Great Cricket Matches 1772-1800

But what of the game itself? If it were possible for a modern cricket follower to attend an eighteenth-century ‘great’ match, would it be the change or the continuity that was more striking? To take this question first at the most basic level, the elements of continuity are profound. Take a look at paintings from the period. There are two sets of stumps, each defended by a player equipped with a wooden bat against adversaries scattered around the field of play, one of whom projects a small, hard ball from near one set of stumps towards the other, while two umpires oversee the game. Against these similarities, the differences pale almost into insignificance: this is cricket. The surroundings were generally much more open than today, with no demarcated boundary to the field of play and, even at the biggest matches, very little organised accommodation for large numbers of spectators. A sound hit might send the ball a long distance, forcing the fielders to scramble to recover it from some nearby bushes or among the crowd. The modern concept of a boundary did not exist, although it was foreshadowed both in the allowance of six runs if the fielding side called ‘lost ball’, and in local rules, varying from ground to ground, that might make a certain allowance of runs, usually three, if the ball struck some defined obstacle such as a refreshment tent (a ‘booth ball’). But in general, the word ‘run’ should be understood in its most literal sense of a dash between the wickets, so that a large innings was a feat of physical stamina as well as sustained skill and concentration: 18th-century batsmen would have considered it a great luxury to be able to stand at the crease watching a well-struck ball whistle to the boundary for four. Some other proceedings would be strange to a modern cricketer. After 1774, the visiting team would normally have choice of innings, the toss being used only on rare occasions such as when teams met at a neutral venue. (This was a change from the laws of 1744, which stipulated that ‘the party that wins the toss up may order which side shall go in first at his Option’. It was not until the early 19th century that the toss was restored as the standard method of deciding choice of innings.) Teams arriving to play a match would not find themselves presented with the close-mown, lovingly-prepared batting strip that we expect today. Instead, the visiting captain would choose to have stumps pitched anywhere within 30 yards of a point stipulated by the home team, so the pitch would be no different from any other part of the playing area. Choosing a suitable pitch must have been a great art: an unwise selection would condemn the team to a torrid experience with the bat and in all likelihood a very low score. Although a poem of 1773 refers to cricketers’ ‘milk-white vestments’, the tradition of cricket ‘whites’ was not yet fully established. Players seem generally to have worn comfortable, relatively loose-fitting clothes, tending to be light rather than dark in shade. A typical outfit would be a tunic and knee breeches, the latter being, according to Haygarth’s comment on a match of 1786, ‘of course in use now by everyone’. As for protective equipment, it can be readily summarised. There was none. Batsmen and wicket-keepers had no gloves, pads, or other physical protection. Robert Robinson, clearly a man far in advance of his time, apparently tried to bat wearing a primitive type of pads but he ‘was laughed out of his invention.’ (Pycroft, The Cricket Field , p145). At this period (and for many years later), the over consisted of four balls. Bowling would, of course, have been ‘underhand’. This meant in essence that the hand must be kept below the shoulder, although not with any particular expectation that the arm must 28