Cricket's unknown hero

Vaibhav Arora

Cricket is a game where records are made and broken every day. The mighty blows and tumbling wickets not only keep the spectators engrossed, but also add up as valuable numbers for the statistician. Although most of the records remain merely a combination of numbers, there are certain other achievements in the game that are remembered forever and the record-maker’s name is etched in history books.While history books on cricket put the game’s origin back to sometime in the seventeenth century, there is little evidence to authenticate the records created during that time. With the laws of cricket being drawn up in 1744, the practice of maintaining scorecard for the matches gained importance.

It is one such half-done scorecard of a game between the Duke of Dorset’s XI and Wrotham that credits the record of scoring the first-ever century in the game of cricket to a little known cricketer John Minshull. Though the incomplete scorecard does not even mention the winner of the game or even a single detail about Wrotham’s innings, it displays a run-by-run account of Minshull’s innings, who scored 107 runs in Dorset XI’s second innings.

Minshull’s achievement may seem miniscule in today’s world, but if we look at it from the perspective of the time when it was scored, it seems nothing short of a miracle. Eighteenth century was a time when team totals rarely crossed the 100-run mark, leave aside a batsman scoring a ton, the unprepared pitches were really hard to bat-on and bats were nothing more than blocks of wood carved into a rough shape.

Minshull, as history books put it, later went on to play cricket for the Duke of Dorset and was also employed by him as head gardener at his Kent estate.

Though he had a lot of admirers and supporters, there was no dearth of detractors either and Minshull too had to face a lot of criticism for his batting stance, which many described as awkward and uncouth, as well as his injury-prone built.As a result of the growing criticism and certain other reasons, Minshull was fired by Dorset in 1772. He then moved to Uxbridge in Middlesex from where he later moved to settle at Surrey in 1775 and continued to play the game until the time of his retirement in 1780. John Minshull died on October 23, 1793 and was buried at Kington-on-Thames

Apart from being the first ever recorded century maker in cricket, Minshull has another distinction to his credit in the game of cricket, very few details of which can be found. Apparently during a match between All England and Hampshire in 1773, he became the first man to be given out hit-wicket in cricket!