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

More runs and notches than his neighbours.

Tankerville’s time at the heart of cricket was far shorter than Horace Mann’s, but his role in promoting the game, especially during Mann’s frequent absences abroad, earns him an honoured place among those who embedded cricket as part of the English way of life. In 1805, when he was in his early sixties, he was described by Thomas Creevey as a ‘haughty, honourable man … communicative and entertaining with a passion for clever men, of which he considers himself to be one, though certainly unjustly’. Lady Tankerville, the former Emma Colebrooke, fares rather better: she was credited with being very clever, and with having ‘as much merit as any woman in England’, but ‘like her Lord, was depress’d and unhappy’. If true, it is a sad postscript.

The third Duke of Dorset, John Frederick Sackville (1745–99), was the finest cricketer of the later patrons. He was an instinctive ball-player, with a good eye and a fine temperament. His talent was evident at Westminster School, where he was regarded as ‘the best [player] of his time at cricket and billiards’. He also played tennis and fives to a high standard. As a man, he was well-made, five feet nine inches in height with a habit when at ease, according to John Nyren, of standing with his head tilted to one side. Despite his social position he was an empty-headed playboy, ‘not in possession of any brains’, according to contemporary opinion. But he was a kindly man. Like many aristocrats, he had assets aplenty but not much ‘ready money’. Nonetheless, he spent lavishly, sometimes on the poor, but more often on his own amusements.

Although not handsome, Dorset had pleasant features, an agreeable manner and a natural dignity. But Nathaniel Wraxall, in his Posthumous Memoirs (1836), concurs with his critics that he did not possess ‘superior abilities’ – except at cricket, where eye and wrist coordination made him the finest gentleman all-rounder of his time. Twice in 1773 he bowled out six batsmen in a single innings, and one year later hit 77 runs for Hampshire at the Vine, Sevenoaks. These were prodigious feats for the time, and John Burnby, the cricket- loving poet, was on hand to record them in ‘The Kentish Cricketers’:

His Grace the Duke of Dorset came,

The next enroll’d in skilful fame,

Equal’d by few, he plays with glee,

Nor peevish seeks for victory.

His Grace for bowling cannot yield,

To none but Lumpey in the field:

And far unlike the modern way,

Of blocking every ball at play,

He firmly stands with bat upright,

And strikes with his athletic might,

Sends far the ball, across the mead,

And scores six notches for the deed.

Burnby’s description suggests that Dorset, then twenty-eight, was an attacking batsman who stood upright at the crease with his bat raised from the blockhole, much as Victor Trumper and Graham Gooch were to do many years later. And if it is a true judgement that he yielded at bowling to ‘none but Lumpey’, he was certainly a pre-eminent all-rounder.

In 1768, as Lord John Sackville, he organised a game between the old boys of Westminster and Eton – for whom the diarist William Hickey was longstop. It was not one of Hickey’s finest hours. He failed to attend the pre-match practices, despite being informed of them, and awoke on the morning of the match with a nasty hangover in ‘a cheap lodging house near Drury Lane’. The contest was for a wager of twenty guineas a player, with the amount to be given by the losers to the poor of the parishes of Moulsey and Hampton – a generous gesture. Any player failing to turn up was to forfeit the same sum.

Hickey, feeling wretched but anxious to save his guineas, hurried home to change his clothes, collect his mare from the stables, and embark at a gallop to Moulsey Hurst. The wickets were due to be pitched at eleven o’clock, and Hickey had to ride twelve miles in forty-five minutes or forfeit his money. He made it with moments to spare, but noted that he had ‘a horrible headache and sickness’, the classic symptoms of over-indulgence. Having arrived barely in time to play, he did not distinguish himself, although after a hard match his team did win. It should have been less of a struggle. Hickey recalled:

the Westminsters insisted we should have won easier had I played as usual, but I was so ill at the time that I let several balls past me that ought not to have done so … When we adjourned – a magnificent dinner was prepared, no part of which could I relish, even Champagne failed to cheer me; I could not rally … The moment the bill was called for, and our proportions adjusted and paid, I mounted my mare, and in sober sadness gently rode to my father’s [house] at Twickenham.

