Haverford
Team with C C Morris seated at lower right.
(click here
for a larger photo)
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Cricket
has been at home at Haverford College longer than anywhere
else in the United States, if not anywhere in North America.
Here, the first Cricket club made up entirely of American-born
youth was founded in 1834, just a year after the school itself
was opened. The game was introduced at Haverford by William
Carvill, an English gardener brought over to landscape the
new campus just outside Philadelphia on the Main Line. Thirty
years later, the first intercollegiate Cricket match, between
Haverford and the University of Pennsylvania, was played in
1864.
So,
the choice of Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia
as the site for cricket's American headquarters was most
appropriate. Throughout the 19th century and for almost
100 years until the 1920's, cricket, with its particular
emphasis upon ethics and sportsmanship, was a distinctive
element in the social life of the Philadelphia area. Philadelphia
was probably the only city in the United States where, for
a brief period, cricket could draw as large attendance and
command as full journalistic reporting as baseball.
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On
Cope Field, which inspired Dr. Francis Benson's well-known
poem, "The
Field," Haverford has kept up the wickets
of American Cricket ever since. In 1896, Haverford sent
the first American undergraduate XI to England under
the captaincy of John A. Lester. This was followed by
numerous other tours to England and several tours of
Canada over the next 25 years. In more recent times,
tours of England, Canada and the Caribbean have been
highlights for the Haverford XI as they have stood as
the only undergraduate cricket team in America.
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For
a historical review of American cricket from colonial times
to the present, you are referred to: Cricket
in America.
Written
by Amar Singh '54, this is a work in process (©
1996; Amar Singh). What is posted is Chapter 1. It covers
the period from the early 1700's to late 1800's.
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For
a well-written history of the near athletic civil war, lasting
from 1850 to 1920, between Baseball and Cricket at Haverford
College, you are referred to: A
Tale of Two Sports: Haverford's Baseball-Cricket Wars.
Written
by Greg Kannerstein '63, (© 1995; Haverford College)
this article was published in HAVERFORD, the Alumni Magazine
of Haverford College in the Fall 1995 edition and is reprinted
here by permission. This is a long article, just over 4,000
words or 10 printed pages. Most the pictures from the original
article (all from the collection) are used throughout these
web pages.
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