Slindon Cricket Club

Slindon Cricket Club

Team information
Established	before 1740
Last match	c.1754
Home venue	Slindon
History
No. of titles	2
Notable players	Richard Newland Edward Aburrow senior

Slindon Cricket Club was famous in the middle part of the 18th century when it claimed to have the best team in England. It was located at Slindon, a village in the Arun district of Sussex.

Cricket in the 18th century was funded by gambling interests and some of the wealthier gamblers, acting as patrons, formed whole teams that were representative of several parishes and even of counties. Such a team was "poor little Slyndon (sic) against almost your whole county of Surrey". That quote is taken from a letter written by Slindon's patron, Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond (1701 - 1750) in the 1741 English cricket season. Playing at Merrow Down near Guildford on 1 September, Slindon had just beaten Surrey "almost in one innings".^[1]

The Duke of Richmond was the greatest of the sport's early patrons and he did an enormous service to the development of the sport in his native Sussex. He had been active as a player and patron since the 1720s and he lent his benevolence to the little woodland club near Arundel in the late 1730s when he became aware that its residents included three talented brothers, one of whom was showing signs of greatness, and a number of other decent players.

The brothers were the Newlands, among whom Richard was outstanding. Richard Newland (1718 - 29 May 1791), an all-rounder who batted left-handed, became one of the greatest early cricketers and was famous throughout the 1740s. His brothers, about whom little is known, were Adam (born 1714) and John (born 1717). Another good player in the village, although he was an unsavoury one, was the notorious smuggler "Cuddy" whose real name was Edward Aburrow senior. Senior because his son became a regular in the Hambledon team of the 1770s.

It is almost certain that Slindon was not just a village team and that it was in fact a Sussex county team, just as Dartford Cricket Club had always formed the nucleus of the Kent team. There can be little doubt that Richmond cast his net wide and that players from elsewhere in Sussex played for Slindon. But Richard Newland was the star and he was definitely local. It seems that Richmond built the team around Newland and so it was perhaps natural that the name of the team, even if it were a Sussex county XI, should be that of Newland's village.^[2]