One warms to Hickey for his unsparing account of his own shortcomings.

After succeeding to the dukedom at the age of twenty-four Dorset embarked on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe, and for two years played no cricket at all. He was accompanied by his mistress, Nancy Parsons, a strikingly attractive woman who either enjoyed cricket or thought it prudent to pretend to do so; in any event, upon her return from the tour she attended matches with the Duke, to the delight of the cricketers. Apart from her physical attractions, Nancy had something of a reputation – she was formerly the mistress of the Duke of Grafton – and the players were keen to gawp at her. John Nyren relates a tale which illustrates the easy relationship that the players enjoyed with the leading patrons.* (#ulink_2436b838-1af3-51bb-86f8-ce724c7c20c4) Apparently his father Richard was eager to meet the lovely Nancy, and the Earl of Tankerville, who was present at a Hambledon game, cheerfully engaged her in conversation so that Nyren could join him. It was a kindness that Richard Nyren never forgot.

From early in his cricketing career the Duke of Dorset was a focus of interest to spectators. In a game in which Kent beat a combined Sussex and Hampshire team at Guildford in August 1772, great sums were wagered upon whether the Duke or an opponent, the cricketing vicar at Westbourne, the Reverend Edward Ellis, would score most runs: it was the Duke, who scored 21 in a single innings, while the Reverend Ellis made 16 in two innings.

As well as being a fine cricketer himself, Dorset employed top-class players to strengthen his teams. One, John Minchen, alias Minshull (1741–93),

was a capital hitter, and a sure guard of his wicket … however, not an elegant player; his position and general style were both awkward and uncouth; yet he was as conceited as a wagtail, and with his constantly aping what he had no pretensions to, was, on that account only, not estimated at the price at which he rated his own merits.

That at least was the view of Nyren, who was not an admirer of Minshull’s behaviour, even though he grudgingly conceded his cricketing ability. And well he might, for Minshull scored the first recorded century in cricket, 107 for Dorset’s XI against Wrotham on 31 August 1769. Six weeks later Dorset engaged him, nominally as a gardener, to work at Knole for eight shillings a week. Minshull remained at Knole for only three years, but during that time he cemented his reputation, as the Kentish Gazette reported on 8 August 1772:

On Wednesday last a game of cricket was played [at the Vine, Sevenoaks] between eleven gentlemen of Sevenoaks and eleven of Wrotham and Ightham, which was determined in favour of the former by 56 notches. In this match a remarkable bet of thirty shillings to a guinea was laid, that the united parishes got more notches than the noted Minshull … but the famous batsman got 58, and the united parishes but 56.

Minshull was a fine acquisition, but not the only one to catch the Duke’s eye. A more engaging personality was the labourer William Bowra,* (#ulink_2b302516-4d36-51d9-a58e-0b191df8dcca) engaged as a gamekeeper at Dorset’s manor at Seal and Kemsing in 1778 for five, later seven, shillings a week. This modest sum secured a fine talent whom the Duke would cheer on while he was batting – ‘Bravo, my little Bowra!’ was a familiar cry from the boundary at the Vine. After the Duke’s death Bowra remained a favourite of the Duchess, and she brought him to Knole, where for the rest of his life he worked as a gamekeeper.

In the 1770s the rules and tactics of cricket were continuing to take shape. Dorset, Tankerville and Mann were at Sevenoaks in July 1773 when Richard Simmons, reputed to be the finest fieldsman of his day, stood sufficiently close to the Hampshire batsmen to intimidate them. A fortnight later the Duke was playing at Laleham Burway when his opponents attempted to do the same to him. The Duke complained, but to no effect until one of his attacking strokes felled a close fieldsman. Such aggressive fielding was set to become an everyday part of cricket.

