|
foot of page An extremely dangerous sport Hitting the ball twice | Staffe and batt | Jasper Vinall | Greater advantage The Thirty Years War | North America | Paradox |
An extremely dangerous sport
 St Giles' Church, Horsted Keynes.First built in medieval times, it stood when Jasper Vinall fatefully played cricket nearby. |
Hitting the ball twice
"Hit the ball twice", as it is written in scorecards, is very rare. It is also called a double-hit. You can actually use the bat to stop the ball going onto your stumps after you have played it, but that is a safe manoeuvre. The rule was first introduced for safety reasons to protect the fielders. We don't actually know when the rule was first introduced, and the same applies to obstructing the field. All we can say with certainty is that both are included in the earliest known version of the Laws of Cricket, which is dated 1744.
That was 120 years after a fielder died following a head injury he received during a match because the batter was trying to prevent him taking a catch.
Staffe and batt
Let's go back a few steps first to 1613 when a court case recorded that someone was assaulted with a "cricket staffe" at Wanborough, near Guildford. We must assume that was a deliberate assault rather than an accidental blow in the course of a game, but it is the first known instance of injury being caused by a "staffe" (or bat).
Then, in 1622, several parishioners of Boxgrove, near Chichester in west Sussex, were prosecuted for playing cricket in a churchyard on Sunday, 5 May. We have their names: Edward Hartley, Anthony Ward, Raphe West, Richard Martin senior, Richard Martin junior, Richard Slaughter, Thomas West and William Martin. There were three reasons for the prosecution: one was that it contravened a local bye-law; another reflected concern about church windows which may or may not have been broken; the third was the now legendary charge:
A little childe had like to have her braines beaten out with a cricket batt!!
As I said above, a bat is just as dangerous as a ball if you are hit by one.
Jasper Vinall
| date | match title | venue | ||
| details | Saturday, 28 August 1624 | Horsted Keynes v West Hoathly | Horsted Keynes | |
| result | Unknown | |||
| notes | The earliest definite mention of cricket in Sussex is dated 1611 but this is possibly the earliest known organised match in the county. Knowledge of it stems from the death thirteen days later of Jasper Vinall, on whom an inquest was held. | |||
| sources | Tim McCann, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv. | |||
It is assumed, perhaps erroneously, that the match in Horsted Keynes on Saturday, 28 August 1624 was between two village teams. There is a doubt because Jasper Vinall was fielding and the batter, Edward Tye, also came from West Hoathly. Given the distance of only four miles, it might not have been an organised match. Even so, we do know that cricket was being played in both of these Sussex villages, and at others besides. In the match, Jasper was struck on the head when Tye, having played the ball once, was trying to hit it again. Jasper died at home on Friday, 10 September as a result of the injury, and an inquest was held.
The coroner recorded that Jasper was a 34-year-old husbandman, meaning he was a free tenant farmer or a small landowner. Edward Tye, whose age is not recorded, was also a husbandman. The record says they were playing with several others "at a customary game called crickett (sic) at Horsted Green". Tye had hit the ball high into the air, and then, "for his greater advantage in the game", intended to hit it again as it was dropping to the ground. Jasper, who was somewhere behind Tye, ran forward to try and take a catch. Tye didn't see him and, as he struck at the ball with his bat, accidentally hit Jasper on the forehead. The bat was worth one old halfpenny, according to the coroner! Jasper was badly bruised, although his injury was obviously much more serious than that, but the potential effects of concussion were largely unknown at the time. He went home to West Hoathly where he "languished until 10 September and then died". The coroner's verdict was that "Vinall was killed not by any felony, but solely through his own rashness and negligence, and by misadventure".
Greater advantage
The phrase, "for his greater advantage in the game", is interesting because the record suggests Tye was not trying to avoid being caught. Rather, he wanted to hit the ball again to further his advantage, presumably so he could score more runs. Basically, then, it was a free-for-all scenario, and you can imagine a batter running around all over the place trying to hit the ball several times, if need be, "for his greater advantage". Thankfully, the rules were changed. Unfortunately, though, lessons were not learned quickly enough. In 1647, the tragedy was repeated when a player called Henry Brand died after being struck on the head during a match at Selsey in West Sussex.
