1759 English cricket season

1759 English cricket season

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Details have survived of three eleven-a-side matches in the 1759 English cricket season, but no notable single wicket matches. ^{[note 1]} Three Dartford v Rest of England matches were played, a number of well-known names being involved.

Matches

date	match title	venue	result	source
5–6 Sept (W–Th)	Dartford v England XI [3]	Dartford Brent	Dartford won	[4]
notes	Dartford had two given men: Tom Faulkner and Gascoigne of London.
6–7 Sept (Th–F)	Dartford v England XI [3]	Dartford Brent	All-England won	[4]
notes	This one was arranged immediately after the previous game finished at noon on Thursday. It is not actually known when the game finished so it is only an assumption that they played into Friday.
12 Sept (W)	England XI v Dartford [3]	Laleham Burway	Dartford won by 3 wkts	[4]
notes	The deciding match was scheduled for Wed 12 September from an announcement in the Whitehall Evening Post dated Tuesday 11 September. Arthur Haygarth refers to this "tri-series" on page 2 of Scores & Biographies, but only to the two games won by Dartford. He appears to believe that only two games were played. He found the names of the players in both those matches in Bell’s Life dated 23 November 1845, but no scores. [5] Bell’s Life stated that the matches took place in 1765 and Mr Haygarth says another account has 1762, but it is evident that G B Buckley has got the dates (and the sequence) right as above. Dartford’s team, evidently unchanged in all three games, was: Tom Faulkner, Gascoigne (both London, given men), John Frame, John Bell (wk), Potter (long stop), Thomas Brandon, Thomas Bell, Goldstone, Killick, Stevens (possibly Edward "Lumpy" Stevens), Wakelin. The England team, also apparently unchanged, was: Burchwood (Kent), John Edmeads (Surrey), Gill (Bucks, wk), Thomas Woods (Surrey, long stop), Stephen Harding (Surrey), John Haynes (Surrey), Durling (Kent), Saunders (Berkshire), Allen (Middlesex), Nyland (sic, Sussex), Cheeseman (Sussex). The main bowlers were stated to be Faulkner and Frame for Dartford; and Burchwood and Edmeads for All-England. The most intriguing names are Nyland, who could have been any of the Newland brothers or perhaps their famous nephew Richard Nyren; and Stevens, who may have been the Lumpy Stevens himself. Richard Nyren and Lumpy were both 24 in 1759. John Frame, who began in the 1740s, played on into the 1770s. He was the greatest bowler in England before Lumpy, Brett and Harris came along. John Edmeads, assuming it is the same man, was still playing for Chertsey and Surrey in the 1770s. Gill of Bucks is probably the wicket-keeper in the score-recorded Hampshire v England XI match of June 1772.

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. G B Buckley, Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket, Cotterell, 1935
4. ACS, Important Matches, p. 23.
5. Arthur Haygarth, Scores & Biographies, Volume 1 (1744-1826), Lillywhite, 1862

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.
• Haygarth, Arthur (1862). Scores & Biographies, Volume 1 (1744–1826). Lillywhite.
• 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.

Further 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.