Another important change in the game emerges in the diary of Richard Hayes of Cobham, who watched Dorset play at Sevenoaks Vine for All-England against Hampshire on 25 and 26 June 1776. Hayes records the Duke bowling the opening over – ‘Four balls. Not a run got’ – though Hampshire went on to score the respectable total of 241. All-England scored a mere 105 and lost heavily, with the Duke bowled for a paltry 6 runs. Hayes’s diary contains two little gems of information. He wrote: ‘They talk of having 3 stumps,’ and noted also that ‘by playing with broad bats … it is a hard matter to hit the wicket’. Both these anomalies were soon to be corrected, and the later patrons would play a part in doing so.

The concept of three stumps has an air of modernity about it, but cricket still had its savage days. When Kent played Essex at Tilbury Fort in 1776, a row arose over the eligibility of one of the Kent team. Essex declined to play, and a fight ensued. One of the Kent men shot and killed an Essex player, and in the chaos that followed an old invalid was bayoneted and a soldier shot dead. Essex then fled, and the Kent team made off in boats. In a violent age, even such incidents did not diminish the enthusiasm for the game.

By 1777 Dorset had long since parted from the delectable Nancy Parsons, who married Viscount Maynard. Dorset’s new mistress was a fellow aristocrat, the Countess of Derby, which created a great scandal. This did not bother either of them. The Countess decided to arrange a ladies’ cricket match, and Dorset is said to have been the author of a letter published in a society magazine, although if so, his purpose in writing it seems ambiguous:

Ladies, while you are eagerly pursuing the round of court pleasures and cutting out new figures for fashion, permit me to add to your entertainments a novelty of no less singularity than those which of late so amply diverted your little society. Divert yourselves, then, for a moment of much importance, cast aside your needles and attend to my essay.* (#ulink_b56fe4e2-22db-558c-8536-2403bbdbd4f7)

After this patronising opening paragraph – ‘cutting out new figures for fashion … your little society … cast aside your needles’ – which would have earned him social crucifixion in the twenty-first century, the Duke – if indeed he really was the author – raises his game and entices women to become involved in cricket:

Though the gentlemen have long assumed to themselves the sole perspective of being cricket players, yet the ladies have lately given a specimen that they know how to handle a ball and the bat with the best of us, and can knock down a wicket as well as Lord Tankerville himself. The enclosed drawing, which I thought proper to make for your information is a true representation of a cricket match played lately in private between the Countess of Derby and some other Ladies of quality and fashion, at the Oaks in Surrey, the rural and enchanting retreat of her Ladyship.

Having baited the hook, the author of the letter comes to the point, but cannot resist putting his tongue in his cheek:

What is human life but a game of cricket? And, if so, why should not the ladies play at it as well as we? Beauty is the bat, and men are the ball, which are buffeted about just as the ladies’ skill directs them. An expert female will long hold the ball in play: and carefully keep it from the wicket; for, when the wicket is once knocked down, the game of matrimony begins and that of love ends …

If Dorset, who had a lengthy string of mistresses, was indeed the author, as claimed by the magazine, it is unlikely that the double entendres were an accident. We shall never know whether the letter was a genuine attempt to encourage women to take up cricket, or a vehicle to poke fun at those scandalised by the Duke’s relationship with the Countess.

When France intervened to support the American colonists in the War of Independence, Dorset became a Colonel in the West Kent militia, and his participation in cricket began to fall away. After the war ended, in 1783, he was appointed Ambassador to the Court of Versailles, and he never again played top-class cricket. But his enthusiasm did not wane. While in France he played casual games for pleasure, despite a pompous rebuke from The Times, which frowned upon ‘his associations with the inferior orders in pursuit of his favourite amusement, cricket’. The Times was in a grouchy mood: apart from castigating Dorset, it noted that horse-racing in Paris was on the wane and cricket was replacing it, but that the French ‘could not equal the English in such vigorous exertions of the body’. The French were soon to show on the battlefield that their exertions were formidable. It was an early example of what, 150 years later, Churchill would say was ‘The Times’ ability to be wrong on every major issue’.

