THE THIRD STUMP

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 6

THE THIRD STUMP

A PUZZLE IN CRICKET HISTORY CHANGED CHARACTER OF GAME Blake’s Handbook of the “New Articles of the Game of Cricket," as drawn up in 1774, throws an important sidelight upon the alteration of the wicket from two stumps to three (says a special correspondent of the London “Observer”). Nobody, so far as I know, has yet discovered exactly when this alteration was introduced, or how it was introduced. But Blake’s copy of the rules states, “by a subsequent meeting (i.e., of the committee) j it is settled for to use three stump# instead of two to each wicket, and the two bails not to exceed six inches.'’ Though the bock is undated, it is clear that if the Star and Garter committee added this rider to their rules, they must have done so before they dissolved themselves, and therefore within a short time of issuing the rules themselves. And, whatever the date may be, the quotation establishes the fact that an authoritative body of cricket legislators laid it down that three stumps were to be used whereever the game was properly played. All this may not be new, but it is certainly newer than “Scores and Biographies," which is the principal book of reference for those who want to study eighteenth-century cricket. Haygarth, a painstaking inquirer, could really find out very little about the introduction of the middle stump. According to one of his notes, attention was first directed to the formation of the wicket in May, 1775, the season following that in which the new rules had been issued. The occasion was a five-a-side single-wicket match in London between Hambledon and Kent. When John Small, the last Hambledon man, went in there were 14 runs to get to win, and Small made them, but not before Stevens, the Kent bowler, who was known as Lumpy, had three times penetrated his defence and sent the ball between the two stumps. This, though it must have happened thousands of times, was now remarked upon as a hard thing for the bowler, “as his straightest balls were sacrificed." All that Haygarth is able to add is that in consequence the stumps were soon after increased from two to three, but it cannot be distinctly stated when this improvement was made, and by some the change is placed as late as 1780. A MISCALCULATION This alternative date of 1780 must be several seasons too late. Mr. Waghorn, another cricket antiquarian of repute, points out that the match between England and Hambledon, in June, 1777, was advertised as to be played with three stumps, in order to shorten the game. It may be remarked that in this particular match the innovation failed in its object, for Hambledon made 403, the highest total then recorded, and Aylward stayed in the best part of three days for 167. The conclusion reached by Haygarth, who raises the question more than once in his book, is that the change to three stumps was made gradually, amid much difference of opinion as to the merits of the old and the new conditions. Some clubs adopted the three stumps, and others refused to adopt them. It will be noticed that this view is at variance with the statement quoted from Blake’s book of the 1774 rules, where the threestump wicket is definitely prescribed, with no suggestion of any liberty of choice.

The committee, in its supplementary law, also refers to the use of two bails, not to exceed six inches in length. Here again “Scores and Biographies" will be found to differ. Haygarth says that the stumps were covered by a single bail as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The various codes of rules are no help as a guide, for they never mention the number of stumps, and they always speak of the bail in the singular, even at a time when it is certain that there were two bails, and not one bail. The picture reproduced from Blake’s book, “An Emblematical Representation of the Game of Cricket," shows a single bail resting on the off and leg stumps and not touching the middle stump, which looks considerably shorter than the other two. There is nothing much in this for sketches of old cricket matches often sacrifice accuracy to picturesqueness in their details. WHOLE CHARACTER CHANGED The alteration of the wicket from two stumps to three was an important improvement, for it changed the whole character of the game for players and spectators alike. With the old curved bat and the two stumps wide apart the amount of missing must have been great, the batsman repeatedly missing the ball, and the bowler repeatedly missing the wicket. One can but think that the adoption of the straight-bladed bat, giving as it did such increased advantages to the batsman, must have suggested that the bowler required some assistance in order to equalise matters, and that the new type of bat must soon have been followed by the new type of wicket. The fact that in the last five and twenty years of the eighteenth century you notice little change in the general standard of run-getting would seem to confirm the view that, when the batsman found himself armed with a weapon with which it was easier to hit the ball, he found also that behind him was a wicket which it was easier for the bowler to hit with the ball.