Surrey County Cricket Club

“ Surplus plants and cuttings are generally distributed without charge to educational or charitable institutions, and to the poor. Provision is made for cricket, football and other games in a number of the parks. Large gatherings of spectators are attracted to the first-class cricket matches played at Lord’s ground, St John’s Wood, by the Marylebone Club and the Middlesex County teams, Eton College against Harrow School, and Oxford against Cambridge University; to the Kennington Oval for the matches of the Surrey club, and the Leyton ground for those of the Essex club. ”

“ In the 1845 diary of the late Mr Briant, who occupied the "Horns," at Kenmngton, for over fifty years, is an entry which cannot fail to be of interest to Surrey cricketers. At least, it is an evidence of the initial ceremony which secured for them the possession of a county ground with proper appliances. "March 1845.—The nursery ground, the Oval, Kennington, taken for a cricket-ground by Mr Houghton, the President of the Montpelier Club, from the 'Bee-Hive,' Walworth; thirty-one years' lease, at £120; taxes about £20; turf laid by Mr South, greengrocer." ”

“ Hence if the wicket had a “brow,” and Lumpy pitched one of his “shooters” on it, Small’s downfall is not remarkable. However, though Hambledon was the best club and Hants the best county, England was too strong to be tackled single-handed. Surrey first met Kent in 1772, and beat the county of cherries and hops, having previously done the same for Hants, though in the latter case the nuisance of “given men” crops up on both sides ”

“ Old cricketers also drift into the same haven. Indeed, the public-house has contributed many of the best exponents of the national game. William Clarke, the father of modern [Pg 143] cricket, and first secretary of the famous All England Eleven, kept the Trent Bridge Inn at Nottingham; Noah Mann, a famous Sussex player, and one of the heroes of the Hambleden Club, came from an inn at North Chapel, near the Surrey border of the county. He is said to have once made ten runs with one hit. At Mitcham, nursery alike of vegetation and of Surrey cricket, every publican is a cricketer of repute. ”

“ The distribution of cricketing ability in England might be the subject of some interesting speculation. In the first forty years of the annual competition for the championship six counties alone gained the coveted distinction, and three of these, Surrey, Notts and Yorkshire, won it thirty-four times between them. Why, it may be asked, is it that one county excels in the game while another has no place whatever in the history of cricket? ”

“ He is notorious for the terrific celerity of his bowling. Human power, it is thought, cannot shoot a ball quicker than his right arm.
Caffyn is from Reigate, in the County of Surrey; he is an excellent bowler and fielder, and equaled by few as a batsman. Playing recently in one of the greatest matches ever played in England—a match between the rival counties of Surrey and Nottingham, at which there was an aggregate of runs unprecedented—I believe, in the annals of Cricket—Caffyn scored off his own bat in the first innings of the Surrey side, seventy-six ”

“ Cricket is now a very serious affair; the struggle for supremacy among counties has reached a pitch of gravity that seems remarkable, considering that many counties are made up of players gathered in from all parts of England. Why an Oval crowd should be so desperately keen to see Surrey win a county match when Nottingham, Yorkshire, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Middlesex, have at different times been drawn upon to make up the Surrey eleven seems incomprehensible, but it is a fact. Human nature, as Squeers said, is "a rum un'," and I can't explain it. ”

“ Nottinghamshire and Surrey had a very close race for first place in county honours, and finished about equal. Both now possessed very strong teams, the Surrey committee in particular straining every nerve to obtain promising recruits.
The Players won their match against the Gentlemen at Lord's by five wickets; whilst that at the Oval was drawn, very much in their favour. The opinion was gaining ground about this time that unless the Gentlemen cultivated bowling more, the Players would shortly have much the best of the contests. ”

