Jasper Vinall was a village cricketer born in West Hoathly, Sussex in 1590. That's right, 1590. Before I write any more about him, I must say I was astonished that cricket was even played as long ago as that!
Whilst researching for the start of this new blog project, I came across Jasper on a brief Wikipedia entry. This entry was so brief but struck such a chord that he was the perfect man to start the cricketing characters odyssey.
History reports Jasper Vinall as the first cricketer to have died during a game of cricket.
Jasper played for the village of his birth, West Hoathly in Sussex from 1620 to the time of his death in 1624. It's reported that Jasper was fielding close in when Edward Tye of Horsted Keynes was batting on 28th August 1624. Tye hit the ball in the air and, seeing the opportunity to hit it again and score more runs, hit Jasper on the back of head with his bat, unaware that Jasper was running up behind him trying to catch the ball. The resulting head injury ultimately claimed Jaspers life 13 days later on 10th September.
There are no official records of this match, and the result is unknown. In fact it is not even confirmed that this was a cricket match at all! At least not what is known as modern day cricket. It is only assumed that this was a cricket match due to the details noted in the subsequent coroners report following Jasper's death. The inquest ruled that he had been killed by "misadventure" and, possibly somewhat insensitively, through "his own carelessness".
This match is one of the earliest recorded in England. Evidence of the the first village cricket match has been dated back to Kent c.1610 when a 1640 court case makes reference to a "cricketing" of Weald and Upland versus Chalkhill 30 years previously. The case reported no details of game being played, but rather concerned a dispute about the land that the match was played on.
Jasper's final match at West Hoathly is the earliest organised match in Sussex for which any reference is thought to exist. It is assumed that this was a village cricket match between 2 neighbouring parishes, and would arguably have been lost to history if it weren't for Jasper's unfortunate accident. There are also no readily available records of who Jasper was, what he did for a living, or whether he left behind a family.
This story raises an interesting question about Law 34 - hitting the ball twice. The incident of Edward Tye trying to hit the ball twice would not occur now as it is outlawed in the modern game. If a batsman is judged to having attempted to score runs of a second hit, he is given out by the umpire. The first official Laws of Cricket were first coded in 1744 by the Marylebone Cricket club as a way to regulate the game for allow for fairer betting. These laws were derived from an amalgamation of various bat and ball games played throughout the country in the centuries before, as betting was becoming more and more popular among British aristocracy. Whether Law 34 was borne out of Jasper's incident or other similar incidents of close fielders being hit by flailing bats is unknown, but the modern law does give protection to these fielders. Therefore perhaps Jasper Vinall's untimely death in a largely forgotten 17th century bat and ball game may have left a legacy on the game we play and watch today. If not, Jasper at least deserves a nod of recognition, and he's a very fitting first cricketing character of this series!
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