Great Cricket Matches 1772-1800

It will be seen that the wicket has grown both taller and wider, but overall the degree of continuity is remarkable. It would, of course, be mischievous, and entirely unfair to the game’s modern legislators, to add that the 1774 code consisted of 843 words, while the 2000 code required a modest increase to 27,557 (not including the diagrams). 1 Scoring was modest: an 18th-century score should be at least doubled to arrive at a modern equivalent. An individual score of fifty was not uncommon, but a century was a rare feat: the ‘conversion rate’, as a modern batting coach might term it, was extremely low. When in 1777 James Aylward scored 167, ironically in the very match that was advertised as being played with a third stump ‘to shorten the game’, the feat was looked upon as almost miraculous, and the record that it set remained unsurpassed, at least in top cricket, for over forty years. Because scoring was slower and matches generally shorter, fewer bowlers were needed. It seems it was not uncommon for a team to use the same two bowlers throughout an innings, or indeed the whole match. A bowler might change ends, but only once in any innings (although there was nothing to stop him, in changing ends, from bowling two overs in succession). Wicket-keeping was a distinct role, recognised as such in the laws, and by the 1770s, if not before, some players were beginning to specialise in it. However, it remained common throughout the period for players to bowl and keep wicket in the same innings. Long stop – that is, near the boundary behind the wicket-keeper – was very much a recognised position, in which players might specialise. Its prevalence may be taken as evidence more of the bumpiness of pitches rather than the inadequacy of wicket-keepers or the inaccuracy of bowlers. The teams would take their innings in strict alternation: there was no follow-on. There were also no declarations: or, rather, the laws made no provision for them. There are, however, a few occasions where an ascendant team appears to have given up its innings in order to have a go at bowling the other side out. Matches were almost always played out. Given the relatively modest scoring, this seldom took more than two or three days in good conditions; but weather interference, or unusually heavy scoring, could extend a match to five or six days or even longer. Eighteenth-century cricketers showed commendable persistence in giving a match as much time as it needed to come to a definite conclusion, returning day after day after weather interruptions or an intervening Sunday even when the result was a foregone conclusion. This may be on account of the wagers laid not only on the result of the match but also on one player’s score against another’s; but whatever the reason, an unfinished game was a rarity. 31 1 The word count for 1774 includes the laws for the settlement of bets. The count for 2000 includes updates to 2008 and comprises the preamble, the numbered laws, and the appendices. It does not include regulations by the ICC, ECB, and other governing bodies; nor does it include the Duckworth-Lewis provisions. The ACS is grateful to MCC for supplying the modern laws in a format that allowed an electronic word count. (The laws of 1774 were counted manually.)