East and West Kent cricket teams
East Kent and West Kent were titles sometimes given to two
The first Kent Cricket Club was founded in
Teams called East Kent and West Kent played each other twice in 1856 in minor matches. Those two matches are the last known to involve an East Kent team. West Kent became the name of a 19th-century club which played minor cricket only and was for a long time based at Chislehurst Cricket Club, with which it ultimately amalgamated in 1980 as the Chislehurst and West Kent Cricket Club.[6]
Matches
The earliest known record of a "West Kent" or "West of Kent" team is in a match against Chatham Cricket Club on 7 August 1705, played at a place called "Maulden" in the primary source. There is no such place although it is generally believed to refer to Town Malling near Maidstone.[7][8][9][10][2] The result and details of the teams are unknown.[11] The next mention is a match on 22 September 1769, played at Sevenoaks Vine between West Kent and a Surrey team. The original report merely states that the wickets will be "pitched soon after 10".[12]
The earliest known match involving an "East Kent" team is one played against West Kent at Sevenoaks Vine on 20 and 21 June 1781. The question of nomenclature arises here because, with at least three
Part of the confusion around match titles comes from the ways in which
On 25 and 26 June 1783, a match at Sevenoaks Vine involved "West Kent with Harris, Stevens and Bedster versus East Kent". East Kent won this by 2 wickets. A curious condition of the match was that Lumpy Stevens, generally reckoned the outstanding bowler of the time, "was not to bowl, by agreement". This would have severely handicapped his team, which lost the match, as he was not a good batsman and so, as Haygarth says, "not much use as a given man". Stephen Amherst, who was a Maidstone man and the patron of later West Kent teams, played in this match for the East.[16]
Amherst had become a match organiser by the start of the 1789 season and led his team to a five-wicket victory against that of Mann at Coxheath on 22 and 23 May. A contemporary report in the Maidstone Journal describes the game as "Sir H. Mann with a select eleven of the County against S. Amherst, Esq. and the County at large, for 100
The final match between Amherst's West and Mann's East took place at Bishopsbourne from 7 to 11 September 1790. Haygarth called it "East Kent with Purchase versus West Kent". West Kent won by 130 runs.[20] Sir Horatio Mann became MP for Sandwich in 1790 and reduced his involvement in cricket. The match in September 1790 is the last East Kent v. West Kent match that can be considered a major fixture.
References
- ^ a b Marsham G (1907) A short history of Kent cricket, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, 1907. Retrieved 2018-03-06.
- ^ a b c Kent County Cricket Club Timeline, Kent County Cricket Club. Retrieved 2017-11-23.
- ^ The history of Kent Cricket: Part 1 – Prehistory, Kent Cricket Heritage Trust. Retrieved 2017-12-01.
- ^ The history of Kent cricket Part Two - Lord Harris takes charge, Kent Cricket Heritage Trust. Retrieved 2018-02-15.
- CricInfo. Retrieved 2016-02-14.
- ^ "CWKCC History". Chislehurst and West Kent Cricket Club. Archived from the original on 10 March 2010. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Town Malling Cricket Club [TownMallingCC] The Old County Ground in @west_malling #westmalling 191yrs of cricketing history in The Garden Of England @VisitKent @westmallingCEP @west_mallingpc #KentDay, (Tweet), via Twitter, 2018-05-26. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
- ^ 300 Years of Cricket at Town Malling, Town Malling Cricket Club. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
- ^ Read C (2017) 10 reasons you should visit West Malling, Kent Life, 2017-04-24. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- ISBN 978-1-900-59252-9.
- ^ Waghorn, p. 4.
- ^ Buckley, p. 52.
- ^ Haygarth, pp. 47–48.
- ^ a b Haygarth, pp. 49–50.
- ^ ACS, p. 25.
- ^ Haygarth, pp. 56–57.
- ^ Buckley, p. 135.
- ^ a b ACS, p. 27.
- ^ Haygarth, p. 96.
- ^ Haygarth, pp. 108–109.
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.
- Haygarth, Arthur (1862). Scores & Biographies, Volume 1 (1744–1826). Lillywhite.
- Waghorn, H. T. (1906). The Dawn of Cricket. Electric Press.