Sometime in the century following Henry Brand's death, common sense prevailed, and hitting the ball twice was outlawed, becoming one of cricket's "rare" forms of dismissal. When the first known Laws of Cricket were coded in 1744, it was illegal to hit the ball twice, but it isn't known when the measure was imposed. The 1744 Laws say that "if the ball is hit up, (a batter) must neither strike at it, nor touch it with his hands". The batter was, however, allowed to stop the ball hitting his wicket after he had "nipped it up just before him". He could "pop down his bat before the ball comes to the wicket, to save it". Obstructing the field was also outlawed: "If he runs out of his ground to hinder a catch, it's out".
By the way, the Boxgrove case in 1622 is our earliest reference to the cricket bat. The use of a "batt" in cricket was peculiar to Kent and Sussex where coastal smugglers were known as "batmen", because of the cudgels they carried. The earliest reference to a "flat-faced" bat (i.e., with a flat surface at the bottom of the stick in ice hockey style) also occurs in 1622 in the files of the Sussex Records Society (see David Terry, note 23). The term "bat" remained comparatively rare until about 1720. The terms in more general use were "staffe", "stave" or "stick". These tended to have regional usage: for example, "stave" was used in the Gloucester area and "batt" in the south-east; while "staffe" and especially "stick" were more widely used. "Bat" is derived from the French battledore, shaped like a table tennis bat, which was used by washerwomen to beat their washing!
The Thirty Years War
 Defenestration of Prague, 1618.Habsburg imperial councillors are flung out of a high window in Prague Castle. |
During a protest against Habsburg Catholic rule, Bohemian (Czech) Protestants hurled imperial councillors out of a high window in Prague Castle (they survived). The incident was the flashpoint which began the Bohemian Revolt, first in a series of conflicts which would become known as the Thirty Years War. That, despite its name, consisted essentially of five separate wars, and a number of other issues which complicated matters, so that ultimate settlement was difficult to achieve.
The main wars were: Bohemian Revolt (1618–1620); Danish War (1625–1629); Swedish War (1630–1648); Franco-Habsburg Wars (1635–1648); and a major civil war in Germany (1619–1648). Germany suffered enormous loss of life to the extent that, as late as the 20th Century, a historian would say Germany's population had never recovered from the ravages of the Thirty Years War. Fortunately, England managed to stay out of it apart from providing some economic aid to its allies. Many English soldiers enlisted in foreign armies as mercenaries.
North America
Colonisation of North America was on the increase as people in the British Isles sought greater freedom. The Pilgrim Fathers arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and famously celebrated the first-ever Thanksgiving Day in October 1621. It is said they played stoolball but, as we saw in an earlier edition, that game and baseball are "not cricket"! Cricket did, however, soon find its way across the Atlantic.
While the colonists wanted freedom for themselves, they were not so obliging when it came to others. In 1619, the first negro slaves arrived in Virginia. A Dutch frigate landed twenty kidnapped African people at Jamestown where they were "sold" like livestock to the English colonists. In the same year, the first known meeting of an American parliament took place at Jamestown. No doubt they had a great deal to say about freedom and rights.
Paradox
Back to the cricket. The quarter-century or so between John Derrick and Jasper Vinall is the beginning of the sport's history. Anything before John Derrick is prehistory and, it must be said, speculation. By the time Jasper was killed, there were already several references to provide evidence of the growing (and, perhaps, well-established) popularity of the game in the counties of Kent, Surrey and Sussex. It is true that references continue to be few, and sometimes far between, until the 1720s at least, but the history is there. The sad paradox is that John Derrick was significant in establishing that history by doing his job, and Jasper Vinall by losing his life.
|
top of page A milestone on the way | The Monster Bat Controversy |
No comments:
Post a Comment