in a direct Line from each Stump.
The Stumps must be Twenty-Two Inches long, and the Bail Six Inches.
The Ball must weigh between Five and Six Ounces.
When the Wickets are both pitch'd, and the Creases cut, the Party that wins the Toss-up, may order which Side shall go inn (sic) first, at his option.
Four Balls and Over.
The Bowler must deliver the Ball, with one Foot behind the Crease, even with the Wicket; and when he has bowl'd one Ball, or more, shall bowl to the Number of Four before he changes Wickets, and he shall change but once in the same Innings.
He may order the Player that is inn at his Wicket, to stand on which Side of it he pleases, at a reasonable Distance.
If he delivers the Ball, with his hinder Foot over the Bowling-Crease, the Umpire shall call no Ball, tho' it be struck, or the Player be bowl'd out; which he shall do without being ask'd, and no Person shall have any Right to question him.
If the Wicket is bowl'd down, it's out.
If he strikes, or treads down, of falls himself upon his Wicket in striking (but not in over-running) it's out. A Stroke, or Nip, over or under his Bat, or upon his Hands (but not Arms) if the Ball be held before it touches the Ground, though it be hugg'd to the Body, it's out.
If in striking, both his Feet are over the Popping-Crease, and his Wicket put down, except his Bat is down within, it's out.
If he runs out of his Ground to hinder a Catch, it's out.
If a Ball is nipp'd up, and he strikes it again wilfully, before it came to the Wicket, it's out.
If the Players have cross'd each other, he that runs for the Wicket that is put down, is out; If they are not cross'd, he that returns is out.
If in running a Notch, the Wicket is struck down by a Throw, before his Foot, Hand, or Bat is over the Popping-Crease, or a Stump hit by the Ball, though the Bail was down, it's out.
But if the Bail is down before, he that catches the Ball must strike a Stump out of the Ground, Ball in Hand, or else it's not out.
If the Striker touches, or takes up the Ball before it has lain quite still, unless ask'd by the Bowler, or Wicket-Keeper, it's out.
When the Ball has been in Hand by one of the Keepers, or Stoppers, and the Player has been at Home, he may go where he pleases till the next Ball is bowl'd.
If either of the Strikers is cross'd, in his running Ground, designedly, the same must be determined by the Umpires.
N.B. The Umpires may order that Notch to be scored.
When the Ball is hit up, either of the Strikers may hinder the Catch in his running Ground; or if it is hit directly across the Wickets, the other Player may place his Body anywhere within the swing of the Bat, so as to hinder the Bowler from catching it; but he must neither strike at it, nor touch it with his Hands.
If a Striker nips a Ball up just before him, he may fall before his Wicket, or pop down his Bat, before it comes to the Wicket, to save it.
The Bail hanging on one Stump, though the Ball hit the Wicket, it's not out.
The Wicket-Keepers shall stand at a reasonable Distance behind the Wicket, and shall not move till the Ball is out of the Bowler's Hand, and shall not, by any Noise, incommode the Striker; and if his Hands, Knees, Foot, or Head, be over, or before the Wicket, though the Ball hit it, it shall not be out.
To allow Two Minutes for each Man to come inn when one is out, and Ten Minutes between each Hand.
To mark the Ball that it may not be changed.
They are sole Judges of all Outs and Innings; of all fair or unfair Play; of all frivolous Delays; of all Hurts, whether real or pretended, and are discretionally to allow what Time they think proper before the Game goes on again.
In Case of a real Hurt to a Striker, they are to allow another to come inn, and the Person hurt to come inn again; but are not to allow a fresh Man to play, on either Side, on any Account.
They are sole Judges of all Hindrances; crossing the Players in running, and standing unfair to strike, and in Case of Hindrance may order a notch to be scored.
They are not to order any Man out, unless appeal'd to by one of the Players.
These laws are to the Umpires jointly.
Each Umpire is the sole Judge of all Nips and Catches; Innings and Outs; good or bad Runs, at his own Wicket, and his Determination shall be absolute; and he shall not be changed for another Umpire, without the Consent of both Sides.
When the four Balls are bowl'd, he is to call over.
These Laws are separately.
When both Umpires call Play three Times, 'tis at the Peril of giving the Game from them that refuse to play.
Settled and revised at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall on Friday 25 February 1774 by a Committee of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex, and London.
COMMITTEE
In the Chair—Sir William Draper.
Present—His Grace the Duke of Dorset, Right Honourable Earl Tankerville, Sir Horace Mann, Philip Dehany, John Brewer Davis, Harry Peckham, Francis Vincent, John Cooke, Charles Coles, Richard James, Esquires, Rev. Charles Pawlet.
THE LAWS OF CRICKET, &c.
The ball must weigh not less than five ounces and a half, nor more than five ounces and three quarters.
It cannot be changed during the game, but with consent of both parties.
The bat must not exceed four inches and one quarter in the widest part.
The stumps must be twenty-two inches, the bail six inches long.
The bowling-crease must be parallel with the stumps, three feet in length, with a return-crease.
The popping-crease must be three feet ten inches from the wickets ; and the wickets must be opposite to each other at the distance of twenty-two yards.
The party which goes from Home shall have the choice of the innings and the pitching of the wickets, which shall be pitched within thirty yards of a centre fixed by the adversaries.
When the parties meet at a third place, the bowlers shall toss up for the pitching of the first wicket, and the choice of going in.
The bowler must deliver the ball with one foot behind the bowling-crease, and within the return-crease; and shall Bowl four balls before he changes wickets, which he shall do but once in the same innings.
He may order the player at his wicket to stand on which side of it he pleases.
The striker is out if the bail is bowled off, or the stump bowled out of the ground.
Or if the ball, from a stroke over or under his bat, or upon his hands (but not wrists), is held before it touches the ground, though it be hugged to the body of the catcher.
Or if, in striking, both his feet are over the popping-crease, and his wicket is put down, except his bat is grounded within it.
Or if he runs out of his ground to hinder a catch.
Or if the ball is struck up, and he wilfully strike it again.
Or if in running a notch, the wicket is struck down by a throw, or with the ball in hand, before his foot, hand, or bat is grounded over the popping-crease; but if the bail is off, a stump must be struck out of the ground by the ball.
Or if the striker touches or takes up the ball before it has lain still, unless at the request of the opposite party.
Or if the striker puts his leg before the wicket with a design to stop the ball, and actually prevent the ball from hitting his wicket by it.
If the players have crossed each other, he that runs for the wicket that is put down is out; if they are not crossed, he that has left the wicket that is put down is out.
When the ball has been in the bowler's or wicket-keeper's hands, the strikers need not keep within their ground till the Umpire has called Play; but if the player goes out of his ground with an intent to run before the ball is delivered, the bowler may put him out.
