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Slindon Cricket Club was famous in the middle part of the 18th century when it claimed to have the best team in England. It was located at Slindon, a village in the Arun district of Sussex. Cricket in the 18th century was funded by gambling interests and some of the wealthier gamblers, acting as patrons, formed whole teams that were representative of several parishes and even of counties. Such a team was "poor little Slyndon (''sic'') against almost your whole county of Surrey". That quote is taken from a letter written by Slindon's patron, Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond (1701 - 1750) in the 1741 English cricket season. Playing at Merrow Down near Guildford on 1 September, Slindon had just beaten Surrey "almost in one innings".〔Timothy J McCann, ''Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century'', Sussex Record Society, 2004〕 The Duke of Richmond was the greatest of the sport's early patrons and he did an enormous service to the development of the sport in his native Sussex. He had been active as a player and patron since the 1720s and he lent his benevolence to the little woodland club near Arundel in the late 1730s when he became aware that its residents included three talented brothers, one of whom was showing signs of greatness, and a number of other decent players. The brothers were the Newlands, among whom Richard was outstanding. Richard Newland (1718 - 29 May 1791), an all-rounder who batted left-handed, became one of the greatest early cricketers and was famous throughout the 1740s. His brothers, about whom little is known, were Adam (born 1714) and John (born 1717). Another good player in the village, although he was an unsavoury one, was the notorious smuggler "Cuddy" whose real name was Edward Aburrow senior. Senior because his son became a regular in the Hambledon team of the 1770s. It is almost certain that Slindon was not just a village team and that it was in fact a Sussex county team, just as Dartford Cricket Club had always formed the nucleus of the Kent team. There can be little doubt that Richmond cast his net wide and that players from elsewhere in Sussex played for Slindon. But Richard Newland was the star and he was definitely local. It seems that Richmond built the team around Newland and so it was perhaps natural that the name of the team, even if it were a Sussex county XI, should be that of Newland's village.〔 ==1741 season== The first written record of the Slindon team is on 15 June 1741 when they played against Portsmouth at Stansted Park, Rowlands Castle, near Havant in Hampshire. Slindon won this match by 9 wickets.〔 It is the earliest report of a match involving Slindon, though the club must have been playing for some time beforehand. The Duke of Richmond in a letter said that "above 5000 people" were present. In a second letter, he gives the result.〔 On Thursday 9 July 1741, in a letter to her husband, the Duchess of Richmond (1706 - 1751) mentioned a conversation with John Newland re a Slindon v East Dean match at Long Down, near Eartham, a week earlier. This seems to be the first recorded mention of any of the Newland family.〔 In two subsequent letters to his friend the Duke of Newcastle, a future Prime Minister, Richmond spoke about a game on Tuesday 28 July which resulted in a brawl with ''hearty blows and broken heads''. The game was at Portslade between Slindon and unnamed opponents. Slindon won the battle but the result of the match is unknown.〔 Richmond had been involved in ruckuses of this sort before and Georgian England was an essentially violent society. Tt was quite normal in cricket for the rough to rub shoulders with the smooth.〔 The ''poor little Slyndon'' phrase followed the game against Surrey at Merrow Down on 7 September 1741. Richmond in a letter to Newcastle before the game spoke of "poor little Slyndon against almost your whole county of Surrey". Next day he wrote again, saying that "wee (''sic'') have beat Surrey almost in one innings".〔 Soon afterwards, Richmond's wife Sarah, a feisty character in her own right, wrote to him and said she "wish’d..... that the Sussex mobb (''sic'') had thrash’d the Surrey mob". She had "a grudge to those fellows ever since they mob’d you" (apparently a reference to the Richmond Green fiasco in August of the 1731 English cricket season). She then said she wished the Duke "had won more of their moneys".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Slindon Cricket Club」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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