Cricket 1883

“ Together joined in cricket’s manly toil.”— B y r o n . No. 30. VOL. 2. Registered for Transmission Abroad. THURSDAY, JULY 12, 1883. PRICE 2d, A C EN TU R Y AGO. T h e lapse of a brief period of three years, and the cricket 'world will have to offer its congratulations on an anniversary, in importance without a parallel, we venture to think, in the history of our manly sports. Two summers only will have to pass before the Marylebone Club will have reached its centenary. It is ninety - seven years since Thomas Lord took a portion of ground on the spot now forming Dorset Square, and laid the foundation of the Society which has with such staunch fidelity upheld the honour and dignity of our national game. Lord, a shrewd Scotchman, who is said to have been compelled to fly to London on account of his Jacobitepredilections, was one of the attendants on the White Conduit Club, which flourished over a century ago under the guiding influence, of .some of the patrician fathers of cricket, including the Earl of Winchelsea, Sir Horace Mann, and others. Lord used to bowl to the mem­ bers of the White Conduit Club, whieh owed its title, no doubt, to its practice on White Conduit Fields, and acting on their suggestion that he should take a private ground, the gentle­ men comprising that body migrated to Dorset Square aud established themselves there under the title of the Marylebone Club. What cricjket was in the days of these b*-ave old worthies it is fortunately easy to show. The anthor of “ The Cricket Field”—most pains­ taking in his researches after early cricket lore —proves from a M.S. of the late Mr. William Ward that the wickets were placed as they now are (twenty-two yards apart) as long ago as the year 1700. The compiler of “ Scores and Biographies ” also contends that the wickets in the earliest days of the game were pitched at the same length as at the present time, but they were only a foot iu height, and, according to some, two feet wide, though the width is questionable. Between the stumps a hole was made in the ground large enough to contain the ball and the butt end of the bat. If in play the wfcket-keeper could receive the ball from the field and place it in the hole before the striker in running home could place his bat there, he was out. The frequent oollision of the bat with the wicket-keeper’s hands caused severe injuries to the players, and suggested the con­ venience of a liue rather less than four feet from but parallel' to the wicket, now called the popping-crease. The stumps were raised to the height of twenty-two inches, limited to six inches in breadth, and the wicket-keeper, insteal of putting the ball into the hole, had to put down the wicket with the ball in hand. Mr, P. Gale, most pleasant of gossips, claims oricket known as a game of any importance to be only 140 years old, and he considers the sport as represented in the illustra- tration, which we are able to reproduce through his courtesy,and bykind permis- sion of the editor of Time ma­ gazine, in 1743 to be a speci­ men of the earliest cricket. He argues, lawyer - like, that the picture is tangible evidence, and that previous mention of cricket does not tell us what it wa3. About this time the game was un­ deniably well supported. The score of a match be­ tween Kent and All Eng­ land, played on the Artillery Ground in Finsbury Square in 1746, proves this, but it was thirty years later be­ fore any further record appears. At this period—a hundred years ago—there is every evidence that cricket had taken a firm hold and was generally practised. A century since the Hambledon Club was in its prime, and it is little more than ten decades ago since the .addition of the third stump was made to complete the wickets. In a match of the Hambledon. Club in 1775,it was observed at a critical time that the ball passed three times be­ tween Small’s two stumps without knocking off the bails. Then first a third stump was added, and seeing that the new style of bowling rose over the wicket at that time only one foot high, the wicket was altered to the dimensions of twenty-two inches by six, at which measure it remained till about 1814. Such was cricket a century ago, just developing into a natioual