August 13, 1855. In the estate grounds of Shillinglee in West Sussex, a weird cricket match took place between the home eleven and the 2nd Royal Surrey Militia. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the day when the scoreboard took a pristine form, with not a run on display!
Shilinglee Park
Shillinglee, just near the county border of West Sussex, was the seat of the Earls of Winterton.
Lord Edward Turnour, the 4th Earl of the residence, was an opening batsman for his house and estate in the 1840s and 1850s. He even made it to First-class cricket, as did his son, the Viscount of Winterton. Gallant cricketers both, no doubt the pride and prestige of the English peerage, they nevertheless ended with Chris Martinesque averages of 2.68 and 4.08 respectively in the 25 and seven First-class matches they played.
The Shillinglee ground is now part of a golf course. During the middle of the 19th century, however, it was witness to some of the most eventful cricket matches, even if the scorers did not always have too much to record.
During one such match in September, 1847, Lord Winterton was playing against Farnham when a ball bowled by Frederick Caesar killed a swallow as it swooped across the pitch.
His Lordship also played for the neighbouring village of Chiddingfold, alongside two players good enough to have their obituaries published in Wisden – Alfred Hoar and James Sadler.
In 1924, Wisden noted the demise of Sadler as follows: “His death caused many interesting links with the past to be severed. He was, it is believed, the last survivor of the Shillinglee team which dismissed the Second Royal Surrey Militia without a run on August 13, 1855.”
All out for no score
His Lordship, the 4th Earl of Winterton, led Shillinglee XI in that famous match played in August 1855. The scorecard of the peculiar innings is provided at the end of the article.
In 1971, in an article titled The Dreaded Cypher, Basil Easterbrook wrote the following about the match:
“It was No. 10 who nearly ruined the whole thing. He hit one to cover point and set off like an Olympic sprinter going for the tape. Major Ridley rent the pastoral scene with a stentorian voice of command – ‘Go Back, Sergeant.’ Sgt. Ayling, pulled up all standing, fell base over apex and was run out by 15 yards. There were those who accused the gallant Major of moral cowardice, but I see him as a man with a sense of history. There is something aesthetically perfect about that scorecard — no catches, no stumping, no LBWs and no runs.The Militia made 106 in their second innings, but who wants to bother with that?”
Poignant, if somewhat anachronistic description. After all, the modern Olympics, with its sprinters dashing for the tapes, did not start for another four decades. But, with such a scorecard and match report, who wants to bother with that as well?
