Talk:Laleham Burway

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Large Bat incident

The articles reiterates a cricket myth that the Large bat incident took place at Laleham Burway.

Sources are as follows:

Firstly John Nyren wrote

…on the 23rd of September, 1771, having played the County of Surrey, at Laleham Burway, they beat them by one run. Out of fifty-one matches played by the same club against England, &c., during the ensuing ten years, they gained twenty-nine of the number.

Several years since (I do not recollect the precise date) a player, named White, of Ryegate, brought a bat to a match, which being the width of the stumps, effectually defended his wicket from the bowler: and in consequence, a law was passed limiting the future width of the bat to 4¼ inches.

Secondly, a piece of paper exists, ostensibly a record of an resolution of the Hambledon Club, was for a long time displayed in the Bat and Ball Inn. It says

“In view of the performance of one White of Ryegate on September 23rd, that four and quarter inches shall be the breadth forthwith. This 25th day of September 1771 Richard Nyren, T Brett, John Small”

However John Goulstone has looked at this document in some depth and concluded that the document is a forgery. Briefly, the points he makes include the following:-

- The signature of Richard Nyren is nothing like the other examples we have of his signature.

- The date of the match looks all wrong. It is borrowed from Nyren’s previous paragraph, which clearly is about a different occasion. Nyren specifically says he can’t recall the date, it is beyond belief that it just happened to be the same as the one mentioned one sentence earlier.

- Nyren, Brett and Small are players, not committee members, they would not have had the authority to pass a resolution of this nature.

- John Nyren would only have been 6 years of age in September 1771, yet in old age, he could still remember seeing the incident. One so young would not have travelled very far, so it was almost certainly a home match and perhaps a year or two later.

- All of the information could easily have been lifted from Cricketers of My Time – and almost certainly has been. If it was original, whoever wrote it would have known White’s first name and inserted it; however, Nyren didn’t spell it out, so neither does this document.

- The document has no provenance before the 1930s. Based on the above, there is every reason to believe it a forgery, nothing to support it.

- At all events, the bat width was incorporated into the Laws of the Game somewhat later, in 1774. Probably the game was closer to 1774 than 1771.

John Goulstone has effectively removed any evidence that Laleham Burway was the location of the incident. He is a reputable cricket historian who won the 2022 Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship awarded jointly by The Cricket Society and the BSSH (British Society of Sports History). His findings were published in Hambledon – The Men and the Myths in 2001 and, as far as I am aware, have never been disputed; indeed they are based on observations that can hardly be disputed. The source quoted for the story in the article does not take issue with Goulstone, it just repeats the discredited story so is pretty much worthless. Ironically, part of Goulstone's thesis showed that Thomas White was very likely the wide-bat batsman, not Shock White as has previously been thought. This seems to have absorbed into Wikipedia but strangely, not the idea that Laleham Burway was not the location.

I suggest that the article should reflect Goulstone's work fully, and get rid of the old myth.

John Price (talk) 08:25, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

If you read the review of Goulstone's Hambledon book by Ashley Mote, I think you will find that the findings were very forcibly disputed. Regardless of Mote's criminal record, he did write an award-winning book about Hambledon, and he must be regarded as an expert on the subject. What you call the "myth" is supported by Mote himself, and by both Wisden and the Cricket Society.

You say Goulstone has shown that Thomas White was the likely batter involved, but Mote rightly pointed out that Goulstone does not appear to know which of the two Whites was which. In fact, the evidence shows that Thomas from Ryegate was definitely the batter. Shock was from Brentford, and there was the occasion when both were playing on the same day in different matches, so I fail to see how anyone could think they might have been the same person. The identity of the batter is simply not an issue.

Goulstone completely missed a key point about Richard Nyren's signature. He did indeed witness the marriage certificates of Tom Sueter and George Leer, but those two signatures are also quite different from each other. It has been suggested that Nyren could not write, and that someone else provided his signature in all three cases, obviously with his approval.

Nyren, Brett and Small are players, not committee members, they would not have had the authority to pass a resolution of this nature. I agree. But they didn't authorise the ruling. They raised the issue (actually, it was White who raised the issue, because his action was almost certainly deliberate), and their proposed bat width was authorised by the committee that updated the Laws in 1774. I daresay Hambledon insisted upon it in their home matches at least until then, but that's by the by.

John Nyren does not say he saw the incident. Clearly, his father told him about it. John must certainly have seen, and probably used, the bat width gauge that was created.

I said I would find the Cricket Society article for reference, but haven't done so yet, and I'll try and do that soon. Jack (talk) 10:03, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Just adding to that, a friend had the particulars, which I've now cited in the article. It was the Autumn 2006 edition of the CS Journal. Jack (talk) 12:27, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

I haven't seen Mote's review, I would be interested to do so. I do however have problems with his book from time to time, for instance identifying a picture as being of Hambledon (page 42), when I could find no supporting evidence for this - the picture is generally thought to be of Norfolk. And, as you say, he was a crook.

I don't quite follow your point about the Whites. Anyway, in Mote's book, the Large Bat bloke was Shock (page 151) and Goulstone comes along later and says it was Thomas. Everyone now says it was Thomas - one up to Goulstone, surely.

Re the signature - I know nothing much about this field, but Nyren's two marriage certificate sigs seem fairly similar to me.

Reading the minute, it looks like it was supposedly authorised by the the three players to me, they signed it off and it is dated - all very formal, they clearly wanted it to carry some weight with someone. The point though, is that it just isn't the type of document players come up with, it is meant to look like committee work.

Re seeing the match: Nyren adds a footnote to his account of the large bat incident when the book was published: "I have a perfect recollection of this occurrence; also, that subsequently an iron frame, of the statute width, was constructed for and kept by the Hambledon Club; through which any bat of suspected dimensions was passed, and allowed or rejected accordingly." This strikes me as a claim to have seen the incident; I can't imagine someone saying that have a perfect recollection of an incident unless they were a witness.

The main thing though is Nyren's two sentences. Read these together and it makes no sense to think that the large bat incident took place on the same day as the one run victory. The text does not support such a notion, I would be fascinated to see how Mote tried to get around that.

And then there is the lack of provenance for the supposed minute which is the only evidence for the LB theory - where was it for all those years, why was it unknown ? And it adds nothing we don't already know from Nyren's text. The document would be so easy to forge, why take it seriously? John Price (talk) 13:11, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

I did add Mote's review, having forgotten it first time. It's at Bodyline Books. I haven't looked at Mote's book for a very long time, but you are right that he only mentions Shock! As you say, everyone else can see it was Thomas.

I think the best way around this is to do what it says on the WP:DUE tin. I think this article and the Thomas White one say all that needs to be said about the Cricket Society/Wisden version, so if you point out that there is an alternative theory and summarise that, it will be fine. You'll need to add Goulstone's book to the source lists as well.

Thanks, and good luck. Jack (talk) 14:29, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

OK, I will try and do something along the lines you suggest. Thanks for the link to Mote's review which I have just read, I think it is really nasty and mean-spirited, without ever going into detail about the supposed errors. Suffice to say, Goulstone was used as a researcher by both Rowland Bowen and John Major, authors of two classics of Cricket History. Yes, he is prone to tedious detail on occasions, but I don't think his work is slipshod, not in any respect. Cheers. John Price (talk) 15:25, 27 November 2025 (UTC)