Cricket, Competition and the Amateur Ethos: Surrey and the Home Counties 1870-1970
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University of Huddersfield Repository Stone, Duncan Cricket, Competition and the Amateur Ethos: Surrey and the Home Counties 1870-1970 Original Citation Stone, Duncan (2013) Cricket, Competition and the Amateur Ethos: Surrey and the Home Counties 1870-1970. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/19263/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ Cricket, Competition and the Amateur Ethos: Surrey and the Home Counties 1870-1970 Duncan Stone A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2013 Abstract By the late-nineteenth-century, cricket had a well-established national narrative. Namely; that the game‘s broadly pre-industrial, rural, and egalitarian culture had been replaced by the ‗gentlemanly‘ ethos of amateurism; a culture which encouraged cricket for its own sake and specific norms of ‗moral‘ behaviour exemplified by idioms‘ such as ‗it‘s not cricket‘. A century later, much of this narrative not only remained intact, it survived unchallenged. However, a regionally specific sub-narrative had emerged in relation to cricket outside of ‗first-class‘ Test and County cricket. Cricket in the North was ‗working-class‘, ‗professional‘, ‗commercialised‘, and played within highly ‗competitive‘ leagues, while cricket in the South was ‗middle-class‘, ‗amateur‘, ‗non-commercial‘, and played in non-competitive ‗friendly‘ fixtures. Whereas cricket in the North has attracted a good deal of academic attention, there remains a paucity of contextualised academic research of cricket in the South. Due to assumed social and cultural similarities, the so-called ‗friendly‘ cricket of the South remains subsumed within the national narrative. Whereas we now know a good deal about who played cricket, and why, in the North, we know little, if anything, of those who played cricket, why they did so, and under what circumstances, in the South. This thesis, which focuses on the County of Surrey, thus examines the social and cultural development of ‗club‘ cricket in the South for the first time. In order to test the historical assumption that cricket in the South replicated the gentlemanly amateurism inherent to the game‘s national culture and historical discourse, this thesis shall not only examine the origins of these important cultural ‗identities‘, but who was playing cricket, and under what social, environmental, economic, and cultural circumstances, in Surrey between 1870 and 1970. In basic terms, it will demonstrate that much of the historiography proves misleading, especially regarding the universality of non-competitive cricket. Moreover, this thesis will also establish that the introduction, implementation, and spread of non- competitive cricket was a class-specific and discriminatory ideology, which had close associations with the middle-classes‘ increasing insecurity and their migration to Surrey. The ideological basis upon which non- competitive cricket was based, was to have fundamentally negative repercussions relating to the game‘s cultural meaning and popularity, and the ‗re-introduction‘ of competitive league cricket to the South in 1968 may well have saved the sport from a slow and agonising extinction. 1 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such Copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trademarks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. 2 Glossary and abbreviations AGM – Annual General Meeting AKCC – Association of Kent Cricket Clubs BaHDCA – Brighton and Hove District Cricket Association BCC – Banstead Cricket Club CCC – Club Cricket Conference CCCF – Club Cricketers’ Charity Fund ECC – English County Championship FA – Football Association GWMCC – Guildford Working Mens’ Cricket Club KCCC – Kent County Cricket Club LaSCCCC – London and Southern Counties Club Cricket Conference LCCC – London Club Cricket Conference MaDCA – Manchester and District Cricket Association MCC – Marylebone Cricket Club NCCA – National Club Cricket Association PEP – Political and Economic Planning RFU – Rugby Football Union SACC – Surrey Association of Cricket Clubs SCA – Sussex Cricket Association SCC – Surrey Clubs’ Championship SCCC – Surrey County Cricket Club SCFA – Surrey County Football Association SHC – Surrey History Centre TDCC – Thames Ditton Cricket Club YCCC – Yorkshire County Cricket Club 3 Contents Foreword and Acknowledgements: 6 Introduction: 9 - The historiography of sport and leisure 14 - Amateurism 18 - The middle-class 23 - Who were the middle-class? 25 - Class, wealth and culture 27 - Sport and the middle-classes 29 - Cricket’s historiography 31 - The amateurs 36 - The professionals 40 - Structure of the thesis 43 Chapter One: The middle-classes and the development of modern sport: 1870-1914 47 - Traditional sporting culture: gambling 49 - Industrialisation and the rise of the middle-classes 52 - The public schools 55 - The development of middle-class values 61 - ‘Sportisation’: organisation, commercialisation and competition 65 - Organisation 68 - Competition 72 - League competition arrives in English sport 75 - Commercialisation and the professional 78 - The amateur response 81 - Conclusion 83 Chapter Two: The development of society and sport in Surrey: 1870-1914 86 - Surrey: rural, suburban or urban? 88 - Early development: 1750-1850 92 - The coming of the middle-classes: 1850-1900 97 - Club cricket: organisation, hierarchy and competition 109 - Club cricket: social relations 113 - Club cricket: culture 115 - Club cricket: continuity or cultural change? 119 - Conclusion 123 4 Chapter Three: Club cricket and the Club Cricket Conference between the wars 126 - Competition and professionalism is criticised 128 - The Club Cricketers’ Charity Fund: 1910-1915 135 - ‘Amateur’ opinions harden 137 - The Club Cricket Conference 142 - Constitutional compromise 145 - Rule 4 between 1921 and 1939 148 - Competitions’ prove resilient 150 - Class relations deteriorate 153 - Metropolitan influence spreads 156 - Conclusions 160 Chapter Four: ‘Gilligan’s Island?’: post-war attempts to form leagues in the South 165 - The Bradman effect 167 - Is competitive cricket the answer? 169 - Re-organising cricket 174 - A new way of life? 179 - Challenging the Conference 184 - The Conference compromises? 196 - Conclusion 201 Chapter Five: The Surrey Clubs’ Championship: competitive cricket ‘arrives’, 1950-1970 205 - Critical discourses of amateur governance 206 - The MCC come under heavy fire 212 - Pressure is exerted 217 - The cricket authorities fail to act 221 - Competition on the agenda 224 - Giving the public what they want? 227 - Sociability or competition? 233 - When Raman met Norman 237 - Choosing sides 240 - Follow the leader or greater hypocrisy? 244 - Conclusion 250 Epilogue and Conclusions: 253 Appendix: 263 Bibliography: 264 5 Foreword and Acknowledgements During an interview for BBC Radio relating to the University of Huddersfield‘s Cricket Research Centre, the interviewer (a Yorkshireman), on hearing that my research related to club cricket in Surrey, appeared to dismiss any research of southern cricket on the grounds that ―it‘s all friendly down there isn‘t it?‖ Such an attitude is understandable, for the friendly non-competitive cricket that pervaded southern club cricket during much of the twentieth-century was in stark contrast to the meaningful competitive leagues that dominated cricket in Yorkshire from the 1890s. Originally this thesis intended to examine the development of the regionalised cricket stereotypes of Yorkshire and Surrey, and the apparent relationship that each had with specific class groups, but after a year of research it became clear that a satisfactory examination