Shock White

Trevor Chappell rolled the ball along the ground at the MCG on 1 February 1981 and won the match. It was entirely within the Laws. Maradona punched the ball past Shilton in Mexico City in 1986 and the goal stood, because the referee missed it. Cameron Bancroft went into his pocket for some sandpaper at Newlands in 2018 and tried to improve the swing of the cricket ball. Every so often somebody arrives with an idea outside the spirit of the game.

At Broadhalfpenny Down this week, it is 255 years since the most audacious of them all.

On 23 September 1771, Chertsey played Hambledon at Laleham Burway for £50 a side, over two days because the money demanded a result. A Chertsey man named White, of Reigate, walked out to bat carrying a blade fully as wide as the wicket. John Nyren later recorded that it effectually defended his wicket from the bowler. No law was broken. Nobody had thought to write one.

Hambledon won by a single run; Thomas Brett bowled quickly enough to counter the wide bat. But the Hambledon men had seen enough. Within two days they had settled on four and a quarter inches as the breadth of a bat and the club had an iron frame built to the statute width and anything wider was planed down until it fitted.

The limit went into the Laws in 1774 and has not moved since. MCC got round to depth and edge limits only in 2017.

The men who decided the width of every bat in the world were based at Broadhalfpenny Down.

Guy Ladenburg turns out for the Brigands with one of the ten commemorative bats made for the 250th Anniversary of First Class Cricket, each of them exactly four and a quarter inches across. Entirely legal.

Which raises the question that had Small, Brett and Nyren kept quiet, and had the width of a bat remained a matter of personal taste, which Brigand might arrive at the ground with a bat as wide as the wicket? Whittle? Turner? Wood? Answers in the comments.