1733 English cricket season

The 1733 cricket season was the 136th in England since the earliest known definite reference to cricket in January 1597 (i.e., Old Style – 1598 New Style). The sport continued to rely mainly on its patrons but there are fewer reports of matches than in the three previous seasons.

Important matches

The following matches are classified as important:^{[fc 1]}

date	match title	venue	result	source
22 May (Tu)	Greenwich v London	Blackheath	London won by 15 runs	[1]
notes	London scored 112 in the first innings after going in first. No other totals were mentioned.
28 May (M)	London v Greenwich	Artillery Ground	London won by 18 runs	[1]
notes	This was a rematch first announced in the report of the previous game.
26 June (Tu)	Fulham v Chelsea	Parsons Green	result unknown	[1]
notes	Played for a prize of thirty guineas. Little is known about either of these teams, which have few mentions in the surviving records and may not have been part of the sport's mainstream. No details are known of the players involved and so the strengths of the two teams cannot now be determined but the stake was high and the match was reported in a newspaper, Berington's Evening Post.
5 July (Th)	London v Kent	Artillery Ground	Kent won by 60 runs	[2][3][4]
notes	Advertised as for one guinea each man with wickets to be pitched at one o’clock and the spectators to keep outside the line round the ground. "If any persons get on the Walls (sic), they will be prosecuted as the Law directs; and the Company are desired to come through the Py'd Horse Yard, Chiswell Street".
c.11 July (W)	Surrey v Middlesex	Moulsey Hurst	Middlesex won by 3 runs	[5][4]
notes	The report says the teams "were very hard matched". The Prince of Wales gave each player a guinea after the game.
1 August (W)	Kent v Surrey & Middlesex	Moulsey Hurst	Surrey & Middlesex won	[6][4]
notes	The Kent v Surrey & Middlesex match was arranged immediately after the match on or about Wed 11 July by Frederick, Prince of Wales and Edwin Stead. The Prince of Wales awarded a silver cup to the winners of the Wednesday, 1 August match and this is the first known instance of a cup being played for. This is also mentioned in Kent Cricket Matches.
20 August (M)	Ealing & Acton v London	Ealing Common	result unknown	[1]
notes	The terms of the match were "for £50, play or pay". This is the only mention of Ealing & Acton and of Ealing Common in the surviving records. The strength of the Ealing & Acton team cannot now be determined but the stake was high and the match was reported in a newspaper, Berington's Evening Post.
31 August (F)	Prince of Wales XI v Lord Gage's XI	Moulsey Hurst	result unknown	[7]
notes	The announcement in the St James Evening Post (Sat 25 to Tues 28 August) states: "On Friday next a great Match at Cricket will be play’d on Molesey (sic) Hurst; by 11 of the best Players in the County on each Side, for a Wager of 100 Guineas between His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and the Right Honourable, the Lord Gage". Waghorn reported this in Dawn of Cricket as being on the following Friday, 7 September, and he confusingly recorded the county as Suffolk when it was in fact Sussex. Lord Gage is the former Sir William Gage. The Prince of Wales was by now completely taken with cricket and had become another great patron of the sport.
10 September (M)	Surrey v Kent	Kennington Common	result unknown	[8][9][4]
notes	The same game seems to be dated 20 September in Dawn of Cricket which may be a Gregorian equivalent, although it is possible by reference to a game reported by Buckley in 1736 that Dawn of Cricket has got the year wrong, let alone the day and month. The game reported in Kent Cricket Matches is correctly dated Monday, 10 September (Julian Calendar). Kent Cricket Matches and Dawn of Cricket both report word for word a condition about roping the enclosure.
12 September (W)	London v Kent	Artillery Ground	Kent won by 3 wickets	[1][4]
notes	This seems to be the earliest known result wherein the win was by a certain number of wickets, unless the Richmond v Chambers game in 1731 was actually conceded by Richmond. London scored 65 & 35; Kent scored 71 "and the second hands of the Kentish men won the wager and had three men to spare".
c.19 September (W)	Croydon v London	Duppas Hill, Croydon	drawn	[10]
notes	Team scores are known: Croydon 95 & 76; London 89 & 41-5. Time expired and it was drawn. Croydon had three given men and it was reported that the betting reached record levels, but that statement could not have been verifiable even at the time. It is interesting that the Croydon team was called "the country men". The report says a rematch would take place at the Artillery Ground "on Wednesday next".
26 September (W)	London v Croydon	Artillery Ground	drawn due to rain	[11]
notes	This was the rematch of the previous game. London had a lead of 8 runs when play was abandoned but we do not what stage the game had reached. Reported in the Whitehall Evening Post dated Saturday 29 September.

Other events

Tuesday, 22 May. The earliest known match in Hampshire took place at Stubbington, near Portsmouth, when a team of bachelors were beaten "most shamefully" by a team of married men. The report for this and the following match was found in the American Weekly Mercury, a Philadelphia newspaper, dated 20 to 27 September 1733.^[12]

Tuesday, 29 May. The return match of the above took place at Titchfield and the married men won again.^[12]

First mentions

Counties

• none

Clubs and teams

• Ealing & Acton^[1]

Players

• none

Venues

• Ealing Common^[1]

Footnotes

1. First-class cricket was officially defined in May 1894 by a meeting at Lord's of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the county clubs which were then competing in the County Championship. The ruling was effective from the beginning of the 1895 season. Pre-1895 matches of the same standard have no official definition of status because the ruling is not retrospective and the important matches designation, as applied to a given match, is based on the views of one or more substantial historical sources. For further information, see First-class cricket, Forms of cricket and History of cricket.

References

1. Buckley, p. 8.
2. Waghorn, Dawn of Cricket, p. 11.
3. Buckley, p. 238.
4. ACS, Important Matches, p. 20.
5. Waghorn, Cricket Scores, pp. 4–5.
6. Waghorn, Cricket Scores, pp. 5–6.
7. McCann, p. 14.
8. Maun, p. 61.
9. F. S. Ashley-Cooper, Kent Cricket Matches 1719-1880, Gibbs & Sons, 1929
10. Waghorn, Cricket Scores, p. 6.
11. Buckley, p. 9.
12. Maun, p. 59.

Bibliography

• ACS (1981). A Guide to Important Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles 1709 – 1863. Nottingham: ACS.
• Buckley, G. B. (1935). Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket. Cotterell.
• McCann, Tim (2004). Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century. Sussex Record Society.
• Waghorn, H. T. (1899). Cricket Scores, Notes, etc. (1730–1773). Blackwood.
• Waghorn, H. T. (1906). The Dawn of Cricket. Electric Press.
• Wilson, Martin (2005). An Index to Waghorn. Bodyline.

Additional reading

• Altham, H. S. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914). George Allen & Unwin.
• Birley, Derek (1999). A Social History of English Cricket. Aurum.
• Bowen, Rowland (1970). Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
• Buckley, G. B. (1937). Fresh Light on pre-Victorian Cricket. Cotterell.
• Major, John (2007). More Than A Game. HarperCollins.
• Marshall, John (1961). The Duke who was Cricket. Muller.
• Maun, Ian (2009). From Commons to Lord's, Volume One: 1700 to 1750. Roger Heavens. ISBN 978-1-900592-52-9.
• Underdown, David (2000). Start of Play. Allen Lane.

External links

• Leach, John (2008). "Classification of cricket matches from 1697 to 1825". Stumpsite. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011.
• Leach, John (2007). "From Lads to Lord's – 1733". Stumpsite. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011.