Marylebone Cricket Club

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The Dorset Square Ground today

The club emerged from the White Conduit Club, itself a sub-group of the patrons of the Star and Garter in Pall Mall. Many of the gentlemen who played at White Conduit Fields where dissatisfied with that ground, largely because of its lack of privacy. Two of them, the Earl of Winchilsea and the Duke of Richmond, guaranteed Thomas Lord, a young entrepreneur who also was a practice bowler, against all losses if he would go out and find a new ground for them.  He came up with what is now Dorset Square, in Marylebone, part of the Portman family estate, took a lease on it personally and made it ready for cricket. The first match we know of that took place there on 31 May 1787. It was A kind of Country Match – ‘Middlesex with two of Berkshire and one of Kent v. Essex with two given men’.

Quite when the MCC was formed cannot be truly pinned down as, when the first pavilion was destroyed by fire in 28 July 1825, it took all the club’s early records with it. The minute book set up after the fire opens with the statement that the club was founded in 1787 so that has become the accepted date. The first match however was not until 27 June 1788, confusingly against the White Conduit Club – something that suggests that the Star and Garter members may have been split about whether to back Lord’s ground or stay with what they had. Or perhaps these were just names taken for what was, in effect, an intra-club game. In any case, the argument, if such it was, was soon settled and the White Conduit Club ceased to function, its last match was in 1788, also against MCC at Lord’s Old Ground.

But the match of June 1788 was not the first act of the club. They announced a new code of Laws of Cricket on 30 May 1788. It is astonishing that a club so new it had never played a match could assume unto itself the authority to tell everyone else how they should play the game, but that is how it was – they were drawing on the existing authority that the Star and Garter and its associates has developed and proclaiming themselves its successors. Sometimes those who assume authority are generally accepted as possessing it and this was the case here. To this day, the MCC retain the sole authority to determine the Laws of Cricket and MCC members are the electorate that votes on it. It is true that the ICC makes recommendations and MCC would never dare to do other than accept them, but still, the ritual remains.

A 1,000 guinea contest at the Dorset Square Lord’s Ground between the Earl of Danley’s team and the Earl of Winchilsea’s. Published in The Sporting Magasine 1 July 1793.

Lord’s quickly established itself as the leading cricket centre in the country, the presumed location of all Great matches. Many of the old Hambledon team spent the summers in London playing for MCC, now genuine full-time professionals. Beldham was one, Tom Walker another. Great players from other counties joined them, generally putting up at the Green Man in Oxford Street, an Inn known to be frequented by bookmakers. It became known as the cricketers’ pub.

The original MCC colour was sky blue and was only replaced in Victorian times by the now famous red and yellow.

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