When the ball is struck up in the running ground between the wickets, it is lawful for the strikers to hinder its being catched; but they must neither strike at, nor touch the ball with their hands.
If the ball is struck up, the striker may guard his wicket either with his bat or his body.
In single-wicket matches, if the striker moves out of his ground to strike at the ball, he shall be allowed no notch for such stroke.
The wicket-keeper shall stand at a reasonable distance behind the wicket, and shall not move till the ball is out of the bowler's hand, and shall not by any noise incommode the striker; and if his hands, knees, foot, or head, be over or before the wicket, though the ball hit it, it shall not be out.
The umpires shall allow two minutes for each man to come in, and fifteen minutes between each innings ; when the Umpire shall call Play, the party refusing to play shall lose the match.
They are the sole judges of fair and unfair play, and all disputes shall be determined by them.
When a striker is hurt they are to allow another to come in, and the person hurt shall have his hands in any part of that innings.
They are not to order a player out, unless appealed to by the adversaries.
But if the bowler's foot is not behind the bowling-crease, and within the return-crease, when he delivers the ball, the Umpire unasked must call No Ball.
If the strikers run a short notch, the Umpire must call No Notch.
Bets. If the notches of one player are laid against another, the bet depends on both innings, unless otherwise specified.
If one party beats the other in one innings, the notches in the first innings shall determine the bet.
But if the other party goes in a second time, then the bet must be determined by the number on the score.
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By the seventeenth century, cricket was established in the counties of Kent, Surrey and Sussex while other bat and ball games were played elsewhere (see The 17th century Game of Cricket: A Reconstruction of the Game by David Terry). These included Cat and Dog in lowland Scotland; Bandy Wicket in East Anglia; Tut (see Wright) in Cornwall and Devon; Stow-Ball aka Stob-Ball in the counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, north Somerset and parts of Dorset. The more generic stoolball and a game called Bat and Trap featured throughout England.
According to Alice B Gomme in The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland, those games generally had batsmen, fielders and a bowler. All appear to have been originally single wicket or double-base games with the aim of scoring points. Some had variations whereby points were gained without taking a run; thus, if the ball was hit and not caught, a point was scored.
Tut, Stow-Ball and Stob-Ball were local variations of the more generic stoolball. These games were played with bases. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), stow-ball and stob-ball appear to have been the same game and played with two bats, a bowler and fieldsmen in the middle of the seventeenth century. Stump, as in the lower part of a tree or its remaining stump, was the generic name for the dialect names of stob and stow, although stow also meant a wooden supporting frame used in small mining tunnels (see Oxford English Dictionary).
The noted anthropologist John Aubrey (1626 - 1697) in his Natural History of Wiltshire (1686) described stow-ball played in north Wiltshire while he lived there from c.1648 to c.1686. He records stow-ball being played in the evenings. The "withy" or willow staves were carefully shaped by their owners, or the local stave maker, and each son when he reached the age of eight was given two staves by his father. The ball was four inches in diameter with a sole leather case stuffed hard with boiled quills. The farm labourers used to hurry home from the fields to gather for a game in the evening.
Percy Manning in Sport and Pastime in Stuart Oxford records that a game of stow-ball was played on Bullingdon Green, Oxford, in 1667 on an area of three acres, which was much the same size as today’s cricket grounds. Bullingdon Green, where many university students gathered, was a popular cricket venue in the second half of the 18th century.
Stoolball has survived and is still played today in the south-east counties.
As for cricket itself, it had taken root in the south-east by 1600, but it was still predominantly a children’s game played at local level only, though adults were beginning to adopt it too. Or rather, people who had played as children were continuing to play into adulthood.
The bats used in the 17th century did not have to be heavy like the four pounders of the late 18th century. They were light in weight (the 1729 bat at The Oval weighs 2.2 lbs) and were actually clubs shaped somewhat like a hockey stick. Hugh Barty-King in Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers: the history of cricket bat and ball manufacture (1979) records that the bat had a hockey stick shape with a broad flat surface at its base to hit or block trundled or skimmed deliveries. The wicket was the same two-stump and single bail affair that continued into the 1770s.
Mr Barty-King also records that an Englishman visiting Ireland in 1673 referred to the common people as playing bandy (hurling) with balls and crooked sticks "much after our play at stowball".
An interesting description of cricket around 1700 has been written by R S Rait-Kerr in his The Laws of Cricket: Their History and Growth (1950). The bat (also known as stick, staff or stave) is like a hockey-stick, shaped with flat surfaces, and the batsman is usually called a striker. He stood with knees bent and used a downward sweep to hit the ball. The objective was to loft the ball over the heads of the fielders, then known as catchers and seekers. Balls were hit to either side of the bowler, who has placed his fielders in an array around him, further emphasising that a hockey-type stick was used. The long stop was an important post in those days of balls being skimmed along uneven ground and one of the best fielders was always strategically placed there (George Leer of Hambledon was a noted long stop in the 1770s). The toss of a coin determined which team would choose the pitch and which team would bat first. In those early times, the senior bowler would pick out the piece of ground on which the wickets would be pitched. Although much later in the 18th century, the famous rhyme about Lumpy and his brows recalls this procedure.
Barty-King writes about the stance of the batsman defending a wide wicket in a picture of 1739, while a slightly later picture from 1742 shows a bat that looks like an ice hockey stick. The 1739 bat is raised, presumably to be in a position to defend the low and widely spaced stumps (see 1680 re the wicket). Rait-Kerr says the striker has a forward stance with bent knee and the bowler aims at one stump. There must have been an infinite number of occasions when, to the bowler’s anguish, he "scored a goal" as it were and the ball shot straight through without any timber falling. Yet this syndrome does not seem to have become a matter of concern until the famous occasion in 1775 when Lumpy "scored a hat-trick" against the seemingly unbowlable John Small. It was only then that the middle stump was introduced.
In the late 17th century, the ball was trundled (if slow) or skimmed (if quick), not bowled as we know it today, in overs of four balls. The four ball over had existed from time immemorial and the number was not increased until the 1889 season. David Terry intriguingly asks if the number of balls in an over equated to the number of stumps? Indeed, there are now six stumps and six balls!
Rait-Kerr writes that the ball itself came in various sizes and colours and was waterproofed with grease to avoid picking up moisture. In The Duke Who Was Cricket, John Marshall describes the ritual of choosing the ball at important matches. For example, there was a choice of balls available for the 1727 challenge match between the Duke of Richmond and Mr Alan Brodrick. It appears that most balls were wooden (probably blackthorne wood) and sewn into a leather cover, which had an annoying tendency to break open during play. The diameter of the ball must have been limited to between three and four inches. Many 17th century balls were about three inches in diameter (see the collection in the MCC museum).
