History of Cricket On The Green
William IV was on the throne when the first recorded cricket match took place on Giggs Hill Green. The year was 1833, and a Ditton side played against the gentleman of Richmond and Brentford. The result was never recorded nor the names of the players who took part, but the beer was only two pence a pint. At this time the club operated from the local inn, 'The Angel', which still overlooks the Green.
The club prospered and by 1877 began to look to travel further afield in search of opponents. A coach and horses was hired to take a team to play Englefield Green with an entertainer on board for the journey. Cash was in short supply, one match was bought to an abrupt end when the ball was hit under the front of a passing steamroller.
Having had his window broken by the ball, the owner of Dorset Lodge, which also overlooks the Green, offered the Club one pound for every ball hit there from that moment on.
Between 1879 and 1920 a number of Surrey and England players learnt their cricket on the Green. A week of matches never failed to attract the attention of the village. Despite the limited changing facilities at 'The Angel', the club prospered, with a team of principally local players. Many of the Surrey County players have held a benefit match on the green against the local side. Two local roads are named after Thames Ditton, Surrey and England cricketers: Maurice Read and Tom Hayward.
The club was one of the few to carry on during the war, helped by the continuity; and was soon going strongly again in 1946. In more recent times, with the generous help of the Milk Marketing Board a new pavilion was built in 1977, rebuilt in 2004 and the club has gone from strength to strength.
Read more about this topic: Giggs Hill Green
Famous quotes containing the words the green, history of, history, cricket and/or green:
“Age becomes reality when you hear someone refer to “that attractive young woman standing next to the woman in the green dress,” and you find that you’re the one in the green dress.”
—Lois Wyse (20th century)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“I’ll dance above your green, green grave
Where you do lie beneath.””
—Unknown. The Brown Girl (l. 59–60)