1756 English cricket season

1756 English cricket season

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Details have survived of five eleven-a-side matches in the 1756 English cricket season, and one notable single wicket match. ^{[note 1]}

The season may be said to mark the beginning of the so-called "Hambledon Era". The Hambledon team, then probably run by a parish organisation rather than the famous club which is believed to have been formed in about 1765, makes its first recorded appearances in three matches against Dartford.

The Seven Years' War began in 1756 and ended in 1763. It is possible this reduced the number of "great matches", as did the Napoleonic and the two World Wars later. It is probable that cricket's first bowling revolution occurred sometime between 1756 and 1763. Bowlers were certainly pitching the ball by 1770, but there are no surviving reports to describe the reception that pitching had when it was tried and implemented.

Matches

date	match title	venue	result	source
date unknown	Dartford v Hambledon [3]	venue unknown	Dartford won	[4]
notes
18 August (W)	Hambledon v Dartford [3]	Broadhalfpenny Down	Dartford won	[4]
notes
30 August (M)	Dartford v Hambledon [3]	Artillery Ground	Dartford won	[4]
notes	These three Dartford v Hambledon games are the earliest known references to matches involving a Hambledon team. The one on Broadhalfpenny Down is known about because of a famous advert in the Reading Mercury concerning a dog called Rover whose owner lost him at the match. He was offering five shillings for Rover’s return but it is not known if the dog was recovered. [5] It should be said that the advert does not conclusively prove that Hambledon was playing Dartford that day, but in the light of subsequent reports it seems a more than reasonable assumption. Nothing is known of the first match except that the last of the three on Monday 30 August was billed as "the deciding match between the two elevens" and played for £50 a side. Furthermore, in the Public Advertiser announcement which H T Waghorn recorded re the game below on Mon 6 September, Dartford is said to have beat Hampshire (sic) 3 matches successively. [3] There is no definite knowledge of Hambledon cricket before 1756 but the team may have gained repute already to be capable of attempting three matches against Dartford, which had been a famous club since the 1720s if not earlier. It is not known for certain when the Hambledon Club was founded and it seems likely that some kind of parish organisation was operating in 1756, although there may well have been a patron involved. The ground is however some distance from the village.
6 September (M)	London v Dartford [3]	Artillery Ground	result unknown	[4]
notes	Played for £50 a side. London had John Bryant, Joe Harris, Durling and George Smith playing for them.
9 September (Th)	Dartford v London [3]	Dartford Brent	result unknown	[4]
notes	In the announcement for the game on Mon 6 September, it says "the second match will be played on Dartford Brim (sic) by the same gentlemen".

Other events

In Dawn of Cricket, H T Waghorn records a pre-announcement that a "fives" game involving a Hambledon side would be played on Sat 28 August at the Artillery Ground. The Hambledon players are unnamed but their opponents were a strong team: Tom Faulkner, Joe Harris, John Frame, John Bell and Durling. No details of the result were recorded. Stakes were £20 a side. This may have been a curtain raiser for the main event on Monday 30 August. ^[3]

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. H T Waghorn, The Dawn of Cricket, Electric Press, 1906
4. ACS, Important Matches, p. 23.
5. G B Buckley, ‘’Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket’’, Cotterell, 1935

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.
• McCann, Tim (2004). Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century. Sussex Record Society.
• Waghorn, H. T. (1899). Cricket Scores, Notes, etc. (1730–1773). Blackwood.
• Waghorn, H. T. (1906). The Dawn of Cricket. Electric Press.
• Wilson, Martin (2005). An Index to Waghorn. Bodyline.

Additional reading

• Altham, H. S. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914). George Allen & Unwin.
• 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.
• Major, John (2007). More Than A Game. HarperCollins.
• Maun, Ian (2011). From Commons to Lord's, Volume Two: 1751 to 1770. Martin Wilson. ISBN   978-0-9569066-0-1.
• Mote, Ashley (1997). The Glory Days of Cricket. Robson.
• Underdown, David (2000). Start of Play. Allen Lane.