The heavy modern-type ball with wound core and thick leather cover did not come into use until about the 1740s when a manufacturer called Clout (whose product was designed to be clouted!) was active in Sevenoaks. Mr Clout is recorded in ASW as "the first cricket ball maker of any pretention". Afterwards came the more famous Richard Duke of Penshurst in Kent, who founded Duke & Son in 1760. Dukes made the first-ever six-seam cricket ball in 1780 and it was presented to the Prince of Wales (i.e, the future King George IV).
The 1744 Laws give several instances of it is out but it is possible that there were still only three methods of dismissal at the end of the 17th century. These would have been bowled, caught and the interesting one of hitting the wicket with the ball before the batsman has touched the umpire’s bat. The function of the umpire’s bat was for the batsman to touch it with his own to record a run. Rait-Kerr says that, as far as we know, there was no batting crease and the batting position was known as the striker’s place.
The double wicket version of the game was controlled by two umpires, one from each team, who would position their bats before allowing the bowler to bowl. The Duke of Richmond’s articles in 1727 stipulated twelve "gamesters" to each team, inferring that this included the umpires. Presumably both umpires had to agree on the decisions taken. In some respects, the holding of a bat by the umpire represents a "staff of office".
The scorers were also on the field and this continued until late in the 18th century. They sat on the grass or on stools to notch the scores on a stick, with a deeper knick at 20, which of course represented a score. The same method was used by shepherds when counting sheep, hence the connection between cricket being played on sheep-shorn hills and the method of scoring for cricket. The term point (or prick) was a means of keeping a tally (i.e., scoring with a point or prick of the pen or knife upon paper or wood).
By the end of the 17th century, cricket had long since broken its bounds as a village pastime and was already into the age of great matches. All that was needed now was for the matches to be reported.
Cricket is a feature of modern life and it is fair to say that our modern times began around 1700 following the great advances in science, technology and philosophy that heralded the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Leibniz, one of the great thinkers of the age, influenced the foundation of the Berlin Academy in 1700. Along with Descartes, Spinoza, Pascal, Galileo and Newton, he was a father figure of 18th century rationalism which flowered under such as Voltaire, Goethe, Rousseau and Franklin and was in many ways underwritten by the genius of such as Bach, Burns and Mozart.
Newton published his Optics in 1704 and Newcomen designed his atmospheric steam engine in 1705. A new, modern world of industrial and scientific revolution was beginning and cricket has held its own in that world, always moving with the times from wealthy patrons to county clubs to Test cricket and ultimately to its newest dawn: Twenty20. Along the way, it has survived its own revolutions and crises such as lbw, roundarm, overarm, bodyline, limited overs, boycotts (!) and TV replays to the point where it is still an important and popular component of culture in the 21st century.
Before delving into the match history of the 18th century, it is worth taking a look at the world in which those matches were played. The 18th century was the era of wigs, waistcoats, cravats, breeches and buckles. The large wigs of the 17th century were driven out of fashion by popular cocked hats such as the familiar tricorn. As this hat could not be worn with a huge wig, the smaller bob wig with queue (i.e., tail) came into general use. Wearing of wigs by all levels of society lasted until Napoleonic and Regency times when natural hair became fashionable at last. One impact of the French Revolution was that breeches had been replaced by trousers when the 18th century ended, thanks to the influence of the sans-culottes.
Travel was mainly on foot or on horseback. Carriages were virtually unknown except as a status symbol and other wheeled vehicles such as wagons and carts were little used except for local traffic. Packhorses or mules were the usual means of carrying goods. Heavy goods went by barge along the rivers or by sailing ship along the coast. Long distance travellers would often rely on coastal voyages too. There had been a gradual introduction of stage wagons designed to carry passengers in stages with horses being changed at staging posts that were usually innings, the innkeeper doubling as a postmaster. It was not until the railways appeared in the 19th century that top-class cricket could break the bounds of its south-eastern heartland and become a truly nationwide game, although there are plenty of references which prove its steady spread across the country during the pre-railway period.
England was still an agricultural economy in those days and the majority of people lived in rural or semi-rural locations. Places like Dartford and Chertsey, whose cricket teams made names for themselves in the 18th century, were rural villages at the time. The only metropolis was London, especially north of the river. With a population of half a million, London was England's major port and its main commercial and cultural centre. London was where you could make your fortune, or more likely your ruin. When cricket came to London, it flourished. It still does.
Autocracy remained the political reality of the times, although in England the mould had been broken: first by Cromwell and then by the Bill of Rights which established constitutional monarchy. But France was ruled by the tyrannical Louis XIV until 1714 and the revolution was still 89 years away. War was the normal state of international relations throughout the 18th century. As the century began, the Baltic was in flames as militant Sweden fought against Russia, Poland and Denmark. The ambition of Louis XIV would shortly begin the carnage known to history as the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 - 1714). Perhaps most ominously of all, bearing in mind the history of war in the 20th century, Prussia had just secured autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire and was about to re-invent itself as the most militaristic state the world has seen since ancient Sparta, so much so that it would be described not as a state with an army but as an army with a state.
But at least England was a largely peaceful place in which to live and play cricket in the 18th century. Apart from the Jacobite rebellions in 1715 and 1745, it was all quiet on the home front and the majority of Great Britain's military and naval actions were performed on foreign fields or faraway seas. Indeed, it was a voyage into those faraway seas, a peaceful one this time, that resulted in Captain Cook's exploration of Australia. It is somehow fitting that a Yorkshireman influenced the foundation and settlement of Australia. The first convicts arrived there in 1788, only one year after MCC played its inaugural match at Lord's.
Whether you think of the 18th century in terms of intrepid Yorkshiremen, transported convicts or the foundation of a gentlemen's club in north London, it was certainly the time when modern cricket began.
The relative tranquillity of England compared with other lands in the 18th century is perhaps best summed up by reference to the century's most famous date: 14 July 1789. In Paris, Camille Desmoulins led the mob towards the Bastille. They stormed and destroyed it to begin the most ferocious revolution in history, the revolution that prefaced Bonaparte and his Napoleonic Wars: earth-shattering events that would change mankind forever. But 14 July 1789 is a date that occurs in the records of English cricket too. On that date, not a million miles from Paris, Hampshire was playing Kent on Windmill Down just outside legendary Hambledon. Kent won by 56 runs. The score in Paris was somewhat different.
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It is quite probable that cricket was originally devised by children in Saxon or Norman times and handed on to the next generation of lads after lasses and ale became more interesting. Each succeeding generation would do likewise but each would add to the game by making amendments to the rules either by introduction or alteration. Each generation would bring in new players from a wider area and so the game would spread as the kids in the next parish came to know of it. Eventually, a situation would arise where fathers and uncles played the game with their sons and nephews to pass on knowledge and help them to improve their skills. Before long, the fathers and uncles would decide that this was a good way of passing their own free time, keeping fit, making friends and getting away from ‘er in t’kitchen.
