Single wicket cricket is a form of cricket played between two individuals, who take turns to bat and bowl against each other. The one bowling is assisted by a team of fielders, who remain as fielders at the change of innings. The winner is the one who scores more runs. Almost never seen professionally today, it is most often encountered in local cricket clubs, in which there are a number of knockout rounds leading to a final. The exact rules can vary according to local practice: for example, a player might be deducted runs for an out rather than ending his or her innings. An innings typically is limited to two or three overs. When single wicket was popular in the 18th century, however, there was no overs limitation, and a player's innings ended only on his dismissal.
Single wicket has known periods of huge success when it was more popular than the eleven-a-side version of cricket. It was especially popular among gamblers at the Artillery Ground during the middle years of the 18th century. Star performers at the time included Robert Colchin, Stephen Dingate, Tom Faulkner and Thomas Waymark.
It was in a single-wicket match on 22–23 May 1775 that the great Surrey bowler Edward "Lumpy" Stevens beat the equally great Hambledon batsman John Small three times with the ball going through the two stump wicket of the day. As a result of his protests, the patrons agreed that a third stump should be added.
Despite this famous match, single wicket experienced a lull during the Hambledon Era and in the early years of MCC, but its popularity soared again in the first half of the 19th century when great players like Alfred Mynn and Nicholas Felix took part in some memorable matches. From about 1800 to the 1820s, single wicket matches were popular but riddled with gambling-related match fixing.[1]
The laws of single wicket differed from contest to contest and it was possible to utilise the basic single wicket rules in games involving two to five players per side. In 1831, a set of laws was created that were meant to apply universally. These were as follows:
These laws seem to have applied to major contests during the next twenty years but then, with the rise of the All-England Eleven and a growing interest in county cricket, single wicket lapsed again and has rarely been seen at the highest level since 1850, despite a brief revival in the 1960s.[2]
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