1761 English cricket season
Encyclopedia
The famous Chertsey Cricket Club
Chertsey Cricket Club
Chertsey Cricket Club in Surrey is one of the oldest in England. Its own website dates its founding as 1737 but in fact matches involving a Chertsey team date from 1736....

 was active in the 1761 English cricket season but overall there was again a scarcity of games possibly because of the war situation.

Matches

Date Match Title Venue Result
27 June (S) Essex
Essex county cricket teams
Essex county cricket teams have been traced back to the 18th century but the county's involvement in cricket goes back much further than that. It is almost certain that cricket reached Essex by the 16th century and that it developed during the 17th century with inter-parish matches being...

 v Kent
Kent county cricket teams
Kent county cricket teams have been traced back to the 17th century but the county's involvement in cricket goes back much further than that. Kent, jointly with Sussex, is the birthplace of the sport...

Billericay
Billericay
Billericay is a town and civil parish in the Basildon borough of Essex, England. It lies within the London Basin, has a population of 40,000, and constitutes a commuter town east of central London. The town has three secondary schools and a variety of open spaces...

result unknown

This was announced in the Ipswich Journal of the previous Saturday, 20 June, as: 11 men of Kent v. the best 11 of Essex. The precise venue was The Crown in Billericay
Billericay
Billericay is a town and civil parish in the Basildon borough of Essex, England. It lies within the London Basin, has a population of 40,000, and constitutes a commuter town east of central London. The town has three secondary schools and a variety of open spaces...

.
1 July (W) Chertsey
Chertsey Cricket Club
Chertsey Cricket Club in Surrey is one of the oldest in England. Its own website dates its founding as 1737 but in fact matches involving a Chertsey team date from 1736....

 v Dartford
Dartford Cricket Club
Dartford Cricket Club is one of the oldest in England and its origins go back to the early 18th century, perhaps earlier.See also: Dartford Brent...

Laleham Burway
Laleham Burway
Laleham Burway is a tract of meadow land on the River Thames near Chertsey in Surrey. Part of it was a famous major cricket venue in the 18th century and the home of Chertsey Cricket Club.-Earliest known matches:...

result unknown

Played for 20 guineas a side. Chertsey had three given men: William Piper, Charles Sears
Charles Sears
Charles Sears was an English cricketer who played for Surrey during the 1750s and 1760s.-Career:Sears is mentioned twice in 1761 when he twice acted as a given man, a sign of a very good player. On Wednesday, 1 July, he played for Chertsey versus Dartford at Laleham Burway...

 and Thomas Woods
Thomas Woods (cricketer)
Thomas Woods was an English cricketer who played for Surrey in the 1750s and 1760s before first-class statistics began to be recorded....

. The latter is interesting given the confusion over players called Wood or Woods in the 1770s; there was a Surrey player at that time who was variously called John Wood or Thomas Wood. The Whitehall Evening Post
Whitehall Evening Post
The Whitehall Evening Post was a London newspaper, founded in 1718.It was started in September 1718 by Daniel Defoe; and was then published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Defoe left it in June 1720, but it continued to exist until the end of the century. It closed in 1801, with issue...

on Saturday 27 June said: Great sport is expected as they are accounted as good 22 men as any in England.
31 August (M) Richmond v Chertsey
Chertsey Cricket Club
Chertsey Cricket Club in Surrey is one of the oldest in England. Its own website dates its founding as 1737 but in fact matches involving a Chertsey team date from 1736....

Richmond Green
Richmond Green
Richmond Green is a recreation area located near the centre of Richmond, which is a town of about twenty thousand inhabitants situated in south west London. The green is essentially square in shape and its open grassland, framed with broadleaf trees, extends to roughly twelve acres...

result unknown

Played for £20 a side.
28 September (M) Chertsey
Chertsey Cricket Club
Chertsey Cricket Club in Surrey is one of the oldest in England. Its own website dates its founding as 1737 but in fact matches involving a Chertsey team date from 1736....

 v Hampton
Laleham Burway
Laleham Burway
Laleham Burway is a tract of meadow land on the River Thames near Chertsey in Surrey. Part of it was a famous major cricket venue in the 18th century and the home of Chertsey Cricket Club.-Earliest known matches:...