Some of the more cynical or rebellious elements would decide that it was preferable to pious humbug in church and would use the game, in effect, to make a protest; and so we have adults playing the game whenever they can, including on Sundays when they do not want to go to church.
Cricket is a team game and the teams almost certainly originated among the boys. When the adults took over and a sufficient number in one parish was playing, it would only be a matter of time before that parish challenged another and then another. Each parish would select a particular plot of land (like the one in Guildford), play its matches there and use the same place for practice. The next stage in this evolution is the interest and participation of wealthier elements who were happy to cross the social divide in order to play a game that they thoroughly enjoyed, even if their enthusiasm was shared by "fellows of a base and beastly sort". As the competition between parishes became more intense, someone would bet a jug of ale that "our parish can beat your lot". The bet is defiantly accepted and it is only a small step from ale to money and then more money.
As the stakes grew, some investors would cover their bets by influencing team selection and providing incentives to the players. Two factors developed from this initiative by the investors. One is professionalism. The best players would begin to attract incentive payments that would shortly take the form of an income, regular or otherwise. The second development is a widening of the catchment area for team selection. Suddenly, the gossips in "our parish" are telling everyone that "Jervis from over t’hill there is playing for us on Saturday". Jervis is of course the best bowler in the county and he has been paid to play for "our parish" by the local squire who has a lot of money riding on the outcome of Saturday’s game.
This is where cricket steps up a level. The addition of Jervis to the "our parish" team means that it is no longer a parish or village side. It is representative of two parishes now and that is a giant stride in the direction of a county team.
The basic unit in cricket is the local side which may be a group of lads in one family or neighbourhood at the absolute grassroots level or, still in the local sense, the "our parish" team in which every player lives in the parish and their opponents are all inhabitants of another parish. Once you go beyond that level you have a side that is "representative" because more than one parish is involved. The "our parish" team plus Jervis may still be regarded as "our parish" but with a given man to strengthen them. In fact, two parishes are represented as residents of Jervis’ parish will come from "over t’hill there" to support him.
Then you get the situation where "our parish" includes "given men" from three or four parishes and is challenged by a team made up of players from three or four parishes that are across the county boundary. Suddenly you’re not talking parishes any more but counties and because it is much easier to say Sussex and Surrey than to reel off the names of about eight parishes, you have a match between two counties or, to be exact, a match between two teams representing different counties.
This is all very logical and although the precise sequence might have been different, or some events could have been concurrent, it does present a realistic view of cricket’s development after first adults, then gamblers and then professionals got involved. It is of course possible that the original inter-county matches were at parish level only: i.e., two neighbouring parishes whose boundary was a county one as well as a parish one. It is possible that Jervis was not a professional but agreed to play for "our parish" simply because he had friends or family here. It is important not to get too hung up on the sequence. The point is that all these things did eventually happen; but we don’t know when, we don’t know who and we don’t know how.
The most tantalising of all these questions is the when. We can make a pretty fair guess at the how (as above) and we are never going to learn much about the who for it to really matter, but it would be really nice if we could pin down the when.
All we can do is theorise. There is every reason to believe that the game began among kids (girls as well as boys) in the south east counties, probably in Saxon or perhaps in Norman times. By 1300, it was sufficiently popular among kids to survive long-term and it may even have acquired acceptability at Court and in centres of learning; IF creag was cricket and the son of Longshanks was playing. It was still a boys’ game in Tudor times, as at Guildford, and in the early Stuart period a dictionary compiler defines it as a boys’ game. But no sooner is his dictionary published than it is overtaken by events and cricket is no longer a boys’ game only. Adults have started playing too and soon it becomes a very serious business indeed.
The first big step forward at this point is the formation of parish teams that play against each other. Evidence acquired from the years before the Civil War strongly suggests that parishes were playing each other by 1642 when the war began. None of this evidence suggests that teams representing multiple parishes had yet been formed; it further suggests that gambling was low key with the stakes still at the jug of ale or six candles level. If we are to define top-class cricket as a representative form of the game in which teams represent a county, or at least a significant part of a county, then it appears that we had not reached this stage by 1642. After 1642, England became firmly controlled by Cromwell and his Puritans and his Goosey Goosey Ganders. Cricket was not banned by these austere authorities, but it certainly wasn’t able to expand either, and we can safely assume that cricket was tolerated by the Puritans as long as the Sabbath was not broken; as long as no large crowds were attracted; and as long as no profanity (such as gambling) was encouraged. So village matches continued, but with everyone looking over their shoulders.
When the Restoration happened in 1660, everything changed. Charles II was known as "the Merry Monarch" and he was content that all his subjects should be as merry as he was, within reason. With the Puritans overthrown, people let their hair down. The theatres were reopened and people sought entertainment. Cricket was a leading entertainment along with several other sports and it was ideal for a wager: you could bet on "first hands" or on the overall result; you could even bet on individual players. Bets were struck, a few fortunes were made but many families were ruined. By 1664, Charles II’s "Cavalier Parliament" felt a need to crack down on gambling that was spiralling out of control and so limits were imposed. This did not stop gambling; it merely imposed a ceiling. By 1697 cricket was being played at the level of a "great match" for 50 guineas a side, which was a fortune at the time.
There can be little doubt that a lot of money was invested in cricket from 1660 and that the likes of Jervis were at that time paid to play for another parish team with the result that strong teams representing several parishes or whole counties were matched against each other for very high stakes indeed. By any definition, this was cricket at the highest level possible for the time and, although details of the matches are lost, or were never recorded in the first place, there can be little doubt that this entire scenario was the point of origin for major cricket.
Note the stress placed on for the time and remember the view of Sir Neville Cardus, wisest of all cricket writers, that the game and its players always reflected their times. In 1660, Jervis and his colleagues representing most if not all of the parishes in Sussex was a top-class (i.e., major cricket or first-class cricket) team. We of the 21st century are in no position to cast judgement on the status of historical teams that were considered top-class by their contemporaries, so much so that some people would literally wager their life’s earnings on them.
If we logically deduce that teams like the one our fictional Jervis played for were first formed in or soon after 1660, given the social and political state of the country after Cromwell’s regime was given the boot and the monarchy was restored, then we have to accept, according to Sir Neville’s doctrine, that it is here that the historical record of major cricket begins, including both first-class matches and single wicket contests. As for the statistical record, that currently begins in 1772, as we shall see.
The earliest known reference to wickets is found in the Marden bible dated 1680.
