FORCING THE RUNS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29798, 14 April 1962, Page 3

FORCING THE RUNS

The Duke Who Was Cricket. By John Marshall. Muller. 189 pp. Index.

“The Duke Who Was Cricket” is a curious but very readable book. The name is badly chosen; but then the author is an enthusiast who is making the most of an eighteenth-century figure of no particular distinction. Charles Lennox owed everything to the fact that he was the grandson of King Charles II and Louise de Kerouaille. His commission in the Horse Guards, the Order of the Garter, the office of Master of the Horse, and other similar honours followed more or less automatically. He was present with his Royal master, King George 11, at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743: but his principal action came after the battle, when he vigorously defended his regiment against a charge of cowardice.

“The Blues,” it was said, “had one and all faced to the right about and never stood their ground.” The Duke had little difficulty in disproving this unkind allegation. The Duke was certainly fond of cricket, although probably not as fond of it as the author of his biographies. But Mr Marshall does his best. “So it is very fair to assume that the young Lord March, as Charles Lennox then was. saw cricket and played cricket in a spirit

which has illuminated the game ever since, and under rules which have remained the basis of the organised game.” By 1725 the Duke “had built up a team which was the strongest in the country; it was virtually Sussex and England, too.” It was good enough to undertake a match against the formidable team captained by Sir William Gage, although the result is not known. Later the Duke’s team played against Alan Brodrick’s “twelve,” and the agreement or “covenant” relating to the game is still extant. It contains 16 clauses, “which bear an extraordinary similarity to the Laws of Cricket, as we know them today.” In those days the wickets were pitched “in a fair and even place at 23 yards distance from each other,” and there were 12 “gamesters” on each side. The game is thought to have taken place at Pepperharowe, Mr Broderick’s seat, where cricket has been played week-end after weekend for more than 200 years. In 1731 quite a modern note was struck by the announcement of a match at Chichester, when “the Duke of Richmond’s XI played Mr Chambers’s XI of Richmond.” Betting on these games was very heavy, and some curious incidents connected with this are recorded. After one match, for instance, the Duke and his players were insulted, some of them having their shirts torn from their backs. Frederick. Prince of Wales, was an enthusiastic gambler and cricketer, who liked to engage in matches where the stakes could be as high as £lOOO. Mr Marshall comments, “Often he lost his money but never his enthusiasm for cricket, which was an odd manifestation for a Hanoverian.”

In later years, when he himself was unable to play, the Duke of Richmond identified himself with the Hindon team, which for students of the game, yields place only to the famous “Hambledon Men.” Of the Duke’s death, which took place in 1750, Mr Marshall writes, “There was a melancholy appropriateness in the fact that such a zealous cricketer, having been born at the beginning of a cricket season, should have died as another drew near its close.” It would not be fitting to add to words like /hese.