Читать книгу More Than A Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years - John Major, John Major - Страница 13

In Terence Rattigan’s screenplay for the film The Final Test (1953), an ageing cricketer, Sam Palmer, is dismissed for nought in his last innings. Unimpressed by his father’s fame, Palmer’s son Reggie, an aspiring poet, hero-worships Alexander Whitehead, a literary icon. But unbeknown to Reggie, his idol is a long-time admirer of Palmer. When Whitehead learns the identity of Reggie’s father, he accepts an invitation to dinner to meet him. Both Palmer and Whitehead are tongue-tied by the eminence of the other, until the conversation turns to cricket. The poet tells the cricketer – to his astonishment – that he envies him his profession. ‘I,’ says Whitehead, ‘am a creative artist. I will be judged on my work because I leave a record. You – on the other hand – will see your legend grow. You are like Paganini, Nijinsky and Garrick: one day you’ll sit on Mount Olympus between Don Bradman and W.G. Grace.’

In this, Rattigan touches on a central truth. Reputations grow in the memory. This is especially true of cricket. Lovers of the game tend to view its past romantically, however crusty they may otherwise be. Just as the fictional Sam Palmer would ‘see his legend grow’, so have the reputations of the early cricketers and their sponsors. Nonetheless, we can say with absolute certainty that the years of the later patrons, Mann, Tankerville and Dorset, were formative ones for cricket. By 1750 the game had taken root; forty years on, technique and style had evolved, famous grounds had been laid out, detailed scores were kept, the rules had been codified and a governing body was in place. Further changes lay ahead, but in its essentials modern cricket had been born, and clubs were spreading far beyond its narrow birthplace of the Weald. Two of them were to have a lasting impact.

Hambledon, about fifteen miles north of Portsmouth, is an ancient Hampshire village whose cricket expertise ensured that its history is now more legend than fact. Many believe that the game was first played at the village’s Broadhalfpenny Down, despite the reality that its genesis is at least two hundred years earlier. Yet Hambledon has become myth, and – as ever – myth has become reality. The myth sprang, unintended, from the pen of one man. John Nyren was born at Hambledon in 1764, the son of Richard Nyren, captain of the Hambledon team, guardian of their cricket ground and, until about 1771, proprietor of the Bat and Ball inn on Broadhalfpenny Down. From the age of twelve young John watched the Hambledon team, at the time when they were in their heyday and he was at his most impressionable. His love and admiration for Hambledon cricket was never to leave him, and over fifty years later, in 1833, he published The Young Cricketer’s Tutor,* which in its final chapters included his recollections of the great days of Hambledon.

The book is a charming portrait of his heroes, infused with romanticism as Nyren recalls, no doubt with advantages, the deeds they did. It is a boyhood memory of men and their successes, in which virtues are recalled, fun is revisited and any failings, squabbles and miseries left unrecorded. It is a cricketing fairy story, a fusion of King Arthur and Robin Hood, and its simple recitation of good men and great events is a delight. The Young Cricketer’s Tutor is the source reference for mid-to-late-eighteenth-century cricket, for no other comparable record exists. It carried the Hambledon team – or, more accurately, teams, for their glory days exceeded thirty years – into legend. The ‘great’ games were big social events. A pavilion, ‘the Lodge’, was erected for members, and the boundary was circled with tents for the teams and for catering: with flags flying, it was a colourful sight. Hambledon cricket was not just a game, it was big business. The team was professional and well-paid, the bets were large, and the logistics of feeding and watering twenty thousand spectators were formidable.

No doubt the team’s fame is merited, even if Nyren does gild the lily. It was a remarkable collection of individuals. Every season they met for practice on the first Tuesday of May and each Tuesday thereafter. As their fame grew, even their practice days attracted crowds of spectators.

