Match-fixing before IPL: Alfred Mynn’s misdemeanours in 1840s and 1850s
With the shady deals surrounding the Indian Premier League (IPL) providing a murky background, Arunabha Sengupta takes a look at the earliest instance of a First-Class match being fixed — and ends up in the mid-19th century.
Each passing day the headlines continue to throw up new dimensions of filth, muck and vulgarity of the supposedly modern day vices of betting and match-fixing. New scandals are unearthed and new names shamed amidst the murky atmosphere surrounding the recently-concluded version of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
And the laments grow increasingly louder, about how the gentleman’s game has been dragged into the quagmire of filthy lucre by blatant commercialisation and naked greed. In short, we continue to hear echoes of manufactured past of pristine purity in which cricketers were angels just short of sprouting wings. Or did old cricketers indeed possess wings, that wrapped around their mortal selves and protected them from all the temptations that have plagued mankind since the dawn of civilisation?
We did attempt to tarnish the halo of the past by pointing out that the first man to be suspended for betting was Ted Pooley — as early as 1873. We did try to explain how the first spot-fixer in the history of Indian cricket ended up with Padma Bhushan. We did endeavour to drive home that match-fixing in cricket is as old as the game.
Such facts generally tend to pass us by like the idle wind which the deep-rooted perceptions respect not. Yet, it is the burden of the historian to throw some perspective into the chaos, some light trickling in from the distant past into the days of current madness. So, here is another go at trying to implant seeds of facts in the landscape of manufactured consent.
The first instance of fixing in First-class cricket
Let us revisit the first occasion of match-fixing in the history of First-Class cricket.
We have to go as far back as 1842. That is correct, 1842.
And let it be mentioned here that uncountable matches were fixed before 1842 as well. Professional cricketers were known to throw games. Single-wicket tournaments were enormously popular in England in those days and plenty of shady deals were struck, with an abundance of grubby money-grabbing hands. Betting and fixing were flagrant in the late 18th and early 19th century.
However, to discover an instance of match-fixing in the county circuit, we need to look at 1842 and involve a remarkable giant of English cricketing folklore —Alfred Mynn.
A giant of a man, Mynn was perhaps as dominating a figure in the cricketing scene of the first half of the nineteenth century as WG Grace was in the second. A genuine all-rounder with his attacking strokeplay and fast round-arm bowling, he was named by John Woodcock as the fourth greatest cricketers of all time. “The speed at which Mynn bowled… and his life-size personality captured the imagination of the public in a way no cricketer had before,” wrote Simon Wilde.
Mynn was known as the ‘Lion of Kent’, and in 1842 the Kent side also included Fuller Pilch, recognised as the best batsman in England before WG Grace.
Another heavyweight in the team was Nicholas Felix, a remarkable cricketer, who was also a classical scholar, musician, linguist, inventor, author and artist. One of his major contributions was the Catapulta, the ingeniously constructed first-ever bowling machine. He also was instrumental in the development of India-rubber batting gloves and wrote numerous books about the game under the pseudonym ‘Felix’.
At Beverly Cricket Ground, Canterbury, this star-studded side took on an England XI.
Batting first, Kent prospered through a 164 run association between Pilch and Felix. Pilch lived up to his reputation as a great batsman with 98 and Felix matched him stroke for stroke to score 74. Mynn himself contributed 27 and the 278 run first innings total was quite formidable for those days.
England replied with 266, the normally formidable Mynn picking up just two wickets in 91 four-ball overs. However, having obtained a 12 run first innings lead, Kent collapsed for 44 in the second innings, to the bowling of William Lillywhite. They lost the three day match by nine wickets.
Money had been staked in huge amounts and the sudden change of fortunes post the first innings scores ended in huge losses. In fact, the format of two innings per side in a match was one of the major factors which drew fixers to cricket. This feature made cricket the ideal game to manipulate the results right from its inception.
After this match charges of fixing made sinister rounds and ‘Alfred Mynn was hissed at in Maidstone Market.’
Shady deals were definitely struck over this match, but there was not enough evidence to implicate Mynn.
The charges against Mynn were more definite 14 years later, when Kent played Surrey in August, 1856.
By then a much respected man for his cricketing wisdom, Mynn played his cards with devious planning. He first influenced the groundsmen to prepare an uneven pitch and followed it up by coaxing his captain William Norton to bat first on that wicket.
The Kent innings fell away in front of the bowling of underarm specialist William Martingell and left-arm medium-pacer George Griffith. They could manage only 54. Mynn was not bowling that season and Surrey responded with 147. When they batted for the second time, Kent surrendered to Martingell and Griffith once again, bettering their first innings total by just four runs. Surrey won by an innings and 35 runs. This was the first county match known to be fixed without the semblance of doubt.
By then Mynn was past fifty, in the last days of his career as a cricketer. As had been the story of his entire life, he was struggling with financial woes. Ostensibly an amateur, he derived plenty of ways and means to make money out of the game and fixing was just another of his many schemes. However, with the cricket season drawing to an end, no action was taken against him. He played just five more matches stretched across the next three seasons.
Mynn’s misdemeanours have been meticulously overlooked by Wisden in their numerous tributes to his gallant cricketing deeds. However, old historical accounts of Kent cricket still contain glimpses of his murky deeds in those early days of cricket.
(Arunabha Sengupta is cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix