Twas Not Ever Thus...

Documents have recently come to light suggesting that The Dukes of Argyll & Northumberland actually collaborated on the cricket field in the early 1700s. The below excerpt from Wisden 1912 about the cricketing career of the Duke of Hamilton shows Argyll to have been on the receiving end of a hiding from Hamilton on the cricket field, but it also suggests that he had the last laugh...

"In 1712 the second British Ambassador to France was named as the Duke of Hamilton, a wily leg-break bowler who, whilst on shore leave from seeing off the Spanish & French during the Wars of the Spanish Succession (1701 - 1714) was the scourge of the Home Counties, once taking a contentious 8-14 against a combined Dukes of Argyll & Northumberland XI at Arundel in 1708. At the time of his appointment as Ambassador to France, Hamilton was keen to use cricket in that country as a diplomatic tool and had envisaged a series of cricketing contests to be played in the Tuileries Gardens between the British Embassy and representatives of the Grande Armée, the Palace, and « any Teame being namely French, that should containe Whom-so-ever it be desired, but to number not more than twentye stoute Menne ». To ensure that his diplomatic retinue would have the edge over their future opponents, Hamilton not only had net facilities built ahead of his arrival in the garden of the British Embassy (which are still used to this day), but also conscripted the entire Essex team of 1711 as part of his Diplomatic Guard and had them ready to board the Viscount Marlborough at Portsmouth in September 1712.

Before setting sail to France, and before he could join his newly founded Diplomatic Guard on the quayside at Portsmouth, Hamilton had untertaken to meet the Duke of Argyll in Winchester to settle a long-running dispute relating to the supposed bribing of an umpire at Arundel with quantities of Port. This meeting resulted in Hamilton's untimely and unfortunate death ; the consequent liberation of the Essex cricket team ; and a postponement of cricket as a diplomatic channel in France which would last well into the 19th Century when the Duke of Wellington bowled Napoleon Bonaparte round his legs in a single-wicket competition held on the island of St Helena in 1821.

During the 20th century, cricket has played an important rôle at the British Embassy in Paris, and it is said that an ability to play with a straight bat on an uncovered wicket was as important an attribute for a potential ambassador as a Good War or even Good Connections. To this day,The British Embassy in Paris has never been defeated at cricket by any representative team of the French Government. To commermorate this remarkable statistic a toast is drunk annually at H.M. Ambassador's Garden Party to « The cricket men of Essex, to England, and to Her Majesty's Cricket Team in Paris »."