As is well known, the wicket until the 1770s comprised two stumps and a single bail. By that time, the shape of the wicket was high and narrow after the 1744 Laws of Cricket defined the dimensions as 22 inches high and six inches wide. But earlier 18th century pictures show a wicket that was low and broad, perhaps two feet wide by one foot high, as was the case in America in 1720. The ends of the stumps were forked to support the light bail and there were criteria for the firmness of pitching the stumps into the ground and for the delicate placing of the bail so that it would easily topple when a stump was hit.
There has been a lot of conjecture about the origin of the wicket, but suffice to say that the 17th century outline shape is more akin to the profile of a church stool, which is low and broad. Furthermore, the legs of the stool were called stumps, which adds further credence to the idea that stools were used as early wickets. Interestingly, according to the Churchwarden’s Accounts for Great St. Mary’s Church of Cambridge (1504 - 1635), a church stool was sometimes known in the south-east by the Flemish name of kreckett, this being the same word used for the game by John Derrick in 1597.
There is another view that the word "wicket", first recorded in a cricket connection in the Marden verse of 1680, derives from playing the game against a small wicket gate. It has been said that cricket was originally a children’s game and this does conjure up the idea that the game was played by children outside their houses or on farmland where such gates would have been sited. The term was surely derived from the gate but almost certainly at a late stage of the game’s development and perhaps not till after the Restoration. There seems little doubt that the original "wicket" was a tree stump or a stool; and that both of those were used before gates.
Some of our evidence about the shape and size of the ancient wicket comes from John Nyren in the first part of his A Few Memoranda Respecting the Progress of Cricket (1832), which is an addendum of sorts to The Cricketers of My Time:
Mr (William) Ward obligingly furnished me with a small manuscript, written some years since by an old cricketer(i.e., William Lambert), containing a few hasty recollections and rough hints to players, thrown together without regard to method or order. From the mass, I have been able to select a few portions, thinking that they might possess some interest with those of my readers who take a pride in the game.
From the authority before me, it appears, that about 150 years since (i.e., late 17th century), it was the custom, as at present, to pitch the wickets at the same distance asunder, viz, twenty-two yards. That the stumps (only one foot high and two feet wide) were surmounted with a bail.
At that period, however, another peculiarity in the game was in practice, and which it is worth while to record. Between the stumps a hole was cut in the ground, large enough to contain the ball and the butt-end of the bat. In running a notch, the striker was required to put his bat into this hole, instead of the modern practice of touching over the popping-crease. The wicket-keeper, in putting out the striker when running, was obliged, when the ball was thrown in, to place it in this hole before the adversary could reach it with his bat. Many severe injuries of the hands were the consequence of this regulation; the present mode of touching the popping-crease was therefore substituted for it.
At the same period the wickets were increased to twenty-two inches in height, and six inches in breadth, and instead of the old custom of placing the ball in the hole, the wicket-keeper was required to put the wicket down, having the ball in his hand.
They seem to have retained the low, wide wicket into the 18th century but, in my opinion, the stuff about a "popping hole" is nonsense. Ashley Mote opines that they got rid of the popping hole before 1700 but it was a long time before that because I am sure it never happened. Nyren, who is a singularly unreliable source generally, is the only point of reference for it. Apart from injuries to the wicket keeper, the act of ramming the bat into a hole would also occasion the destruction of the wicket more often than not with the batsman’s momentum carrying him into it. The idea is ludicrous and I have always wondered where on Earth Nyren got it from. It is possible that Nyren was misled by the rural game of Cat and Dog mentioned earlier (see Gomme; see Terry), whereby one player attempts to throw a "cat" into a hole and the other tries to hit it away with a "dog". The former is a small piece of wood and the latter is a club. Who knows?
Cricket has seen many revolutionary changes in its long history but the first of real significance was the introduction of the pitched delivery which in its turn proved to be the catalyst for the invention of the straight bat.
In John Nyren's Memoranda (1832), he writes:
The following account of a match played in the year 1744 ...
'It arose from a challenge given by Lord John Sackville on the part of the County of Kent to play all England; and it proved to be a well contested match as will appear from the manner in which the players kept the field. The hitting however could neither have been of a high character nor indeed safe, as may be gathered from the figure of the bat at that time; which was similar to an old-fashioned dinner knife, curved at the back and sweeping in the form of a volute at the front and end. With such a bat the system must have been all for hitting; it would be barely possible to block and when the practice of bowling length balls was introduced and which gave the bowler so great an advantage in the game it became necessary to change the form of the bat. It was therefore made strait in the pod (sic).'
Some years after this the fashion of the bat having been changed to a strait form the system of stopping and blocking was adopted.
And this is effectively all we can find about the introduction of the length ball and the consequent development of the strait bat! The revolution apparently occurred after the landmark year of 1744 and probably well into the 1750s, if not the 1760s, but definitely before 1770.
Interestingly, John Nyren went on to praise John Small and Lumpy Stevens as the most eminent and esteemed players of the day. It has long been thought that Lumpy was the first great exponent of the flighted delivery, even if he did not actually introduce it. John Small, who became a batmaker in course of time, may not have invented the straight bat but he has always been held as the first to master its use.
Nyren's views on batting technique are the most interesting part of the above passage. It would seem that batsmen formerly went out to hit every delivery, rather in the style of today's limited overs batsmen, and invariably got out cheaply, especially as the prevailing pitch conditions were definitely not in their favour. It seems only too logical to suppose that they would play defensively against difficult balls but Nyren seems to say they did not and that defensive technique had to be devised and adopted, the straight bat providing them with the tool for the job, as it were.
Unlike the later introductions of roundarm and overarm, this change to the accepted method of bowling doesn't appear to have ignited major controversy. There seems to have been a seamless transition from true bowling (i.e., trundling and skimming) to pitching. The crux of the matter may well be that no one suggested the arm action was illegal. With an underarm action, the position of the arm is the same to trundle a ball along the ground, to skim it across the ground or to pitch it onto a distant piece of ground. The action is the same, only the height of the hand at release or the speed of the action will vary. When roundarm began, its opponents cried foul and claimed that it was throwing and the same happened again when overarm started.
One of the very best passages in all of Rowland Bowen's Growth & Development History is, oddly enough, a footnote. This is what he has to say about true bowling and true throwing in the context of the pitched delivery being introduced:
Bowling has two meanings: one is its original meaning of rolling a ball along the ground, and the other is its special cricket meaning of the bowler delivering a ball to the batsman within the definition of current laws. Throwing has also two meanings: one is the normal straightforward meaning of propelling a ball other than by rolling it and the other is its special cricket meaning, which has altered with the years, of a bowler's delivery which is not in accordance with the-current laws.
Until the mid-eighteenth century all cricket bowling was true bowling. Then we had what is called under-arm and this may be 'cricket' bowling but it is not true bowling - it is true throwing. If anyone doubts this, let him 'bowl' under-arm and 'throw' under-arm and he will be hard put to it to find any difference for there is none.
