1729 English cricket season

1729 English cricket season

Cricket formats	major, including single wicket

The 1729 English cricket season is noted for the earliest known innings victory and the earliest known surviving cricket bat. A total of six major cricket matches have been recorded.

List of matches

date	match title	venue	result	source
24 June (Tu)	Kent v Sussex	Walworth Common	result unknown
notes	The match was for fifty pounds per side with a play or pay rule agreed. It is the earliest match featuring a team that is expressly called Sussex, though teams raised by patrons in earlier seasons are understood to have been composed of Sussex players.
30 July (Wed)	Dartford v London	Dartford (precise venue not specified)	result unknown
notes	The teams were described as "the Gentlemen of Dartford and London"; the stake was fifty pounds.
5 August (Tu)	Gentlemen of Middlesex v Gentlemen of London	The Woolpack, Islington	result unknown
notes	The venue was described as "in the Field behind the Woolpack Back Gate near Sadler’s Wells", the match having a stake of £50 per side. Several sources have listed the match in 1728 due to an error in original research.
5 August (Tu)	London v Dartford	Kennington Common	Dartford won "very much"
notes	Described thus: "a great Cricket Match at Kennington Common between the Londoners and the Dartford men, for a considerable Sum of Money, Wager and Betts, and the latter beat the former very much".
26 August (Tu)	Kent v Surrey	near Farnham	result unknown
notes	The Daily Journal on 26 August reported that a match would be played same day near Farnham between "Mr Steed (sic) of Kent and his Company, against the best Players in the County of Surrey".
28 August (Th)	Mr Edwin Stead’s XI v Sir William Gage’s XI	Penshurst Park	Sir William Gage’s XI won by an innings?
notes	Stead v Gage was also titled Kent (Stead) v Surrey, Sussex & Hampshire (Gage). It was 11 a side and played for 100 guineas with "some thousands" watching. This match seems to have resulted in the earliest known innings victory as Gage's XI "got (within three) in one hand, as the former did in two hands, so the Kentish men (i.e., Stead's XI) threw it up". The report added re Thomas Waymark that "a groom of the Duke of Richmond signalised himself by extraordinary agility and dexterity". The report then states that "(Waymark) turned the scale of victory, which for some years past has been generally on the Kentish side". This indicates that inter-county matches had been played for many years previously and that there was keen rivalry with each team seeking ascendancy: i.e., as "champions" or, given a 1728 reference to the superiority of Kent, at least of "bragging rights". Penshurst Park surrounds Penshurst Place, then the seat of John Sidney, 6th Earl of Leicester, near Tonbridge in Kent.
? Sept	Sussex, Surrey & Hampshire v Kent	Lewes	result unknown
notes	A report dated 13 September says that: "the great match played at Penshurst will be played again in Sussex". This is the first time that Hampshire is known to be used in a team name, though not individually.

County cricket

It appears that Gage's XI was representative of three counties and so should perhaps be considered a Rest of England team representing the rest of the major cricket-playing counties against Kent, who had hitherto enjoyed: "the scale of victory, which for some years past has been generally on the Kentish side" (see above). The match on 24 June involved a team specifically named Sussex, but the result is unknown. Despite losing to Gage's team in August, Kent under the patronage of Edwin Stead is generally believed to have been the strongest county team of the 1720s.

Other events

The oldest cricket bat still in existence dates from 1729. Note the shape, which is more like that of a modern-day hockey stick than a modern-day cricket bat. It is kept in the Sandham Room in the Member's Pavilion at the Oval

There is a bat in The Oval pavilion which belonged to John Chitty of Knaphill, Surrey. Dated 1729, it is the oldest known bat. It looks more like a field hockey stick than a modern cricket bat but its curvature was to enable the batsman to play a ball that was always rolled, as in bowls, never pitched. Pitching began about 30 years later and the straight bats used nowadays were invented in response to the pitched delivery.

Dr Samuel Johnson attended Oxford University from October 1728 until the following summer and later told James Boswell that cricket matches were played there. Boswell mentioned this in his Life of Samuel Johnson.

A local game in Gloucester on Monday, 22 September is the earliest known reference to cricket in Gloucestershire.