More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years. John Major

bat and fingers might collide – painfully for the fingers – when an attempt was made to ‘run out’ the batsman before, like a badger, he was safe and ‘in his ground’. Unlike the ‘umpire’s stick’, the ‘block hole’ theory of how runs were registered has no other contemporary confirmation: it may be right, but it is based only on Nyren’s 1833 manuscript. It seems an unlikely tale to invent, so possibly both methods were in use for a time, perhaps by different clubs; but the ‘umpire’s stick’ has the better historical pedigree.

      Nyren may have misled us also about the size of the stumps. In the early eighteenth century, pictorial evidence suggests that wickets were about six inches wide, although the height varies: a 1739 engraving by Gravelot, a Frenchman, seems to show a height of around twelve inches, whilst in a 1743 painting by Hayman they appear to be the twenty-two inches approved in the 1744 codification of the laws. Yet, writing in the 1830s, Nyren refers to a manuscript he had seen which claimed that ‘about 150 years since’ – i.e. about 1680 – wickets were twelve inches high and twenty-four inches wide. No one has ever found this manuscript or any corroborating evidence.

      Events caused two further innovations that were to last. In May 1775, five of Kent were playing five of England at the Artillery Ground, London. John Small Senior, in his prime as a batsman, was facing Lumpy Stevens, without doubt the pre-eminent bowler of the day. Fourteen runs were needed for victory – and were got. But before they were, Lumpy beat Small’s defence three times, only to see the ball pass between the two stumps without disturbing either of them or the single bail. Morally, Small was out, he had been beaten, but as the wicket was undisturbed, he batted on. This was so patently unjust that from then on a third, central stump was added to prevent the ball passing straight between the wicket. By 1776 the press were reporting that ‘it had been decided to have 3 stumps to shorten the game’. They were half-right: three stumps, yes – but to end an anomaly, not to shorten the game.

      Another lacuna in the rules was exposed by a piece of sharp practice some time in the early 1770s. Thomas White of Reigate (not, as sometimes claimed, Shock White of Brentford), a regular England player, strode to the wicket carrying a bat as wide as the stumps – and, very possibly, a smile that was even wider at this attempted mischief. Nothing like this had been seen before, or would be seen again for two hundred years, until in 1979 Dennis Lillee tried, unsuccessfully, to use an aluminium bat during a Test match against England in Perth. The concept of such a wide bat was so at odds with the spirit of the game that it was soon outlawed, and as John Nyren, noted: ‘An iron frame, of the statute width, was constructed for, and kept by, the Hambledon Club, through which any bat of suspected dimensions was passed, and allowed or rejected accordingly.’

      In this fashion the laws continued to evolve, and though they were not yet universally applied, they soon would be. The intriguing question is, who determined and enforced the laws? It is probable, in pre-MCC days, that clubs such as Hambledon set the rules, and they simply became common usage.

      The belief that Hambledon was the fount of cricket is by no means the only misconception about the club: the many myths of Hambledon would require Sherlock Holmes to unravel them all. They have, over the years, bamboozled even eminent and serious cricket historians such as Harry Altham, Derek Birley, David Underdown and R.S. Rait Kerr. In setting out what I believe to be misconceptions, made in the light of information available at the time, I mean no disrespect to those who related them as fact.

      The history of Hambledon Cricket Club is shadowy from its inception, the date of which is itself a matter of controversy. Birley and Altham assert that the club was playing by 1756, but this is very questionable. It is true that the first known reference to Hambledon and cricket appears in that year – but not to a Hambledon Club. On 28 August 1756 the Public Advertiser reported a five-aside match, for £20 a side, between five gentlemen of the parish of Hambledon and five named others at the Artillery Ground, London. It added that on the following Monday an eleven-aside game would be played between the Dartford Club and eleven gentlemen of the parish of Hambledon, this being the deciding match between the teams for £50 a side. However, one cannot assume that this is the Hambledon Club. Dartford is referred to as a club, but Hambledon is twice described explicitly as a parish. It cannot be asserted confidently from this that Hambledon had yet formed a club, although a number of historians have done so. The minutes of the Hambledon Club, held at the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester, almost complete from 1772 to 1786, when the club was at its peak, contain no mention of the law-making responsibilities which some writers have attributed to it at this time, and nor has any yet turned up in contemporary newspapers.

