More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years - John Major

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the best part of the story is not told here. The Duke, to procure good players on his side, ordered 22, who were reckoned the best players in the Country, to be brought before him, in order for him to choose 11 out of them. They played accordingly, and he chose 11. The other 11, being affronted at the choice, challenged the elect to play for a crown a head out of their own pockets. The challenge was accepted; and they played before the Duke and the elect were beat all to nothing.*

      It seems, at least for the first match, that Cumberland was a finer judge of soldiers than of cricketers.

      Horace Walpole’s disapproving correspondence unmasks another noble cricketing sponsor. Henry Bromley, Lord Montford, became a peer in 1741 when George II allowed his mistress Lady Yarmouth to sell two peerages to raise funds. Bromley immediately raised teams to play Lord John Sackville, and was sufficiently active in society to catch Walpole’s attention, as he wrote to Horace Mann in June 1749:

      ‘I could tell you of Lord Montford’s making cricket matches and fetching up parsons by express from different parts of England to play matches on Richmond Green; of his keeping aide-de-camps to ride to all parts to lay bets for him at horse-races …’ The bets were lost, and Montford wasted his fortune, but he lacked neither courage nor style. When he realised he was £30,000 (about £3 million today) in debt he made his will, read it carefully three times and then went into the next room and shot himself through the head before his lawyer had left the house.

      Another notorious gambler, William Douglas, Earl of March (1725–1810), put his knowledge of cricket to good purpose. He entered into a wager that he could convey a letter a certain number of miles within a given time, which, since the distance was faster than horses could travel, was deemed to be impossible. But March was cunning: he enclosed the letter within a cricket ball and had it repeatedly thrown around within a circle of eminent cricketers, easily covering the distance. It was sharp practice, but he won his guineas.

      John Montague, Earl of Sandwich (1718–92) – famous for the invention of the snack bearing his name – features in cricket history as the cricket-lover to whom James Dance dedicated his 1744 ‘Cricket: An Heroic Poem’ (see page 53). He was also the subject of some satirical verses written by Sir C. H. Williams which appeared in the Place Book for the Year, 1745:

      Next in lollop’d Sandwich, with negligent grace

      For the sake of a lounge, not for love of a place

      Quoth he, ‘Noble Captain, your fleets may now nick it,

      For I’ll sit at your board, when at leisure from cricket.’

      Sandwich, who was a Lord of the Admiralty at the time, kept up his cricketing activities alongside his official duties. In June 1751 he organised three matches against the Earl of March for the sum of a thousand guineas, the winner requiring two victories. Both Sandwich and March played in the games, and Sandwich’s team of ‘eleven gentlemen from Eaton [sic] College’ were dressed in silk jackets and velvet caps to add to the spectacle. They also ‘took constant exercise’ to prepare themselves. The result of the first match is unrecorded, but Sandwich won the second and March the third, so the fate of the guineas is unknown. As an added attraction, a further entertainment that appealed to all classes was laid on: there was cockfighting between each match, at which spectators shouted their bets as the blood and feathers flew. It was an odd accompaniment to cricket, but cockfighting remained a hugely popular sport.

      Sandwich maintained an active interest in playing cricket until at least 1766, when he was in his late forties. As George Montague wrote to Horace Walpole in October that year:

      Lord Sandwich would play at cricket when he was at Sir George’s this summer with his eldest son, against Sir George and the youngest Sir George caught him out left handed before he got one, went in, fagged him fourteen times till the Earl was not able to run any or move, but paid his money and went to bed.

      ‘Sir George’ was Sir George Osborn, Bart (1742–1818). Sandwich was a tall, vigorous man who when not playing cricket was an active member of the notorious Hell Fire Club. He certainly lived up to its reputation: after his long-suffering wife finally left him in 1755 he had three sons by a mistress who was murdered by a deranged clergyman in 1779.

      Cricket had entered the bloodstream of the aristocracy, and a relative handful of patrons, enthusiasts for cricket and betting, did much to popularise the peasant’s game. Until 1750 most teams were known by the name of their home town or parish, or by the identity of their patrons. There are references to a few cricket clubs: in 1718–19 the Rochester Punch Club Society in Kent had been formed, and was playing a London side. A Clapham Club appeared in 1731, and by 1735 there were at least two clubs in London – a Westminster Club that played its home games at Tothill Fields, and an Artillery Ground side, which also played under the loose nomenclature of the ‘London Club’. Another London club was playing home games at Lamb’s Conduit Fields by 1736, and in 1745 and 1747 advertisements in the Norwich Mercury invited ‘lovers of cricket’ to ‘subscribe their names for the ensuing season’. The enthusiasts of Norwich clearly took the game very seriously: spectators were warned ‘not to bring dogs along with them’, for ‘if there was any interruption … by them in the game … all such dogs will certainly be killed on the spot’. The poor animals found chasing the ball irresistible, thus hindering play.

      It was a fierce threat from enthusiasts of a game growing in fame. In 1755 cricket would even earn a mention in Dr Johnson’s new dictionary. ‘Cricket’, defined Johnson, is ‘a sport of which the contenders drive a ball with sticks in opposition to each other’ – accurate insofar as it went, but inadequate. Soon the game would be far better-known.