Caterham Cricket Club, based at Caterham in Surrey, was briefly a top-class cricket team, playing ten known matches from 1767 to 1770 which are recognised as important.[1][note 1] Caterham at that time was effectively representative of Surrey as a county. Its home venue was on Caterham Common. The club was patronised by Henry Rowett, a prominent landowner in the area, and was in reality his own private club. Six of their matches were against Hambledon, and three against Bourne. In the other match, Caterham combined with Coulsdon Cricket Club to play against the Rest of England.
Caterham is first recorded as a top-class team on about 21 September 1767 when it played Hambledon at Duppas Hill, and was heavily beaten by 262 runs. Two unidentified Hambledon batters had a partnership worth 192.[6][7] Caterham's last major match in 1770 was also against Hambledon, and they lost that by 57 runs.[8]
There is a modern Caterham Cricket Club, whose origins are in the 1870s. Its team plays in the Surrey County League.[10]
Notes
↑Some eleven-a-side matches played from 1772 to 1863 have been rated "first-class" by certain sources.[2] However, the term only came into common use around 1864, when overarm bowling was legalised. It 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.[3] Matches of a similar standard since the beginning of the 1864 season are generally considered to have an unofficial first-class status.[4] Pre-1864 matches which are included in the ACS' "Important Match Guide" may generally be regarded as important or, at least, historically significant.[5] For further information, see First-class cricket.
The administrative centre is Oxted. The largest town is Caterham. Three of the post towns have urban centres Caterham, Godstone and Oxted. Lingfield and Warlingham are major villages which have post town status. The others are outside the area.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
