'The Greatest Match at Cricket': a brief history of London cricket
In celebration of England retaining the Ashes I thought a brief post on the history of English cricket might be in order. There's a theme to the imagery, but only the most cunning will spot it (and thanks to Hazel Potter for the above image).
Cricket is a game so peculiar and convoluted it could only have been arrived at by the combination of schoolboys, apprentices, parish labourers and aristocracy who from 1600 made it the English game of choice during the summer. From the beginning cricket was a social leveller, played everywhere from the lowest day schools to Eton and Winchester by 1650, and due to the numbers involved and relative lack of violence (more on that later) it continued to be a sport where the classes mixed.
The earliest references to cricket in the counties are confined mainly to Surrey and Sussex, but are soon found in Kent and Hampshire. 'The Gentlemen of London' appear here and there, and by 1700 cricket is being played on the Artillery Ground as well as Clapham and Kennington Commons. By the 1730s, cricket had arrived. In July of 1739 a match between London and Kent had an estimated ten thousand spectators all paying tuppence each (indicating an enclosed ground and infrastructure for spectator sport on a large scale).
In 1744 The Laws of Cricket were laid down by the London Club and are notable for setting the pitch length at 22 yards, an over to four balls and limiting the batsman to one attempt at the ball (previously he'd been allowed two, resulting in serious head injuries and some fatalities amongst enthusiastic fielders). As is typical of cricket, further laws were drawn up as the years went by: in 1774 LBW was outlawed, but it isn't until 1795 an LBW dismissal is recorded.
As the century went on, cricket became more visibly formalised (although I suspect it was a sport played and followed very seriously from the late 17th century, we just do not have the records). It was commonly played on a Monday afternoon and by the latter 1700s 'clubs' were beginning to emerge, most famously the Hambledon Club and the Marylebone Cricket Club.
The Hambledon Club was formed in Hampshire and marked a turning point in English cricket in employing professional players. However, it was also a social club and they liked a good dinner with plenty of toasts, which included 'cricket', 'the King' and 'The immortal memory of madge'. (The madge of immortal memory is a rather jocular reference to ladyparts. Hambledon must have had a joker in the pack - Thomas Paine is down as one of the attendees at a meeting after he had been exiled for sedition.) By the late 1790s, the Hambledon was finished, but already, the Marylebone Cricket Club had taken up the slack.
The MCC had been around as the White Conduit Club or WCC played at White Conduit Fields and was supported heavily, if not founded by the Earl of Winchelsea and Charles Lennox, later Duke of Richmond. The WCC was a club for 'gentlemen' but they didn't like to lose: by 1785 it was employing professional players, including Edward 'Lumpy' Stevens, John 'Little Joey' Ring and one Thomas Lord. Lord was an enterprising man and when White Conduit Fields became undesirable as a place to play (due to pressure of development), Winchelsea asked him to find a new ground. Lord took a lease on a piece of ground near Dorset Square in Marylebone (1787) and the MCC was born. There is no evidence the ground was ever called anything but Lord's and in 1806 it hosted the first Gentlemen vs Players match. In 1810 a row over the lease caused them to move, but in 1813 the development of the Regent's Canal threatened Lord's again, so the wily bowler, by then a wine merchant, shifted the ground to its current site.
By this time, cricket was part of the London summer scene. Surrey and Hampshire Ladies played at Ball's Pond in 1811, and 1827 saw the first Oxford vs Cambridge match at Lord's. Just before our era closes, in the early 1830s, the MCC introduced the use of pads for the batsman (not a moment too early I would imagine!). Cricket had changed and was well on the way to becoming the sport we love today. All the best to England in Sydney, and a Happy New Year to Georgian Londoners everywhere.