“ Susan's mother was a widow, and she paid to get rid of her daughter a cow and twenty shillings from the churchwardens.
Not many Surrey towns or villages can boast a family cricket eleven. Horley can. Eleven Watneys of Horley have played frequent matches against local clubs, and against eleven Wigans of Mortlake. Mr. F.S. Ashley-Cooper has collected some other instances of family cricket teams in the county. Eleven Bacons, a father and ten sons, played eleven postmen at Thornton Heath in 1895, but were beaten by the postmen. In 1877 eleven Mitchells played eleven Heaths on Shalford Common. ”

“ Well, then, as the Surrey Club had resuscitated cricket at the Oval, he was anxious that the body should restore the equally healthful game of foot-ball also to that district [hear, hear] ; with that view he had drawn out some rules, which he would now submit for the approval of and adoption by that meeting. By the first of those rules it would be seen, he proposed that the members of the Food-ball Club should be confined to those gentlemen who belonged to one or other of the cricket clubs which met at the Oval [hear, hear] . ”

“ I have suggested that we owe the increase of cricket to the growth of county cricket, and the reasons are not far to seek. When once a county is included in the first class, or aspires to it, its first effort is to enlist all its available talent, and as the reward of the great cricketer is no mean one, whether that reward come in the shape of reputation and amusement to the amateur, or of good red gold to the professional, the aim and ambition of every promising player and of the club to which he belongs is to get at least a fair trial in the higher spheres of the game. ”

“ For a long time Notts and Kent have been regular antagonists, and it seems almost a pity that their matches should be dropped; but even the best friends amongst the counties sometimes drift apart for a year or so, as has been shown again this year in the coy conduct of Surrey, who again refuse to play with Somerset, the county which has done so much to encourage Surrey cricket, originally by consistently beating her, and then by paying her the compliment of adopting and developing her most promising young players. ”

“ That was the state of affairs at the end of 1864; and when it was announced that 60 young players had applied and been recommended to play in the Nottinghamshire Colts' Match on Easter Monday, 1865, and that other counties were full of promising talent also, the prospects of professional players looked very rosy. University and public school cricket were in full swing also, and the number of first-class amateur batsmen was rapidly increasing.
At the end of 1865 County Cricket showed that Nottinghamshire and Surrey were at the head of the poll. ”

“ They did much good work in popularizing the game, and an annual match between the two at Lord’s on Whit-Monday was once a great feature of the season; but the increase of county cricket led eventually to their disbandment.
At this period, and much later, the first-class matches of “M.C.C. and ground” (i.e. ground-staff, or professionals attached to the club) occupied a far greater amount of importance than is at present the case. In recent years over 150 minor matches of the utmost value in propagating the best interests of cricket are annually played by the leading club. ”

“ The surprise was on Carpenter's side, the laugh on ours.
"Well, well! there's no fool like an old fool," said he. "To think I should have played cricket all these years, and get out in that way!"
Surrey came out excellently in county contests that year, and headed the list: Kent dropped to the bottom.
Lancashire made good progress also, and was much indebted for its success to two bowlers W. Mclntyre and Watson. So well did those two perform, that Mr. A. Appleby, almost at his best, played a comparatively small part in bowling for his county. ”

“ The good men of Surrey, in 1800, monopolised nearly all the play of England. Lord Frederick Beauclerk and Hammond were the only All England players who were not Surrey men.
Kent had then some civil contests—petty wars of single clans—bat no county match; and their great friend R. Whitehead, Esq., depended on the M. C. C. for his finest games: The game had become a profession: a science to the gentlemen, and an art or handicraft to the players; and Farnham found in London the best market for its cricket, as for its hops. The best Kent play was displayed at Rochester, and yet more at Woolwich ”

“ Being first of the second-class counties in 1892 and 1893—bracketed with Derbyshire in the latter year—it was duly promoted to higher rank, and opened the 1894 season in sensational fashion by defeating, in rapid succession, Notts, Surrey, and Kent, no other county being successful that year in beating Surrey at the Oval. The county has always held its own well, even though, with the exception of the internationals, Lilley and W. G. Quaife, it has produced no very prominent men: it has won its way by steady and consistent cricket, rather than by brilliancy. ”