Round-arm when it first appeared before the eighteenth century was out and until it was legalized was at first called 'cricket' throwing: as its delivery did not differ from the under-arm delivery which was true throwing, save only in that the arm was raised outwards from a vertical plane, or near-vertical plane in which under-arm had been delivered, it followed that it was not only 'cricket' throwing, it was also true throwing, like under-arm. But under-arm was not regarded as throwing by cricketers: nor, when round-arm was legalized was it regarded as throwing by cricketers. We thus reach a stage where round-arm was 'cricket' bowling but also true throwing! It is fascinating that it was originally condemned as 'straight-armed bowling'!!
In due course, round-arm became over-arm: and, as with round-arm, over-arm was at first regarded by cricketers as throwing. Insofar as the delivery was no more than a more vertical round-arm it was indeed true throwing. At some unknown stage, the idea took root that 'cricket' bowling involved a straight arm. In due course over-arm was legalized as 'cricket' bowling but it was not true bowling: having become legalized, after a period of time cricketers began to discern two types of over-arm bowling, one, which was not to be distinguished from round-arm, und which was a throw, a true throw, and one which became what cricketers regard as legitimate bowling, but which is all the same still truly a throw. The former came to be penalized as a 'cricket' throw: the latter is accepted as correct. Note that all the way from the beginning of under-arm, all 'cricket' bowling has in fact been true throwing. The distinction that cricketers make is an artificial one, and if, for example, over-arm were suddenly made illegal, what they call throwing would prevail in almost every delivery, and in fact every delivery would be a true throw, as it is now.
But a true throw is not a 'cricket' throw and a 'cricket' bowl is not a true bowl.
The italics are mine. I think this is the best description of bowling vis-à-vis throwing that I have ever found.
Anyone who has studied the history and statistics of cricket up to the advent of roundarm bowling will agree that the single greatest controversy that the sport had to deal with pre-roundarm concerned the width of the bat. The Laws of Cricket innocuously state that the bat shall be no more than four and one quarter inches wide at its broadest part. What this statement does not reveal is the tremendous row that erupted when someone tried to use a bat that was fully as wide as the wicket itself!
The incident is shrouded in controversy even now. There are still questions asked about who exactly introduced the monster bat and when it happened; and about who challenged it and when. About the only thing we can be certain of is that the maximum width was stipulated in the 1774 version of the Laws of Cricket, having been absent from the 1744 version.
It is generally agreed that the match in question was Chertsey v Hambledon (or Surrey v Hampshire, if you prefer) at Laleham Burway on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 September 1771. Hambledon's team included captain and all-rounder Richard Nyren, opening fast bowler Thomas Brett and master batsman John Small. Playing for Chertsey was another good all-rounder Thomas Daddy White (c.1740 - 1831), who hailed from Reigate, Surrey.
H T Waghorn in CS states that:
On Monday (i.e., 23 Sept) began to be played on Laleham Burway, near Chertsey, in Surrey, a great cricket-match depending, the Hambledon and Chertsey Clubs (the latter being allowed to pick four men), which was decided on Tuesday evening in favour of the former. Great sums were depending on this match, which was very strongly contested by both parties, the winners heading their opponents only by a single notch, viz:-
Hambledon (both innings) 218; Chertsey 217
According to G B Buckley in GB18, although he defers to CS re the main details, the match was for £50 a side and had to be be played out at Chertsey: the wickets to be pitched at 10. His source was the St James Chronicle dated Thurs 19 September.
There are no newspaper reports of the game beyond what Mr Waghorn found re the team totals and certainly nothing to suggest that a great controversy had taken place.
Our main evidence for what occurred is based on a book written two generations later by the son of Hambledon's captain; and by a piece of paper dated Wed 25 September 1771 and signed by the three greatest Hambledon players.
Not for the last time in the 18th century, there was confusion about players called White. A number of Whites were active in the 1790s and statisticians have a nightmare trying to differentiate them, their difficulties increased by the player called Knowles who used White as a pseudonym (or vice-versa!).
Differentiating between the Whites of the 1760s and 1770s is relatively easy but previous historians have made hard work of it. There were two. One was Thomas Daddy White of Reigate who played in various Surrey and All-England teams, often against Hambledon, until he retired in 1779. He has a biography in S&B (p.40) and lived to a ripe old age. He is the one who was responsible for the monster bat controversy, though his motives are unclear.
His namesake contemporary was Shock White, who may or may not have been called Thomas. He was first recorded as playing for Hampton (a Middlesex team) in 1761, so he was perhaps older than Daddy White. Ironically, this appearance for Hampton was against Chertsey at Laleham Burway! He was latterly a resident of Brentford, also north of the river Thames in Middlesex. He was twice mentioned by the Daily Advertiser in 1773 as Shock White of Brentford. Furthermore, while Shock played at Tothill Fields for Westminster versus London on Wednesday 18 August 1773, Daddy was simultaneously playing for Surrey v Kent at Sevenoaks Vine! Shock White had nothing to do with Surrey or Chertsey or outsize bats; yet he has often been blamed for the incident.
This is one aspect of the controversy that we can be sure about. Despite several books saying that Thomas Shock White introduced the huge bat, it was Thomas Daddy White who did it and Shock White was a completely different player. It is not clear who originally confused the two Whites, though it may well have been John Nyren, son of the Hambledon captain.
In his Young Cricketers Tutor (1833), John Nyren refers to the incident by saying: Several years since (I do not recollect the precise date) a player, named White, of Ryegate (sic), brought a bat to a match, which being the width of the stumps, effectually (sic) defended his wicket from the bowler : and, in consequence, a law was passed limiting the future width of the bat to 4¼ inches. In a footnote, Nyren adds that: I have a perfect recollection of this occurrence; also, that subsequently, an iron frame of the statute width, was constructed for, and kept by the Hambledon Club; through which any bat of suspect dimensions was passed, and allowed or rejected accordingly.
One or two writers have taken Nyren at his word re the footnote but, as usual, Nyren is completely unreliable. John Nyren was born at Hambledon in 1764 and so he was a young boy of nearly seven when the infamous match took place. It is questionable if Nyren was actually present as Hambledon to Chertsey in those days was a long journey. When he says he has perfect recollection he is surely referring to his recall of his father talking about the incident in, no doubt, heated terms. I was seven when I first watched Test cricket but I admit my actual recollections are memories of comments made by my father re certain incidents rather than a reliable eye-witness account of the incidents themselves, which in any case I have subsequently read about or seen recordings of.
Nyren certainly could recall the iron frame. It was surely shown to him and he will have handled it and watched his father demonstrate its use.
In an earlier passage, Nyren refers to Shock White as one of the four leading bowlers to oppose Hampshire in the 1770s and he is wrong, for this was Daddy White again.
