A History of Cricket at King Edward's School, BIrmingham

1 Chapter One ORIGINS AND EARLY YEARS Like so many of our other national institutions and ideas, the playing of organised sport in schools is essentially of nineteenth-century origin. Cricket is no exception to this. According to HS Altham’s A History of Cricket , the game was played at Eton, Westminster and Winchester in the eighteenth century, and indeed one of the earliest references to cricket is John Derrick’s testimony that it was being played at the Free School at Guildford as long ago as the reign of Elizabeth I; but only in the early years of the nineteenth century was the game played on an organised basis at schools such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester. The first generally recognised Eton v Harrow match was played in 1805, and the three schools met each other in the Triangular Week at Lord’s each year until 1854. However, these three schools were in advance of the rest, and until the middle years of the nineteenth century they held a virtual monopoly of the places in the two University elevens. (The first University Match was played in 1827.) At King Edward’s, according to that distinguished School historian GW Craig, cricket was introduced by Francis Jeune, first of a long line of great headmasters, in 1834. Before then, according to TW Hutton’s School History, sport at New Street seems to have consisted mainly of fighting and ball games in the playground. Even after 1834, cricket and other sports had a rather tenuous existence until the 1870s, and this is generally true of organised sport in all schools. Why was this so? Why was it that cricket, although fashionable in London after the Restoration, should, along with other sports, be predominantly a pastime until the nineteenth century, when sport became part of the national consciousness, and the desire for organised competition sprang up? The key decade seems to be the 1870s, which saw the creation of the FA Cup in 1872, the first Test Match in 1877, and the birth of the Football League in 1878. It used to be thought that the County Championship was established in 1873, though it is now accepted that it did not formally begin until 1890, and that the league tables that appeared before then were informal compilations by the newspapers; however, it remains true that the formal county qualification rules first applied as from 1873. According to Dr David Newsome’s book Godliness and Good Learning , the answer to the question lies in the replacement of one predominant ideal by another – in the transition from Godliness and Good Learning to Godliness and Manliness. Until the end of the 1850s, the typical idea of recreation was a walk in the country. Cricket, and other sport, was something only meaningful to a small minority. Then, all of a sudden, things changed. Sport became an integral part of any public-school education, and a factor present in the minds of all Englishmen. So far as cricket was concerned, this was due in no small measure to the activities of one man, WG Grace, who became perhaps the most well-known national figure after Gladstone. But all this development in sport was only part of a wider movement that had repercussions at all levels of national activity.