In the mid-1770s the two premier bowlers were Tom Brett and the left-handed Richard Nyren. Brett, a farmer, dark-haired and strong, was the fastest bowler of his day, and famed for his accuracy. Nyren, a Slindon man and nephew of the great cricketer Richard Newland, was the undisputed leader of the team in all matters: batsman, bowler and, despite his stout build, ‘uncommonly active’ in the field. Off the field he was a hard-headed businessman, mine host of the Bat and Ball, who advertised matches to attract crowds to the game and thereafter to his inn, where he sold ‘punch to make hair curl’ at twopence a pint. John Nyren remembers his father as ‘the head and right arm’ of Hambledon cricket, adding that he ‘never saw a finer specimen of the thoroughbred old English yeoman’. In those few affectionate words the character of Richard Nyren stands out: did any father ever receive a finer tribute from his son?

The second-string bowlers were William Barber, who took over the Bat and Ball from Richard Nyren in 1771, and the unfortunately named William Hogsflesh – ‘staunch fellows’, Nyren tells us, ‘and thorough going’, which conjures up an image of honest yeoman cricketers with no intellectual pretensions. Nyren characterises a later bowler, Lambert (or possibly Lamborn; he is sometimes confused with William Lambert, an early-nineteenth-century Surrey player), known as ‘the Little Farmer’, as something of a bumpkin, without intelligence but with talent. Lambert was in fact a shepherd, and had the natural gift of bowling underarm off-breaks. He practised these aiming at sheep hurdles, but it was only when he was told where to pitch them by Richard Nyren that he tumbled out Kent and Surrey batsmen ‘as if [they were] picked off by the rifle corps’.

The finest of the early batsmen was John Small Senior, a pioneer of forward play, renowned as the best judge of a short run – a skill perhaps learned from his specialist fielding positions at the equivalents of the modern-day cover point or midwicket. Small was the Hambledon version of the ‘senior pro’, whom Richard Nyren consulted on tactics and cricket law; he also entertained the team with his fiddle and double bass, and made bats and balls in the off-season. It was Small who developed a new straighter bat with a marked shoulder at the head of the blade. This was a great improvement, but it was still unsprung – such refinements lay far ahead.

Behind the stumps, the wicketkeeper – with no protective pads or gloves – was Tom Sueter, handsome and easy-natured by temperament, who must have stood up to Brett’s fast bowling for he ‘stumped out’ many a batsman. He was also an accomplished left-handed batsman. Sueter was popular, ‘a pet of all the neighbourhood’. A chorister in Hambledon church with a sweet tenor voice, he often sang solo or led team songs in the dressing room, and afterwards as they drank their ale at the Bat and Ball. His partner in harmony was George Lear, counter-tenor, middle-order batsman and, his chief role in the team, longstop to Sueter’s wicketkeeping.

New players arrived to strengthen the team over the years. Noah Mann, short and swarthy as a gypsy, would ride twenty miles each way on horseback to practice every Tuesday: a fleet-footed, agile man, he batted and bowled left-handed and was an excellent fielder. Poor Noah came to a sad end: after a convivial evening he fell onto the smouldering ashes of a fire, and died of his injuries. He was only thirty-three. Years later, his son would umpire one of the most fateful games in cricket history (see page 132).

Even among the working men of the team, the two Walker brothers, Tom and Harry, stood out as ‘unadulterated clod hoppers’. But they were difficult to dismiss and utterly without nerves – valuable attributes in a cricketer. Harry was a dashing batsman, quite unlike his brother. ‘Old ever-lasting’ Tom, who once faced 170 balls for one run, was hardly an advocate of brighter cricket. He did, however, make the first century on the first Lord’s pitch (which was subsequently partially covered by Dorset Square): 107 for MCC against Middlesex – followed by four other hundreds on the same ground. Nyren’s description of Tom Walker is memorable:

a hard, ungainly scrag-of-mutton frame; wilted, apple-John face; long spider legs, as thick at the ankles as at the hips; the driest and most rigid limbed chap; his skin was like the rind of an old oak, and as sapless. He moved like the rude machinery of a steam engine in the infancy of construction and, when he ran, every member seemed ready to fly to the four winds.

