Bats and other equipment

Bats

General

Archaic bats

Stonyhurst bats

One obscure aspect of cricket history, sometimes ignored in the of the the narratives of the history of the game is the version of the game once played at Stoneyhurst College, a Catholic boarding school in Lancashire. In 1593 the Jesuit, Fr Robert Persons, set up a school in St Omers in France for the education of English Catholics who were unable to receive such an education in Elizabethan England. The College of St Omers operated until 1762 when, forced to leave what was by that time part of France, it moved first to Bruges, then, Liege (1773) and finally to the supportive and out of the way Stonyhurst estate in Lancashire (1794).

The school boys and their teachers who returned to England brought with them their own games including that of cricket.  But it was a form of the game preserved by geographical and cultural distance from the evolution of the game in England.  It was a form of the game probably dating back as far as the College’s foundation in 1593, if not beyond. This was believed to be similar to cricket played in the villages at the time of Cromwell’s  Commonwealth.  So it was preserved in a kind of time-warp and carried on being played until the second half of the nineteenth century.

So – I am suggesting, maybe before the hockey style stick, there was a round ended bat used perhaps in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. I doubt if anyone will prove me wrong as there is really no way of knowing.

The hockey-stick style bat

One thing about early cricket that most enthusiasts know is that the first bats were shaped like a hockey stick. This indeed is apparent from at least one of the illustrations of Eighteenth Century cricket.

I have given some thought to the question, rarely asked, of how these bats could be effective. Of the three surviving examples, only the Breaston one has a toe end anything like at right angles to the main stick and easily wins the best-in-show award. The Sandham room one has a toe at 45 degrees and the Boredam Hall one is nearly straight. If a ball was genuinely rolled along the ground, as is commonly believed, the first two would be of little more use than a straight stick. So – I would offer the following as possible explanations.

• I suggest the ball was rolled only very early on in the game’s history. This would have been hard as grass was not cut mechanically, any pace would have been lost by the time it reached the striker. At this point, maybe up to around 1735, a hockey style bat would have been at least partially effective.
• After that, I suggest it was skimmed so as to bounce two or three times, so that batsmen would typically strike it while it was slightly off the ground. To support this, look at the image of Cricket at the Artillery Ground where you can see the artist is at trouble to show ball casting a shadow a little way away – why do this if not to show it off the ground.
• To add to this point, the catching mode of dismissal was, as far as we know, an original feature of the game. How would this work if the ball was always on the ground? In particular, the first attempt at a code of rules that we have specifies that catches behind the wicket count – all but impossible for a genuinely rolled ball.
• I tentatively suggest that the hockey-style bat was adopted early as these were used in other games and pastimes, as suggested by several of the very early images. Or even – as we see above – a fulling club.
• The basic batting technique would involve backing off the on side and seeking to make contact with the ball, with the bat at an angle of something between 45° and 60°. This would have had the effect of bringing the head of the bat something more like parallel to the ground and give the striker a better chance. It would also mean that the ball would generally go on the off side, something supported by the predominately off-side fields seen in most cricket paintings – mostly 7-2.
• Another suggestion I am prepared to make is that sometime around 1740, dissatisfaction grew with the hockey-stick style bat as it was not effective against the skimmed delivery. So the curved bat was designed, a stronger implement, which would offer more power, better balance and, I speculate, less likely to break. It would also give the batsmen the chance to play with a somewhat straighter bat. That is not to say that the curved bat took over immediately, mass advertising was not available. Rather it would have been phased in, and soon became a fashionable product; several family portraits of youths showing off such items indicate that it was a prestigious piece of kit.

So let us consider it in more detail.

The curved bat

The three curved bats below are held by the MCC museum. All believed to be circa 1750. They are certainly asymmetrical and some curve more than others, but beyond issue, none can be described as shaped like a hockey stick. Yet writers (e.g. see Cardus and Major below) still stay with the simple story that the hockey-style bat was the one that preceded the modern shape, even when confronted with numerous bats of the style shown below. As outlined above view is that these were designed to be used for facing a skimming ball, and for off side play with an angled bat, deployed by a batsman rooted on the leg side of the stumps. The optimal striking are would have been near the toe of the bat, but not the toe itself.