Throughout his five years as Ambassador, Dorset spent a part of every summer in England, where he was able to enjoy some cricket. He carried his enthusiasms back to Paris, and supposedly presented Queen Marie Antoinette with a cricket bat that she ‘kept in her closet’.* (#ulink_4962dd52-d64b-521f-9486-1b03e5d8463d) He finally returned home to England in 1789, amidst the first stirrings of the French Revolution but before the violent disruption became widespread. The real terror lay ahead. Myths arose about Dorset’s homecoming. Serious historians** (#ulink_0701b3c7-58f2-5a7d-9b08-e9934a48ae63) have alleged that his ambassadorial role ‘ended in farce’, when he invited Tankerville to bring a cricket team to play in Paris to placate anti-British feeling. At Dover, it is said, they ‘encountered Dorset scurrying ignominiously the other way’. An earlier version suggests that he wrote not to Tankerville, but to William Yalden, then landlord of the Cricketer inn at Chertsey, an old Surrey cricketer, and that it was his eleven at Dover.† (#ulink_0216d761-7de1-5ff7-94c0-94342a000731) In fact the whole story is nonsense. Dorset did not ‘scurry ignominiously’ from Paris. He had written to the Foreign Secretary, the Duke of Leeds, in July 1789, seeking permission to return. As he had warned other British residents in Paris to leave, it seems unlikely that he would at the same time have invited a cricket team to France. It makes a good story, but it is fiction. Dorset left France on 8 August 1789, four weeks after the outbreak of the Revolution. He reached Dover on 10 August, continued to Bourne Place, dined with Horace Mann and, to celebrate his homecoming, spent the following day watching Kent play Surrey.

After his return Dorset married an heiress less than half his age – he was forty-six – and soon afterwards ceased to support cricket. The news of the bloody events in France, including the execution of Marie Antoinette, preyed on a mind already predisposed to melancholy. Sadly, the wayward Sackville gene that had robbed his forebears of their sanity was active once more. During the 1790s Dorset became progressively more morose and penny-pinching, in sharp and unhappy contrast to the gay enjoyment of his free and easy youth. He died a virtual recluse in 1799. His cricketing glories were long behind him, but not forgotten: he left the Vine ‘for the use of cricketers’.

On their village greens the players may have noted these great events, but their attention would have been diverted by the more peaceful revolution that had taken place in their smaller world of cricket. The immortal Hambledon Club had been formed, enjoyed its greatest days, and set a shining example for all cricket to follow. To ensure that it did so, the game now acknowledged a governing body that would wield its authority for the next two centuries: the Marylebone Cricket Club had been formed.

* (#ulink_10854373-4fb7-55df-b71d-cd7f9ced59b1) Not ‘Joseph’, as is sometimes stated; nor, as is also claimed, was he employed by Dorset or Tankerville.

* (#ulink_bbef3843-4566-51b8-9207-a0aa88227105) Presumably the dogs, not the people.

* (#ulink_d3ae9097-bd6d-539c-9520-35e96d8364fd) Quoted in Lord Harris and F.S. Ashley-Cooper, Kent Cricket Matches (1929).

* (#ulink_12cf45f6-fdbb-5f3d-a4a3-caa863ae3bf4) G.B. Buckley, Fresh Light on Eighteenth Century Cricket (1935).

* (#ulink_a0bdf34f-2a4b-5151-b210-8e0d3a89bf27) Poet’s error: he means the batsman John Small.

** (#ulink_22818a37-987f-5705-84c4-9d6e9381b958) Poet’s error: he means Hogsflesh, a bowler from Hampshire.

* (#ulink_6f73f1a0-108e-568a-af14-2dd4f94d3957) It was published in the Town, 21 October 1832, but censored from Nyren’s book TheYoung Cricketer’s Tutor (1833).

* (#ulink_1090cd9f-90d2-5fac-a17f-7348eefa4e03) Pronounced ‘Borrer’. He is sometimes confused with a locksmith of the same name.