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      Or repine at the loss of Bayton and Land?

      This suggests that by then he had severed his connection with the Hambledon Club. None of this is conclusive. It is possible that ‘Squire Lamb’s Club from Hambledon’ is not the Hambledon Club but a short-lived predecessor. Perhaps ‘Lamb’ is not ‘Land’. The absence of references to Land in later years counts against him. So far as I can see, there is no mention of him in the club minutes, and his obituary in the Hampshire Chronicle of 27 June 1791 refers to him as a ‘celebrated fox hunter’ but does not mention cricket. He is therefore a possible founder only, and the case for him is as speculative as is that for Powlett and Dehany.

      By 1767 the Hambledon Club’s existence can be established. From the early minutes we know the names of thirteen gentlemen who were definitely members, and twelve others who may have been by 1772; but returning to Altham’s claim that it was founded by former Westminster pupils, only four certainly attended that school, of whom only two were there in the 1740s. The club’s members from 1772 onwards were highly influential: they included thirteen who either had, or were to inherit, titles, fourteen clergymen, and ten who were to become Admirals. Three members elected in the 1780s – Richard Barwell (1782), John Shakespeare (1784) and Laver Oliver (1786) – had gained riches in India. Hambledon had a lot of clout. Over a twenty-year period the club’s Presidents included the Duke of Chandos, a future Duke of Richmond, and the Earls of Northington, Winchilsea (twice) and Darnley, as well as Lord John Russell. However, the eminent members from far away were outnumbered by those from nearer home. Over half of the initial twenty-five, who did not include Land – another strike against him as founder – lived within easy distance of Broadhalfpenny Down, which suggests that the club was simply founded by a group of local gentlemen. This is a less glamorous paternity than legend has suggested, but it is probably accurate.

      Another uncertainty relates to the management of the club. Altham implies that Powlett ‘piloted’ Hambledon through ‘at least one crisis’, and that when the club folded in 1796 he was ‘the last to abandon the sinking ship’. This is creditable if true, but it conflicts with the known facts. There is no record of Powlett attending any of the club’s final meetings, nor of his being a subscriber for their last season. It seems that he sank before the club.

      John Richards, however, did not, and he was the central figure in running the club throughout its heyday. Richards was about twenty- nine years of age when he settled in Hambledon in 1766, buying ‘Whitedale’, a large house just outside the village. Five years later he made his only known appearance as a cricketer, playing for Gentlemen of Hampshire against Gentlemen of Sussex at Broadhalfpenny Down. He is a type familiar to cricket history – the lover of the game with little skill at actually playing it. From the outset he seems to have been club treasurer, and thus financial executor of the club’s wishes. He was the club’s factotum, loyal and ever-present, as is reflected in a series of references from the club’s minutes: in 1773 he was asked to check the expense of a conveyance to carry the team to away matches and then, later that year, to purchase it from surplus funds; in 1780 tobacco was ordered to be held in his safekeeping; in 1784 he was supervising alternatives to a ‘booth’ on the club’s new ground at Windmill Down; and in 1787 he was asked to provide ‘six spitting troughs’ and a ‘hogshead of the best port … to drink immediately’.

      Richards was active in many local causes, and in 1772 was one of three nominees for Sheriff of Hampshire. He seems to have been as passionate about politics as cricket: in 1775 he helped found the Hampshire Club ‘for the support of public liberty’, acting sometimes as its steward, while in 1780 he was chairman of a meeting which adopted a petition against Lord North’s government, promoted by his fellow Hambledon member Philip Dehany. He filled local government posts such as Surveyor of Highways, and though not himself a farmer, invented, according to the Hampshire Repository, ‘several useful ploughs and implements of the drag and harrow, and a machine to weigh draft’. He was an energetic and inventive man who loved shooting, and thought little of walking six hours with his gun slung over his shoulder. In the midst of all these other pursuits he remained a faithful member of the Hambledon Club, and was one of only three subscribers who attended its final meeting before it was wound up in late 1796. But even then his stamp on the club did not end: his son, the Reverend Richard Richards, served as vicar of Hambledon for forty-one years, and was a member of the reformed club in the early nineteenth century.