In John Nyren's The Cricketers of My Time, the author Ashley Mote rightly says that Nyren was a plagiarist and it is true that parts of his work were taken sometimes verbatim from earlier works. It could be said that we are all plagiarists unless we are truly original! No matter. Nyren does seem to have adapted someone else's much earlier words when he talks about a player, named White, of Ryegate.
The MCC has in its possession a paper, evidently written by Thomas Brett and signed by himself, Richard Nyren and John Small. This document, which is in effect a slip cut from a larger sheet of paper, may be called the Brett Declaration for want of a more appropriate name. It amounts to an item in the minutes of a Hambledon Club meeting, though it may have been a separate document that was subsequently discussed at a club meeting. It has been suggested that the paper is a forgery but I think this is introducing a conspiracy theory into circumstances where the solution is surely the most obvious of the options.
The Brett Declaration states:
In view of the performance of one White of Ryegate on September 23rd
that ffour (sic) and quarter inches shall be the breadth forthwith.
this 25th day of September 1771
Richard Nyren
T Brett
John Small
It has been supposed that a 19th century forger took the words a player, named White, of Ryegate from Nyren and wrote one White of Ryegate on the forged declaration. In my view, it was the other way around. Nyren, the plagiarist, must have seen the declaration many times and had the phraseology in his head. It is curious that White's first name is not used in either source. Nyren may well have been confused about White's name. He was clearly confused about many things if you read his book carefully! But he had an easy escape because all he had to do was simply adapt Brett's words. Thomas Brett certainly knew that White was called Thomas but he was still incensed enough about the incident to refuse to call him by his given name. That is only natural. Brett's anger can be seen in his use of the word performance. He is using that word in its most derogatory sense.
There have been doubts about whether Thomas Brett would have written the declaration. Brett was still a young player and, according to Nyren, Brett's judgment of the game was held in no great estimation. Maybe so, but can we trust Nyren's judgment instead? I don't think so. The fact is that Thomas Brett was the best bowler in England apart from the great Lumpy Stevens. But it's a fair question. Why was it Thomas Brett who wrote this historic document and not his captain or the club's senior batsman, who both merely signed it; or indeed some senior and preferably noble official within the Hambledon Club's hierarchy?
A few points need to considered here and the most crucial one is the doctrine of Sir Neville Cardus that the game and its players have always reflected their times. This was the anything goes world of Georgian England, not the stuffy protocol one of Victorian England. Aristocrats in those days were notorious for enjoying themselves while having some other fellow deal with any issues that might arise. The classic case is Lord's. Why is it called Lord's and not Winchilsea's or Lennox's? Because when the jolly good chaps decided they wanted their own private venue, they didn't want to soil their hands with the necessaries. No, they got one of their bowlers, Thomas Lord, an enterprising fellow, don't y'know?, to do the work for them.
When the Hambledon players came back from Chertsey shouting the odds about White and took their objections to the Duke of Dorset or whoever, is it not reasonable to assume that Dorset told them to: Put it in writing and get one of your fellows to make this damned gauge thing that you're wanting.? The club members yawned but agreed that Brett had a point and so Dorset added: Yaas, one shall have it in the Laws when one gets around to having one's scribe write them up. I say, dashed beastly business, don't y'know?.
As for why Brett had the point and not one of the more senior (i.e., older) players. Although Tom Brett was still only 24, he was unquestionably the club's main and therefore senior bowler. This was not Victorian England and Brett did not need to know his place if he was demonstrably the best bowler around. No doubt he had the ball in his hand when White walked in and so he was the one who furiously objected to the umpire and then summoned his captain for support. In short, he raised the issue and the club, both members and players, told him to see it resolved. So he wrote the Brett Declaration (and he did write it: compare his signature with the writing of the declaration) when he returned to Hambledon a couple of days later. Richard Nyren's name was added as he was the club captain.
Why did Small sign it too? Because Richard Nyren was Hambledon's #2 bowler and thus far it looks like bowlers whingeing about a batsman getting the better of them. Having Small sign it provides a seal of approval from other batsmen (and Small was no mere other batsman); more importantly, Small's signature showed that if the world's greatest batsman would happily use a bat that was subject to a prescribed limit, then everyone else should use it too. Small's support was absolutely vital to having the rule accepted.
You will note that I say Nyren's name was added. Other writers have pointed out that Nyren's signature on the declaration is unlike his signatures on two official documents where he witnessed the marriages of George Leer and Tom Sueter. That is so, but an added problem is that the two official signatures differ from each other as well!
For what it is worth, I think the Brett Declaration is semi-genuine. I think Thomas Brett raised the issue and he wrote it down for presentation at a committee meeting. I think Richard Nyren's name was inserted as he was the club captain but perhaps by someone in the committee and not by Nyren himself. They may have similarly added Small's name. Having said that, I would imagine that Nyren and Small had already expressed agreement with the issue and the proposed resolution.
The how really doesn't matter. The facts are that the incident occurred, the issue was raised and the Laws of 1774 provided the permanent resolution.
But why did White do it? There are three possible reasons and again we must remember Sir Neville's doctrine when we think about what could and did happen in Georgian times.
First, he did it for a prank because he knew the Laws of Cricket written in 1744 said nothing about the width of the bat; just as they also said nothing about the bowler's arm action, incidentally. Perhaps there were a few volatile characters on the Hambledon team and White thought he would wind them up. If that was his intention, he seems to have succeeded because it looks as if some of the Hambledon people went ballistic!
Second, and given the times I seriously doubt this, he was deliberately cheating. Not legally cheating as the Laws were silent on the issue, but morally cheating in terms of acting against the spirit of the game. The action in itself seems too outrageous to have been done with any serious intent unless there was a third motive.
Third, and this is the one that seems to have escaped all previous writers on the subject. Thomas White realised that there was a loophole in the law and it may well have been a sore point for many years that players were using different-sized bats. It may have become an issue that no one would assert themselves to address: remember the notorious torpor of Georgian aristocrats. So White forced the issue. He knew that people who are angry will resolve to take action. White selected his target with care as he knew the Hambledon Club was the one with the clout to enforce a change in the Laws.
In 1771, the straight bat was still new. Until the 1760s, batsmen still used a club shaped like a modern hockey stick because that shape was most suitable for playing a delivery trundled (i.e., rolled) or skimmed along the ground. It is believed, as described earlier, that pitching the ball began in the 1760s and it is quite possible that the proponent, and certainly the great exponent, of this radical development was none other than Edward Lumpy Stevens, the master bowler of the age. He is known to have studied the flight of the cricket ball and to have worked out the variations of pace, line, length and spin that a bowler could employ depending on the ground and atmospheric conditions. The hockey stick was ineffective against Lumpy's new and startling repertoire so a new type of bat was introduced. Possibly, the straight bat was invented by John Small, who certainly manufactured them in years to come. Even if he did not invent them, he was the first to truly master their use.