      The confusion appears to arise from a document, in the hands of the MCC and dated 1771, which purports to limit the width of cricket bats to 4¼ inches, a law which was to come into force in 1774. This paper bears the signature of three people who were believed to be Hambledon cricketers – yet in fact none of them was a member of the Hambledon Club. It may be one of the many cricketing fakes produced to supply a market avid for ‘historic’ documents. But even if the document is genuine, it does not establish the Hambledon Club as lawmakers. We do know – after the Thomas White incident – that three Hambledon cricketers signed a club rule over bat sizes, but that does not signify that they were rule-makers for all cricket controversies. In any event, when the 1774 rule revision took place Hambledon officials were present, and no doubt they urged the inclusion of a rule on the maximum size of bats.

      At the beginning of the Hambledon Minute Book is a curiosity that teases over two hundred years later. ‘By order of the Club, May 1st, 1781’, a number of standing toasts are presented, presumably for formal dinners. After proper acknowledgement to royalty, there are toasts to the ‘Hambledon Club’, ‘Cricket’ and ‘The President’. All these were standard fare, but in the midst of the cricketing toasts is the oddity – a toast to ‘The Immortal Memory of Madge’. Who or what is ‘Madge’? Is it an acronym? If so, for what? Was ‘Madge’ an early financial supporter? If so, I can find nothing to identify him. Was ‘Madge’ a woman, perhaps an abbreviation for Margaret? Or was it an in-joke among the club members that can no longer be deciphered? The possibilities are infinite, but the answer is hidden: we may never know.

      Other club records are more revealing. There is a famous scene in the 1939 film Goodbye, Mr Chips, starring Robert Donat, in which the old schoolmaster Chips recalls punishing a boy for changing his marks in a Latin test from a 0 to a 9. A similar exaggeration is evident in estimates of the membership of the Hambledon Club. It has been claimed that ‘assiduous researchers’ have discovered that at its peak the club had 157 members; however, the researchers were neither assiduous nor accurate. All they did was to add up every subscriber over the twenty-five years between 1772 and 1796, and assume that sum total was the peak membership.* This is patently absurd: some would have withdrawn from membership, some would have died, and in any case many of the names are duplicated. The earliest surviving annual subscription list, for 1791, contains only fifty-two current members, and nothing in the club’s minutes suggest that the figure ever much exceeded that.

      There is also uncertainty about the identity of the club’s founders. Altham speculated that the Reverend Charles Powlett was, if not the founder, at least the principal architect in developing the club. His assessment is that Powlett, assisted by Philip Dehany (sometimes inaccurately spelt ‘Dehaney’), was prominent, together with others who had been pupils of Westminster School in the 1740s. Later writers have concurred, yet this can only be conjecture – we do not know, and it is equally likely that the founders could have been Thomas Land (1714–91), a minor patron of cricket, or John Richards (c.1737– 1819), a Hambledon resident and the first treasurer of the club.

      Land lived at Park House, a mile to the east of Hambledon village, beside the lane leading to Broadhalfpenny Down, and served as a local justice of the peace. He is possibly first mentioned in connection with Hambledon in the St James’s Chronicle in September 1764, which refers to a game between the Gentlemen of Chertsey and Gentlemen of Hambledon called ‘Squire Lamb’s Club’. For ‘Lamb’ one could read ‘Land’, and by this date Hambledon is being referred to as a club. For the record, Hambledon won, although Chertsey were successful in a rematch. I can find no record of the outcome of a third and decisive