Modern design

It is sometimes said that the man responsible from introducing the modern square shouldered bat in the 1760s was the great player, John Small of Hambledon. It is more accurate to say that he was the first batsman to master the use of the straight bat and that he subsequently manufactured them in his workshop.

The transition though from the shoulderless bat to the shape we recognise today was undoubtedly the result of the development of the length ball, associated chiefly with David Harris, in the 1770s. The great Cricket writer, Neville Cardus wrote in 1945 : “As soon as the Hambledon men bowled a length and used the air and caused the ball to rise sharply from the ground, a hockey stick sort of defence was of no avail, so the shouldered narrow blade was evolved”¹. John Major echoes this – “length bowling was a tricky prospect for the batsmen: for a start it was no longer possible to play with the old-fashioned curved bat resembling a hockey-stick”². Of course, Cardus and Major, like many writers, ignore the obvious fact that before the introduction of the length ball the curved bat had replaced the hockey-stick style, but there is still something in what they say. The length delivery meant that it was the upper reaches of the bat that was important, not the toe, so a different style of bat was essential.

While the shape became recognisably modern the manufacture of the bats was not. As Hugh Barty-King says in his fine book about the history of cricket equipment, Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers “the solid wood, one piece ‘plain match’ implement was the only kind of bat well into the nineteenth century”³. So, spliced bats, cane handles and springing were unknown in the period covered by this website.

Here is a selection of bats owned by MCC.

It was around this time that details of the first bat manufacturers began to appear. John Small is mentioned above, so is William Pett of Sevenoaks. Charles Budd of Brighton is another name I have come across. Before that, it may be presumed, players were responsible for either making their own bats or commissioning a local woodworker to do it for them. A variation could be that teams had earlier developed a skilled bat-maker who could be persuaded to make bats for players of local clubs.

Another issue is materials. I can find no great evidence on this and personally, lack the skill to judge which wood is used in the bats I have seen. My guess is that a variety of woods were tried; maybe the bats that have survived to the present day are made of willow as that is known to be durable against the cricket ball.

As far as I can judge, the few bats I have handled seem of similar weight to the heavier of today’s bats – perhaps three pounds. Fredrick Gale records that one bat in his collection is five pounds, an astonishing weight, and, I would have think, virtually unusable.

Balls

Balls have survived history much less well than bats, so it is harder to say very much about them. The MCC Museum for instance, has no balls from the Eighteenth Century, neither do they know of where any are to be found. Further more, As Barty-King says an air of mystery and sophistication enveloped the skill of making cricket balls, based, to some extent, of the lack of ready information as to how it was done. Unlike cricket bats, which anyone with woodworking skills could attempt, balls were the preserve of specialists, perhaps local cobblers were enlisted in the early days. By the end of the Eighteenth Century, there were three – Duke, Small and Martin.

We do have an account of how Duke went about this, quoted by Barty-King: “The Great secret is to wind the thread around an octagonal piece of cork, which forms the kernal of the ball… When the ball is perfectly formed with cork and thread, he delivers to men in a room adjoining and they put on the leather cover which is made on ball hide.” It sounds like the modern ball – I remember in my youth that a real cricket ball, rarer than now, was described as a ‘corky’. Barty-King also says that records indicate they have been doing it this way since they started in 1761.⁴

As for the colour red – the first mention I have found of this is is 1843, in Dickens’ novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. He describes some ledgers as having ‘red backs, like strong cricket balls, beaten flat’. Another point is that Stonyhurst do have a leather ball to go with their amazing bats, but information is scare on this aspect of cricket history.

Protective equipment

By and large, protective equipment was not a feature of the game in the period covered by this site, reinforced gloves and protectors were not in use. There is however some small question about leg guards. Certainly there is no evidence in cricket paintings of the use of pads. Some sources connect the introduction of the LBW law in 1774 as evidence that batsmen were deflecting the ball away with that rudimentary bating pads and say that simple leather shin-pads, strapped under their breeches, were in use by batsmen. I am not sure though that this was the case; a few batsman may have been kicking the ball away with their boots, and in any event, no LBW is recorded as being awarded until 1795. One player who did apparently wear leg-guards towards the end of the Eighteenth Century was Robert Robinson who wrapped thin boards around his shins for a time; he was, however, ridiculed and so decided to stop.