But whereas a hockey stick shape has practical limitations that would constrain the creation of one of monster proportions, a straight bat does not have such constraints and it is entirely feasible that a straight piece of wood might as easily be 12 inches wide as 4¼ inches wide. In 1744, when the existing Laws were written, the bat was always a hockey stick. The issue could not arise until the bat changed shape, never mind width.
The fact is that an official limit on the bat's width would have come sooner or later. Whatever Daddy White's motive was (windup, cheating, forcing the issue) he did force the issue and the new limit was already in place, via the Hambledon Club's iron frame, before the Laws were rewritten in 1774.
It seems that every cricket history book ever written contains some reference to this controversy. Only a few seem to realise the difference between Thomas Daddy White and Shock White. Few go into any real detail about the whys and wherefores of the big bat incident and I don't think anyone has considered the connection with the advent of the straight bat only a few years previously; neither has anyone else considered that White may have been forcing an issue rather than cheating or joking.
Cricket's statistical record commences in 1772 and it is at this point that Mr Benjamin Disraeli would throw up his hands in horror and utter his famous pronouncement on the three degrees of untruth!
As we have seen, there were scorecards before 1772 but so few and far between that we can only treat them in isolation as historical oddities. From 1772, scorecards quickly became a habit and then the norm. We can easily trace a continuous line of statistical development from the three scorecards of 1772 to the present day.
There are no bowling or fielding records in 1772, but it is the first season in which we can properly use statistical data to analyse batting performances in terms of scores only. We still don't know that much about all the batsmen's styles, strengths or weaknesses. Even these stats are incomplete because we only know who two out of 13 not outs were and so any compilation of the season's batting averages must carry this caveat in a footnote.
But why compile batting averages anyway? Averages are only any use if you are comparing like with like. I can see the point of calculating averages for a modern Test series where some batsmen played more innings than others: the averages might well show that he who scored most runs was not the most consistent performer (a good example of this is the 1985 Ashes series). But if you compare the batting averages of England's Ashes winners in 2005 with those in 1953 you are wasting your time, because the game has changed and batting styles have changed with it. A player with a limited overs style who several times hits an express bowler for six did not exist in 1953: not even Denis Compton played like Kevin Pietersen.
If you make the even bigger mistake of comparing the statistics of a 21st century batsman with those of an 18th century batsman, you really are in the realms of sheer folly.
Because of the prevailing conditions, the scoring potential of the 18th century batsman was only about 30% of the 20th or 21st century batsman.
Pitch preparation in those far off days was rudimentary at best and needless to say the pitches were completely exposed to the elements. Heavy rollers were first used at Lord's in 1870 and it is generally agreed that this was the innovation that began the great general improvement in pitches, to quote Bowen on the matter. Later still, in 1895, groundsmen began using marl, which is a sort of limestone clay that binds the soil (it is also used as fertiliser) and ensures more permanence in the surface. These techniques were a long way in the future when batsmen were facing Lumpy o'er a brow on a pitch that was probably crumbling before their eyes.
For honest Lumpy did allow
He ne'er would pitch but o'er a brow!
The famous rhyme about Lumpy confirms that the pitches were not level: a fact that must appal the modern flat track artists. Pitch preparation was performed by sheep for the most part. These were of course relocated by the local collie to another field before the game began. Additional mowing was done after the fashion of the Grim Reaper, using scythes. We know they did use primitive (light only) rollers and I daresay they did their best to remove stones and fill holes in. They went off the field if it poured down and then moved Heaven and Earth to get the game finished, even postponing games for whole years in some cases. The pitches were uncovered during the deluges and so the restart would often feature a second dog: the sticky one.
I started watching cricket in 1961 when I were a lad. My dad sparked my interest by taking me to watch Yorkshire and there was an Australian tour that year too, led by Richie Benaud. I distinctly remember my dad saying that batsmen like Simpson, O'Neill, Dexter and Cowdrey were all well and good but the players who mattered were the great bowlers like Trueman, Statham, Benaud and Davidson: Bowlers win matches. How many times since have I heard that phrase repeated? Yet it was not always so.
The real heroes of Georgian cricket were the batsmen. If he had been around two centuries earlier, my dad would have said: Batsmen win matches.
A lot of runscoring nowadays is done by default. Batsmen don't have to work very hard unless they are up against a really good bowler. But in Georgian times, every run was a triumph, even against a stock bowler, never mind a class act like Lumpy, Brett or Harris. Every single delivery was a potential Gatting Ball. Georgian batsmen looking like someone had nicked their lunch must have been par for the course! The low scores do not tell the full story but you can invariably spot an innings that made a difference, where one batsman stood his ground and made runs that really were crucial to the result while wickets tumbled all around him.
Coming back to that 30% benchmark I mentioned.
28 players took part in the three scorecarded games of 1772 and the teams were pretty much the same in all three games. Hampshire used 12 players including their two given men. Their opponents used 16 but key players like Joseph Miller, John Minshull and above all Lumpy appeared in all three games. Hampshire's opponents are labelled All-England in the first two games but more precisely as Kent with two men given in the third. Even so, with 16 players to choose from, it was effectively the same team in all three games.
So you could think of those matches as a series, except that the Duke of Dorset would seriously object. He and his contemporaries were interested in the current game and the current game only or, more precisely, the prize on offer at the conclusion of the current game. Yes, there might be another game arranged for se'ennight Tuesday but no one is even thinking about that. These fellows did not suffer from non-match syndrome. They didn't have a championship and so they didn't have games between mid-table mediocrities going through the motions. Every match was a keenly contested competition in its own right. They didn't need Bill Shankly or Bob Paisley to tell them to focus on the current game: the current game and its prize were already everything.
Although it is wrong to do so, lets for the sake of argument say that these three matches were a series. The total number of runs scored was 1356, including 91 extras (all byes), and this is a volume typical of the entire Georgian era right up to the days of roundarm and beyond. In the 21st century, you might well see that total in a single game. And so, it may be said, by and large and without exaggeration, that it was three times more difficult to bat on a Georgian pitch as on a 21st century one.
That being so, what do we expect the stats to tell us? The historical record, as expressed by John Nyren in 1832, tells us that John Small was a star of the first magnitude: an expression that we would freely translate as superstar.
In 1772, Small had six innings in the three recorded matches and scored 213 runs with a highest score of 78. His 1772 average, assuming he was never not out, comes to 35.50. The statistical record tells us that Mr Small of Petersfield was anything but a superstar. But if we allow for the undoubted fact that his scoring potential was limited by the prevailing conditions to only 30% of that of today's batsmen, can we say that his flat track average would have been 100-plus and he would have scored over 600 runs?
In reality, Small the master of the bad wicket brows might have made rather more runs than th