Charles Sears was an English cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er who played for Surrey

Surrey county cricket teams

Surrey county cricket teams have been traced back to the 17th century but the county's involvement in cricket goes back much further than that. The first definite mention of cricket anywhere in the world is dated c.1550 in Guildford.-17th century:...

 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

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....

 versus 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...

 at 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:...

. He then played for Hampton as a given man in their match against Chertsey at the same venue on Monday, 28 September.

As Sears had established his reputation by 1761, he must have been active for some years previously but it was a period when very few players were mentioned by name in contemporary reports.

External links

• From Lads to Lord's; The History of Cricket: 1300 – 1787

Further reading

• F S Ashley-Cooper, At the Sign of the Wicket: Cricket 1742-1751, Cricket Magazine, 1900
• G B Buckley, Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket, Cotterell, 1935
• Timothy J McCann
  Timothy J McCann
  Timothy J. McCann has been an archivist at the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester since 1967. He has written several books about the history of Sussex including a classic work on cricket: Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century...
  
  , Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century, Sussex Record Society, 2004
• H T Waghorn
  H T Waghorn
  Henry Thomas Waghorn , was a cricket statistician and historian. He is best known for his two classic researches into cricket's early history: The Dawn of Cricket and Cricket Scores: 1730 - 1773....
  
  , Cricket Scores, Notes, etc. (1730-1773), Blackwood, 1899
• H T Waghorn
  H T Waghorn
  Henry Thomas Waghorn , was a cricket statistician and historian. He is best known for his two classic researches into cricket's early history: The Dawn of Cricket and Cricket Scores: 1730 - 1773....
  
  , The Dawn of Cricket, Electric Press, 1906