More significant though is Fredrick Gale’s conversation with old Surrey cricketer John Bowyer in 1871, whose recollections were of the early nineteenth century – in this conversation Bowyer said ‘It was no joke to play without pads and gloves on a bumpy down against quick bowling’. Similarly, in 1886, Rev. James Pycroft writes in Oxford Memories: a Retrospect After Fifty Years, Vol. 2: “When Lord Frederick Beauclerk [1773 – 1850] first saw leggings he never imagined they should be allowed in a match — ‘so unfair to the bowler.’” While that seems clear enough to me, it is still just possible that some players used unobtrusive protection, but I doubt if this was widespread.

Clothing

The evolution of cricket dress is a complex matter, it was only in the second half of the nineteenth century that all white clothing was absolutely settled on as the universal dress. That lasted about 100 years before the Packer revolution in Australia introduced new ideas.

In reality, Eighteenth Century players would just wear their everyday garb. That would be a voluminous shirt that would act as an undergarment, often finely decorated for the upper classes; breeches, which were trousers that came to just below the knee, colourful stockings up to the knee; elaborate waistcoat (also known as a vest) and a decorative long jacket. For the purposes of exercise, often in the summer, players would dispense with jacket and waistcoat and, as shirt and breeches were very often white, would present an all-white appearance. Headwear fashionable in the period was generally the cocked hat – a hat with opposing brims turned up and caught together in order to give two points (bicorn) or three points (tricorn). Around 1785, top hats became fashionable.

Meanwhile An Exact Representation of the Game of Cricket shows white shirts with breeches in a variety of colours. Many other pictures show that white commonly features in cricketers dress though subject to many variations. An obvious example towards the end of the century is Cricket Match At Lord’s Ground In Dorset Square (1790) where clothing is virtually all white (or off-white). Similarly, Cricket at Mousely Hurst is all white. Off the field, the great clubs would have jackets made to reflect club colours, Hambledon players for instance, wore light blue coats and MCC had the same colours.

Another important source of information is the 1744 poem, by James Love, Cricket, An Heroic Poem. In book II he writes

⁠The Stumps are pitch'd. Each Heroe now is seen,
Springs o'er the Fence, and bounds along the Green
In decent White, most gracefully array'd,
Each strong-built Limb in all its Pride display'd.

For the concluding years of the Eighteenth century, our best guide is probably is the recollections of John Bowyer (mentioned above). He seems to indicate that players were now dressing specifically for cricket rather than just turning up. He records that players dress was generally nankeen [pale yellowish cotton], silk stockings (which were often provided by patrons who supported the game), with a pair of socks pulled on over them and rolled over the ankle, laced boots, with sparrowbills [small rough nails], white shirts and hats. So it would seem there was still a bias towards near-white clothing, even if this was not enforced in any way.

This reinforces the idea that white clothing was always to be seen on the cricket field, at least for shirts and trousers, but not for jackets as shown by this 1824 picture, which shows a much more variable range of clothing – note that trousers have now replaced breeches. Also the short jackets the players are wearing was a fashion innovation, as are the top hats which can be seen.

It wasn’t until the second half of the Nineteenth Century that white was defined as the standard colour for cricket clothing. I think this probably had its origins in the tendency of Eighteenth Century cricketers to play in white, almost by accident.

Further reading

• Bat, Ball, Wicket and all – GD Martineau (1950) – a good book on the evolution of cricket equipment, though, like most other, he fails to adequately distinguish between the hockey-stick style bat and the curved bat, calling them all, simply ‘curved bats’.
• Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers – Hugh Barty-John (1979)

Footnotes

1. Neville Cardus, English Cricket, 1945 ↩︎
2. Major, page 93 ↩︎
3. Barty-King page 92 ↩︎
4. Barty-King page 53 ↩︎