Chertsey Cricket Club Marks 250 Years of Middle Stump
Surrey club Chertsey traces cricket's third stump to a 1775 duel between bowler Lumpy Stevens and batsman John Small, ahead of a match anniversary.
Chertsey Cricket Club in Surrey has marked 250 years since the match that gave cricket its middle stump, drawing on club records and archives held at Lord's and the Chertsey museum to piece together how it happened.
The first game played with three stumps rather than two was recorded on 6 September 1776, a date that fell last Sunday for the anniversary. Chertsey and Coulsdon, now merged with Chipstead and Walcountians, were the two sides on the field that day. Martin Allen of Chertsey, who has taken on the role of unofficial club historian, has led the digging into what happened.
«The story began in late May 1775,».
Before the change, wickets consisted of two stumps joined by a single long bail, built more like a croquet hoop than the target bowlers aim at today. The middle stump arrived only towards the end of the 18th century, and Chertsey's account traces its origins to a bowler named Lumpy Stevens, rated the best in the country at the time, and a batsman called John Small, his equal by reputation with the bat.
Allen's account places the pivotal contest in 1775, a year before the Chertsey-Coulsdon fixture now marked as the anniversary. He credits a single passage of play involving Stevens and Small with settling the case for a third stump.
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