1738 English cricket season

1738 English cricket season

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Details have survived of eight eleven-a-side matches in the 1738 English cricket season. ^{[note 1]}

As in 1737, Kent seems to have been the strongest county, again defeating the combined London & Surrey team. London Cricket Club is featured in most of the surviving match reports. Chislehurst Cricket Club and Horsmonden Cricket Club became prominent. The earliest reference to cricket in the county of Dorset has been found.

Matches

date	match title	venue	result	source
July	London & Surrey v Kent	Kennington Common	Kent "won easily"	[3] [4]
notes	This was a repeat of Kent's successes in two 1737 matches against the same opponents.
July	Kent v London & Surrey	venue unknown	result unknown	[3] [4] [5]
notes	A return match to the above was intended but no details have been found. The odds were 2 to 1 on Kent.
11 July (Tu)	Chislehurst v Horsmonden	Chislehurst Common	Chislehurst won	[5]
notes	Played for "a considerable sum of money". This is the first known reference to each of these teams who were prominent for a few seasons before and after 1740.
12 July (W)	Chislehurst v London	Chislehurst Common	London won	[5] [4]
notes	A game that "turned several times" until finally being won by London. The rematch was arranged a week hence.
19 July (W)	London v Chislehurst	Artillery Ground	Chislehurst won by 5 wkts	[6] [4]
notes	London scored less than 100 in their combined innings. Chislehurst had scored 73 in the first innings and won "without much difficulty".
21 July (F)	Horsmonden v Chislehurst	Horsmonden	Horsmonden won by an innings and 4 runs	[6]
notes	The return match to the one at Chiselhurst on Tuesday, 11 July. Played for (again) "a considerable sum", it was won by Horsmonden "in one Hands (sic), all but 4 notches". The use of "hands" in this context means "innings", so Horsmonden achieved an innings victory, one of the earliest on record.
11 August (F)	London v Mitcham	Artillery Ground	London won by 1 wkt	[7] [4]
notes	Mitcham totalled 117-20 in two innings; London 118-19 in two innings. Strangely, the only report of this was in the Warwickshire & Staffordshire Journal dated Thursday, 17 August.
September	London v Chislehurst	Artillery Ground	London won	[8] [4]
notes	Betting on London at the start of the second innings was a guinea to a shilling.

Other events

An advertisement in the Sherborne Mercury dated Tuesday, 9 May, is the earliest reference to cricket in Dorset. Twelve Dorchester men at Ridgway (sic) Races challenged twelve men from elsewhere to play them at cricket for the prize of twelve pairs of gloves valued at a shilling a pair. ^[9]

September. An inter-parish match in Sussex between teams from Eastbourne and Battle. Lord John Sackville captained Eastbourne, who won by 4 wickets. ^[6]

Notes

1. Some eleven-a-side matches played before 1864 have been rated "first-class" by certain sources, but there was no such standard at the time. The term came into common use from around 1864, when overarm bowling was legalised, and was formally defined as a standard by a meeting at Lord's, in May 1894, of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the county clubs which were then competing in the County Championship. The ruling was effective from the beginning of the 1895 season, but pre-1895 matches of the same standard have no official definition of status because the ruling is not retrospective. However, matches of a similar standard since the beginning of the 1864 season are generally considered to have an unofficial first-class status. ^[1] Pre-1864 matches which are included in the ACS' "Important Match Guide" may generally be regarded as top-class or, at least, historically significant. ^[2] For further information, see First-class cricket.

References

1. ACS 1982, pp. 4–5.
2. ACS 1981, pp. 1–40.
3. Maun, p. 91.
4. ACS, Important Matches, p. 20.
5. Waghorn, p. 20.
6. Waghorn, p. 21.
7. Buckley, p. 15.
8. Waghorn, pp. 21–22.
9. Major, p. 116.

Bibliography

• ACS (1981). A Guide to Important Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles 1709–1863. Nottingham: ACS.
• ACS (1982). A Guide to First-class Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles. Nottingham: ACS.
• Buckley, G. B. (1935). Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket. Cotterell.
• Major, John (2007). More Than A Game. HarperCollins.
• Maun, Ian (2009). From Commons to Lord's, Volume One: 1700 to 1750. Roger Heavens. ISBN   978 1 900592 52 9.
• Waghorn, H. T. (1899). Cricket Scores, Notes, etc. (1730–1773). Blackwood.

Further reading

• Altham, H. S. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914). George Allen & Unwin.
• Ashley-Cooper, F. S. (1880). Kent Cricket Matches 1719–1796. Gibbs & Sons.
• Birley, Derek (1999). A Social History of English Cricket. Aurum.
• Bowen, Rowland (1970). Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
• Buckley, G. B. (1937). Fresh Light on pre-Victorian Cricket. Cotterell.
• McCann, Tim (2004). Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century. Sussex Record Society.
• Marshall, John (1961). The Duke who was Cricket. Muller.
• Underdown, David (2000). Start of Play. Allen Lane.
• Waghorn, H. T. (1906). The Dawn of Cricket. Electric Press.
• Wilson, Martin (2005). An Index to Waghorn. Bodyline.