result unknown

Announced in the Whitehall Evening Post on Sat 26 September. Hampton had Charles Sears, John Haynes
John Haynes (cricketer)
John Haynes was an English cricketer who played for Surrey during the 1750s and 1760s.-Career:Haynes is first mentioned in 1759 when he took part in the three Dartford Cricket Club v All-England matches which are the only first-class matches found in the 1759 sources...

 and Shock White
Shock White
Shock White was a noted English cricketer of the mid-18th century who played for Middlesex. He has often been mistaken for Thomas "Daddy" White but there is no doubt at all that he was a different player altogether. His first name and the source of his nickname are unknown...

 as given men. The enigmatic Shock White, who was a Brentford man, is not to be confused with Thomas White
Thomas White (cricketer)
Thomas "Daddy" White was a noted English cricketer.White played in the 1760s and 1770s; details of his early career are largely unknown but he retired in 1779. He is known to have appeared frequently for Surrey and All-England since recorded scorecards first became commonplace in 1772...

 of Reigate.

Other events

Thurs 2 July. The Whitehall Evening Post reported the death of Mr George Smith
George Smith (cricketer)
George Smith was an English cricketer and also the "keeper" of the Artillery Ground, which was cricket's main venue in London during the mid-Georgian period....

 on Mon 29 June at The Castle in Marlborough. He was formerly the keeper of the Artillery Ground
Artillery Ground
The Artillery Ground in Finsbury is one of London's most centrally located cricket grounds, situated just off the City Road immediately north of the City of London...

 and the landlord of the adjoining Pyed Horse in Chiswell Street.

Tues 7 July. The Leeds Intelligencer (now the Yorkshire Post) announced a game to be played at Chapeltown the following Thursday (9 July) and this is the first game known of in the Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 area. Sheffield had been a known centre of Yorkshire cricket since 1751.

Sat 18 July. The General Evening Post reported that part of the walls of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground and the Artillery Ground
Artillery Ground
The Artillery Ground in Finsbury is one of London's most centrally located cricket grounds, situated just off the City Road immediately north of the City of London...

 will shortly be taken down to widen that part of the City Road. See also 28 August 1776.

Thurs 3 September. The General Evening Post announced an odds game in Essex with 22 of the county to play the Dartford XI. This is the first known instance of 22 playing against 11. Dartford were to have Tom Faulkner
Tom Faulkner
Tom Faulkner , known as "Long Tom", was a noted English cricketer of the mid-Georgian period.A Surrey man, he was a prominent single wicket player who frequently played in challenge matches at the Artillery Ground....

 and Durling
Durling (Surrey cricketer)
The Surrey and All-England cricketer called Durling was a noted player in the mid-18th century, although nothing is known of him outside mentions in match reports....

 as given men.

External links


Further reading

  • H S Altham
    Harry Altham
    Harry Surtees Altham, CBE, DSO, MC was an English cricketer who became an important figure in the game as an administrator, historian and coach. His Wisden obituary described him as "among the best known personalities in the world of cricket"...

    , A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914), George Allen & Unwin, 1962
  • Derek Birley
    Derek Birley
    Sir Derek Birley was an English educator and writer who had a strong interest in sport, especially cricket.He was educated at grammar school in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, and at Queens' College, Cambridge University....

    , A Social History of English Cricket, Aurum, 1999
  • Rowland Bowen
    Rowland Bowen
    Major Rowland Francis Bowen was a cricket researcher, historian and writer....

    , Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970
  • Ashley Mote
    Ashley Mote
    Ashley Mote was a non-inscrit Member of the European Parliament for South East England. An outspoken critic of fraud in the European Institutions, he himself was convicted of benefit fraud in 2007 for which he served a nine-month prison sentence and was described by the trial judge as "a truly...

    , The Glory Days of Cricket, Robson, 1997
  • David Underdown
    David Underdown
    David E. Underdown was a historian of 17th-century English politics and culture and Professor Emeritus at Yale University. Born at Wells, Somerset, Underdown was educated at the Blue School and Exeter College, Oxford...

    , Start of Play, Allen Lane, 2000
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