A second set of brothers, George and William Beldham, brought forth the greatest batsman cricket had yet known. ‘Silver Billy’ Beldham had been taught by a gingerbread baker, Harry Hall, and he had learned well. Hall, from Farnham – the very cradle of cricket – may have been the first batsman to realise the full potential of playing forward. Hall was not a great player, but he batted side-on, with his left elbow up and a straight bat, which meant he could play down the line of the ball and hit to the off side of the field in a manner that had previously been impossible. Beldham was a keen pupil, and in the game in which Tom Walker scored the first hundred at Lord’s, he scored 144. ‘Silver Billy’, an instinctive ball player, was a star from the moment of his arrival at Farnham in 1780 at the tender age of fourteen. He was engaged by Hambledon in 1785, aged nineteen, and played his first ‘great’ game two years later. Beldham was a batsman of elegance and style, a savage hitter with a particularly fine cut; a fine fielder in the slips and a competent medium-pace bowler, he lived for ninety-six years, played cricket for forty of them, and his memories, faithfully recorded by Pycroft in a famous conversation in The Cricket Field (1851), cast light in his old age upon the times in which he played.

Many other talented cricketers were part of these Hambledon teams: James Aylward (see page 70), the rustic who in 1777 scored 167 over three days, at the time the highest score in cricket; John Wells, a baker and a brilliant fieldsman, built like a cob horse and known as ‘Honest’ John; the Freemantle brothers, John and Andrew; Tom Scott; John Small Junior; Richard Francis; Tom Taylor; William Fennex; Richard Purchase; and finally – but by no means least – the man who changed cricket forever: David Harris.

The name of David Harris does not convey the magic of a Sydney Barnes, a Harold Larwood or a Shane Warne, but his role in changing the face of cricket was greater than any of theirs. As Tom Brett left Hambledon, Harris arrived, to become the pioneer in that most fundamental of cricket skills, bowling on a length – and nothing was ever the same again.

Early bowling was underarm and along the ground, as in the ancient game of bowls: the ball, therefore, did not rear up, and the stumps did not need to be of any height. But in a 1744 codification of the laws the stumps were both heightened and narrowed. They became twenty-two inches in height and only six inches in width, and were adorned with both a proper bail and a popping crease. The target for the bowler was suddenly very different, and the concept of ‘length’ bowling became possible: a ball could pitch and rise and still hit the stumps, rather than passing safely over them.

From this much followed, and Harris practised summer and winter to perfect his new style. He was accurate and difficult to score off, and his best deliveries rose to trap unprotected fingers against the bat handle. Such ‘length’ bowling was a tricky prospect for the batsman: for a start it was no longer possible to play with the old- fashioned curved bat resembling a hockey stick. In or around the 1750s, therefore, the modern bat, or a near replica, was born, with a flat and square-faced front. Even so, the batsman’s plight remained dire if he stood within his crease and attempted to swat every ball to leg in the traditional manner.

Before the advent of the new bat, forward defensive strokes were unknown, as they were all but impossible with the ‘hockey-stick’ shape. But against bowling pitched on a length it became essential, as did an array of strokes familiar today but unknown in the mid- eighteenth century. David Harris not only changed bowling, but batting too, as batsmen adapted to face the new threat to their wicket.

On one occasion Harris was presented with a gold-laced hat for an outstanding bowling performance. So far as we know he did not take three wickets in three balls on that occasion, but this incident may be the origin of the action, adopted in the 1850s, of presenting a hat to a bowler who accomplishes that feat. Or it may not, for in his wonderful series of novels purporting to be the adult memoirs of the cad Harry Flashman, immortalised in Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), George Macdonald Fraser gives a different explanation. In Flashman’s Lady (1977), Flashman, by trickery of course, dismisses the great cricketers Felix, Pilch and Mynn in three balls, and is presented with a hat by Mynn. It is pure fiction of course, but for all we know something similar may have occurred. One day, hopefully, a researcher may uncover a hidden piece of cricket history to reveal the truth.

John Nyren’s recollections of Hambledon give us a vivid picture of early cricket that is unavailable elsewhere … and yet one longs for more. His narrative is rich in character studies of the players, but silent upon their lives and views. What did this mixture of honest yeomen and simple rustics think of the society in which they lived? How did they react when they left Broadhalfpenny Down to play matches in the sprawl of London? Did they know anything of the political turmoil of the wars against France, of the American Revolution and the fall of Lord North’s government? What opinions did they have of twenty-four-year-old William Pitt the Younger becoming Prime Minister? Did they know Captain James Cook had discovered Australia? Nyren is silent on all these issues.

