In early
1866 the Beckenham Cricket Club was founded by Mr AC Wathen and friends
who had the permission of Mr Peter Hoare to use the private cricket ground
at Kelsey. After the first season at Kelsey the ground on Foxgrove Road
was leased where play has continued ever since.
The first
recorded game was on 19th May 1866 between a Married X and a Single X.
Even taking into account the fact that the game was only 10-a-side, scoring
was low. Single made 95 batting first and. in reply. Married mustered
a rather hen-pecked 71 including 21 wides!
The Beckenham Cricket Club
played its first game the following week against the Saturday CC, losing
by 137 runs to 51, and had to wait until 23rd June 1866 for its first
win against South-Eastern Railway. These were
early days for club cricket in general and fixtures were hard to come
by.
There are several references to interesting experiments simply in
order to get a game. For example the Club's first 7 played against the
next 14 (the 7 winning easily, 149 runs to 39). There was another easy
win for the Club against a 22 from the Village, a game that became an
annual fixture until the First World War, although by then the Village
side had been reduced to 17 players!
Several notable
fixtures took place between 1885 and 1895 between Beckenham, Bexley and
Bickley |
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Park. In 1885 Beckenham replied to Bexley's 77 all out with 470
for 0, but, it wasn't always so easy. Bexley returned the favour the following
year and in June 1894 Beckenham suffered their largest ever defeat against
a Hampstead side containing AE
Stoddart of England and FR
"The Demon" Spofforth of Australia. Hampstead made 269 and
promptly dismissed Beckenham twice for 13 and 21. Spofforth 8 for 7 and
4 for 4 lived up to his nickname.
By the end
of the century two teams were turning out for the Club on most Saturdays.
The Whole-Day and Half-Day (at most 5 hours play) sides were starting
to field players who would become well known throughout Kent as well as
Beckenham. P
Northcote, FD
Brown, CO
Cooper and GJ Gulliver were making their mark with bat and ball, while
the families Inglis, Torrens, Baker,
and Stenning also started playing around this time, and would continue
to do so up to around the outbreak of the WWI.
Beckenham's
annual cricket week started in 1893 and continues to this day. The first
ever game was a 2-day fixture against Oxford University Authentics. It
was an inauspicious start for the home side following-on after the visitors'
had posted 217. Of all the other sides to appear in the first week, Incogniti, who
were soundly defeated by seven wickets, are the only surviving team. More
about cricket week later. |
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