Chertsey Cricket Club in Surrey is one of the oldest cricket clubs in England, the foundation of the club dating to the 1730s. The club is based in Chertsey and plays in the Surrey Championship.
Three known matches were played in 1736, one against Croydon Cricket Club at Duppas Hill in Croydon followed by a return match at the Laleham Burway ground in Chertsey. A deciding game on Richmond Green was played on 5 July. In each of the two matches, the home team won "by a great number of runs".
The club played a number of matches against London Cricket Club and Dartford Cricket Club. In the 1760s, they played matches against the sport's rising power, the Hambledon Club, and in September 1778, Chertsey beat the rest of England (excluding Hampshire) by an innings and 24 runs.
Chertsey produced several famous players in the 18th century including the great bowler Edward "Lumpy" Stevens and the noted wicket-keeper William Yalden. Originally, cricket wickets had only two stumps and one bail. The third (middle) stump was introduced in 1775, after Lumpy Stevens bowled three successive deliveries to John Small that went straight through the two stumps rather than hitting them.[1][2]
The Duke of Dorset (who played cricket for Chertsey) was appointed as Ambassador to France in 1784 and supposedly arranged to have the Chertsey team travel to France in 1789 to introduce cricket to the French, apparently to improve Anglo-French relations. However, the team, on arrival at Dover, met the Ambassador returning from France at the outset of the French Revolution, and the opportunity was missed. According to John Major in More Than A Game, "the whole story is nonsense";[3] Dorset had already warned other British residents to leave Paris so he would hardly have invited a cricket team to come to France at a time of crisis.[4]