There may also be errors in his account of the changing game itself. Under Articles of Agreement signed for a game in 1727 (see Appendix 1, page 399), runs were scored when the batsmen crossed and touched the umpire’s stick. In The Young Cricketer’s Tutor Nyren refers to a ‘block hole’ between the stumps which the batsman had to touch to register a run – this was before the introduction of the popping crease. Thus, in this version of run-scoring, bat and fingers might collide – painfully for the fingers – when an attempt was made to ‘run out’ the batsman before, like a badger, he was safe and ‘in his ground’. Unlike the ‘umpire’s stick’, the ‘block hole’ theory of how runs were registered has no other contemporary confirmation: it may be right, but it is based only on Nyren’s 1833 manuscript. It seems an unlikely tale to invent, so possibly both methods were in use for a time, perhaps by different clubs; but the ‘umpire’s stick’ has the better historical pedigree.

Nyren may have misled us also about the size of the stumps. In the early eighteenth century, pictorial evidence suggests that wickets were about six inches wide, although the height varies: a 1739 engraving by Gravelot, a Frenchman, seems to show a height of around twelve inches, whilst in a 1743 painting by Hayman they appear to be the twenty-two inches approved in the 1744 codification of the laws. Yet, writing in the 1830s, Nyren refers to a manuscript he had seen which claimed that ‘about 150 years since’ – i.e. about 1680 – wickets were twelve inches high and twenty-four inches wide. No one has ever found this manuscript or any corroborating evidence.

Events caused two further innovations that were to last. In May 1775, five of Kent were playing five of England at the Artillery Ground, London. John Small Senior, in his prime as a batsman, was facing Lumpy Stevens, without doubt the pre-eminent bowler of the day. Fourteen runs were needed for victory – and were got. But before they were, Lumpy beat Small’s defence three times, only to see the ball pass between the two stumps without disturbing either of them or the single bail. Morally, Small was out, he had been beaten, but as the wicket was undisturbed, he batted on. This was so patently unjust that from then on a third, central stump was added to prevent the ball passing straight between the wicket. By 1776 the press were reporting that ‘it had been decided to have 3 stumps to shorten the game’. They were half-right: three stumps, yes – but to end an anomaly, not to shorten the game.

Another lacuna in the rules was exposed by a piece of sharp practice some time in the early 1770s. Thomas White of Reigate (not, as sometimes claimed, Shock White of Brentford), a regular England player, strode to the wicket carrying a bat as wide as the stumps – and, very possibly, a smile that was even wider at this attempted mischief. Nothing like this had been seen before, or would be seen again for two hundred years, until in 1979 Dennis Lillee tried, unsuccessfully, to use an aluminium bat during a Test match against England in Perth. The concept of such a wide bat was so at odds with the spirit of the game that it was soon outlawed, and as John Nyren, noted: ‘An iron frame, of the statute width, was constructed for, and kept by, the Hambledon Club, through which any bat of suspected dimensions was passed, and allowed or rejected accordingly.’

In this fashion the laws continued to evolve, and though they were not yet universally applied, they soon would be. The intriguing question is, who determined and enforced the laws? It is probable, in pre-MCC days, that clubs such as Hambledon set the rules, and they simply became common usage.

The belief that Hambledon was the fount of cricket is by no means the only misconception about the club: the many myths of Hambledon would require Sherlock Holmes to unravel them all. They have, over the years, bamboozled even eminent and serious cricket historians such as Harry Altham, Derek Birley, David Underdown and R.S. Rait Kerr. In setting out what I believe to be misconceptions, made in the light of information available at the time, I mean no disrespect to those who related them as fact.

The history of Hambledon Cricket Club is shadowy from its inception, the date of which is itself a matter of controversy. Birley and Altham assert that the club was playing by 1756, but this is very questionable. It is true that the first known reference to Hambledon and cricket appears in that year – but not to a Hambledon Club. On 28 August 1756 the Public Advertiser reported a five-aside match, for £20 a side, between five gentlemen of the parish of Hambledon and five named others at the Artillery Ground, London. It added that on the following Monday an eleven-aside game would be played between the Dartford Club and eleven gentlemen of the parish of Hambledon, this being the deciding match between the teams for £50 a side. However, one cannot assume that this is the Hambledon Club. Dartford is referred to as a club, but Hambledon is twice described explicitly as a parish. It cannot be asserted confidently from this that Hambledon had yet formed a club, although a number of historians have done so. The minutes of the Hambledon Club, held at the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester, almost complete from 1772 to 1786, when the club was at its peak, contain no mention of the law-making responsibilities which some writers have attributed to it at this time, and nor has any yet turned up in contemporary newspapers.

