1729 English cricket season

The 1729 cricket season was the 132nd in England since the earliest known definite reference to cricket in January 1597 (i.e., Old Style – 1598 New Style). Details have survived of seven important matches.

The earliest known innings victory is believed to have happened in 1729 and the earliest known surviving cricket bat dates from the season. The earliest known reference to cricket in the county of Gloucestershire has been found.

The following matches are classified as important:

The match was for fifty pounds per side with a play or pay rule agreed. It is the earliest match featuring a team that is expressly called Sussex, though teams raised by patrons in earlier seasons are understood to have been composed mainly of Sussex players.

The teams were described as "the Gentlemen of Dartford and London"; the stake was fifty pounds.

Described thus: "a great Cricket Match at Kennington Common between the Londoners and the Dartford men, for a considerable Sum of Money, Wager and Betts, and the latter beat the former very much".

The Daily Journal on 26 August reported that a match would be played same day near Farnham between "Mr Steed (sic) of Kent and his Company, against the best Players in the County of Surrey".

Stead v Gage was alternatively titled Kent (Stead's XI) v Sussex, Surrey & Hampshire (Gage's XI). It was an 11-a-side match played for 100 guineas with "some thousands" watching. The match seems to have resulted in the earliest known innings victory as Gage's XI "got (within three) in one hand, as the former did in two hands, so the Kentish men (i.e., Stead's XI) threw it up". The report added re Thomas Waymark that "a groom of the 2nd Duke of Richmond signalised himself by extraordinary agility and dexterity".

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