cricket live-Cricket’s early beginnings in Katikati
Historian Chris Bedford of Athenree recently wrote a university research assignment about the origins of cricket in Katikati. The following is a condensed version of Chris’ assignment.
When any of Katikati Cricket Club’s approximately 120 playing members take to the field next summer, they will probably little realise the challenges facing those who first sought to establish cricket in Katikati.
The first recorded game involving a Katikati cricket team was played in Tauranga on March 9, 1878. At that time the Katikati district was sparsely populated, being part of what was known as the Katikati-Te Puna Block, a large area forcibly purchased from Māori following the end of the Tauranga theatre of the New Zealand Land Wars.
Those who first played cricket were mostly men who had arrived in Katikati on the immigrant ships Carisbrooke Castle (1875) and Lady Jocelyn (1878) as part of the settlement established by George Vesey Stewart.
In a new and unfamiliar country, cricket was something familiar, which linked them with their recently departed homeland, and with other settlers. It was a recreation, but more importantly, it provided valuable social contact for settlers who often lived isolated lives.
We are entirely dependent on reports in the Bay of Plenty Times and Clement and McCormack’s book The Pioneers, Settlers and Families of Katikati and District (available in Katikati Library) for information about these men of the Katikati Block who were motivated to take time from their pioneering farm work, and introduce cricket to this outpost of Empire.
In particular, it was the arrival of the second echelon of settlers on the Lady Jocelyn in August 1878, that considerably increased the pool of cricket players. The names of many of the early settlers appear in early match reports, with the names of M P (Michael) Stewart, Alexander McDougall Ralston, and Richard Villiers Surtees appearing most prominently over an extended period.
Katikati Cricket Club formed and re-formed several times in the early years of the settlement, with the earliest known reference to the “newly formed Katikati Cricket Club” being in the Bay of Plenty Times of November 14, 1878.
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