“ County cricket had a better chance in the absence of the Australian eleven, and it was very encouraging to notice the increase of spectators. Travelling elevens were rarely heard of now, and county matches were fulfilling the aim of their promoters. Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire were well ahead of the others, both being strongly represented in batting and bowling. Middlesex came next; and at last Surrey began to creep up again, owing to the magnificent batting of Mr. ”

“ Many of these same people go to the Oval on Saturday afternoon to see Surrey play Gloucestershire. And the large majority of them would be doing nothing if they did not do this. The remembrance of a bright half-hour when Tom Hayward and Walter Read were in together makes the cricket news doubly interesting all the summer. It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time to have an interest in something or other outside their particular groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. ”

“ At the present day there are county clubs which rely mainly for their existence on the voluntary subscriptions and donations of their supporters, men whose only reward is the opportunity of seeing good cricket brought home to their own doors, and the promotion, expansion, and improvement of the game. Gate-money is of course an important factor in a club’s receipts, but it is sheer nonsense, it is almost mendacity, to declare that the county cricket of to-day is played for gate-money and for nothing else. ”

“ To begin with, first-class cricket, including representative M.C.C., county, and university matches, is quite different from any other—partly because the results are universally regarded as more important, partly because certain obligations towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration. The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come to see. Again, school cricket is quite different from ordinary club cricket, and both of them from country-house cricket. ”

“ Next in importance to the Kent matches were those of Hampshire and of Surrey, with each of which counties indifferently the Hambledon men used to play. For it must not be supposed that the whole county of Surrey put forth a crop of stumps and wickets all at once: we have already said that malt and hops and cricket have ever gone together. Two parishes in Surrey, adjoining Hants, won the original laurels for their county; parishes in the immediate vicinity of the Farnham hop country. The Holt, near Farnham, and Moulsey Hurst, were the Surrey grounds. ”

“ There is one drawback, and that is, that if a real native professional of high merit and skill be found in these counties, instead of devoting the remainder of his life to his native county, he is tempted away by the magic gold of Surrey, Lancashire, or some other first-class county. He has got to earn his living, and it is not in human nature that he should refuse an opportunity of earning five pounds a match twice in the week, to say nothing of a prospective benefit at the end of his cricket career. ”

“ In 1899 he made 357 not out in an innings against Somersetshire, and in 1901 his aggregate of 3309 was the largest then compiled. The Oxonian K. J. Key was another famous batsman whose services as captain were also exceedingly valuable to the county. An almost inexhaustible supply of professionals of the very highest class has been at Surrey’s service. W. Lockwood (b. 1868) became almost as deadly a bowler as Lohmann, and Tom Richardson (b. 1870) was the terror of all Surrey’s opponents for several seasons after 1893. Richardson took in all no less than 1340 wickets at the cost of 20,000 runs. ”

“ The King's Oak, Tilford.
When were the great days of Surrey cricket? When Surrey could lend All England William Beldham, and still win—which they did twice—a Tilford man might answer. At all events, they were days in which cricketers lived to heroic ages. Abarrow, who lies at Hambledon over the Hampshire border, lived to be 88; James Aylward, "rather a bulky man for a cricketer," was buried close to Lord's ground, aged 86 ”

“ The English players, twelve in number, selected for the matches, were from a club known as the "All England," and from another club, called "the United All England;" one of the twelve acted as umpire. These men have the reputation of being among the finest proficients of the game in the world—they are from the great Cricketing counties of Surrey, Cambridge, Sussex and Nottingham. Their names are George Parr, John Jackson, Julius Caesar, Thomas Hayward, Alfred Diver, H. H. Stephenson, John Wisden, John Lillywhite, William Caffyn, Thomas Lockyer, James Grundy, and Robert Carpenter. ”