The confusion appears to arise from a document, in the hands of the MCC and dated 1771, which purports to limit the width of cricket bats to 4¼ inches, a law which was to come into force in 1774. This paper bears the signature of three people who were believed to be Hambledon cricketers – yet in fact none of them was a member of the Hambledon Club. It may be one of the many cricketing fakes produced to supply a market avid for ‘historic’ documents. But even if the document is genuine, it does not establish the Hambledon Club as lawmakers. We do know – after the Thomas White incident – that three Hambledon cricketers signed a club rule over bat sizes, but that does not signify that they were rule-makers for all cricket controversies. In any event, when the 1774 rule revision took place Hambledon officials were present, and no doubt they urged the inclusion of a rule on the maximum size of bats.

At the beginning of the Hambledon Minute Book is a curiosity that teases over two hundred years later. ‘By order of the Club, May 1st, 1781’, a number of standing toasts are presented, presumably for formal dinners. After proper acknowledgement to royalty, there are toasts to the ‘Hambledon Club’, ‘Cricket’ and ‘The President’. All these were standard fare, but in the midst of the cricketing toasts is the oddity – a toast to ‘The Immortal Memory of Madge’. Who or what is ‘Madge’? Is it an acronym? If so, for what? Was ‘Madge’ an early financial supporter? If so, I can find nothing to identify him. Was ‘Madge’ a woman, perhaps an abbreviation for Margaret? Or was it an in-joke among the club members that can no longer be deciphered? The possibilities are infinite, but the answer is hidden: we may never know.

Other club records are more revealing. There is a famous scene in the 1939 film Goodbye, Mr Chips, starring Robert Donat, in which the old schoolmaster Chips recalls punishing a boy for changing his marks in a Latin test from a 0 to a 9. A similar exaggeration is evident in estimates of the membership of the Hambledon Club. It has been claimed that ‘assiduous researchers’ have discovered that at its peak the club had 157 members; however, the researchers were neither assiduous nor accurate. All they did was to add up every subscriber over the twenty-five years between 1772 and 1796, and assume that sum total was the peak membership.* This is patently absurd: some would have withdrawn from membership, some would have died, and in any case many of the names are duplicated. The earliest surviving annual subscription list, for 1791, contains only fifty-two current members, and nothing in the club’s minutes suggest that the figure ever much exceeded that.

There is also uncertainty about the identity of the club’s founders. Altham speculated that the Reverend Charles Powlett was, if not the founder, at least the principal architect in developing the club. His assessment is that Powlett, assisted by Philip Dehany (sometimes inaccurately spelt ‘Dehaney’), was prominent, together with others who had been pupils of Westminster School in the 1740s. Later writers have concurred, yet this can only be conjecture – we do not know, and it is equally likely that the founders could have been Thomas Land (1714–91), a minor patron of cricket, or John Richards (c.1737– 1819), a Hambledon resident and the first treasurer of the club.

Land lived at Park House, a mile to the east of Hambledon village, beside the lane leading to Broadhalfpenny Down, and served as a local justice of the peace. He is possibly first mentioned in connection with Hambledon in the St James’s Chronicle in September 1764, which refers to a game between the Gentlemen of Chertsey and Gentlemen of Hambledon called ‘Squire Lamb’s Club’. For ‘Lamb’ one could read ‘Land’, and by this date Hambledon is being referred to as a club. For the record, Hambledon won, although Chertsey were successful in a rematch. I can find no record of the outcome of a third and decisive game.

Land is mentioned in the version of the club song written by the Reverend Reynell Cotton, master of Hyde Abbey School, Winchester,* probably in 1772, and authorised in 1781:

Then why should we fear either Sackville or Mann,

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.