[BROADSIDE] CRICKET. On Monday, October 1, 1798, a Match of Cricket, will be played on Tunbridge-Wells Common, between Mr. R. HOSKINS and Mr. DAY, (of Mayfield) for TEN POUNDS.

The Wickets to be pitched at 10’Clock, and the Game played out. Tunbridge Wells : Sprange, Printer, [1798]. Broadside, 250 x 195 mm, letterpress on laid paper; scattered light foxing and some browning, but overall well preserved; tipped onto a later (probably early twentieth-century) paper backing sheet.

An extremely early cricket broadside, advertising a challenge match played in Tunbridge Wells, Kent in the Autumn of 1798.

Little is known about the identities of Mr. R. Hoskins (presumably of Tunbridge Wells) and Mr. Day, of nearby Mayfield in East Sussex. A Mr. Hoskins is recorded as a lodging-housekeeper at 17 The Parade in The Directory: Or, The Ancient and Present State of Tunbridge Wells … (Tunbridge Wells : Jasper Sprange, 1808, p. 33). A Hoskins, tailor, is also listed at Bath Square (ibid., p. 31). Hoskins was evidently an experienced cricketer, as records tell us he had taken part in two single-wicket matches at Tunbridge eleven years earlier, on 11 and 18 August 1787, in partnership with Young against Ring and Tailor and Harris and Aylward (source: Cricket History website). We have not been able to glean any biographical information about Mr. Day.

The game – possibly a single-wicket match – took place on Tunbridge Wells Common, where cricket is known to have been played even earlier in the eighteenth century: the first recorded match on the ground took place in 1782. The first first-class cricket match was held on the ground in 1844, when a team of Married cricketers played a Singles’ team. Kent County Cricket Club used the ground between 1845 and 1880. In 1882 a first-class match was played there between a United Eleven, captained by W.G. Grace, and the touring Australians. Since 1906 it has been the home ground of Linden Park Cricket Club. Today it is known as the Higher Common Ground.

The broadside was printed by Jasper Sprange (1746-1823), a Tunbridge Wells printer and bookseller who also acted as the local postmaster. Sprange is of course listed in his own 1808 Tunbridge Wells directory (ibid.), at 1 The Parade – so he was a close neighbour of Hoskins the lodging-housekeeper. An archive of Sprange’s proof sheets made between 1800 and 1802 is held in the Tunbridge Wells Museum.