Ned Wenman Debuts for Kent — A Wicket-Keeping Career Begins, 1825

Wicket-keeping in 1825 was a primitive trade. There were no pads, no gloves and rare specialists. Most county sides used a batsman who happened to be quick behind the stumps. Wenman was one of the first players to take the role as his primary skill.

Kent club cricket had been organised informally through the 1810s and early 1820s. By 1825 a recognised Kent county side was playing fixtures against Sussex, MCC and other counties; Wenman's selection in his early twenties reflected his standing in Wealden village cricket.

Edward Gower Wenman was born at Benenden in the Weald of Kent on 18 August 1803. A carpenter and wheelwright by trade, he never moved from the village and worked at his bench between cricket engagements all his life. His first appearance in important cricket came in a Kent v Sussex match in 1825, when he was 22. Wenman established himself first as a hard-hitting batsman — his highest score was 73 not out — and only later took on the wicket-keeping role for which he became famous. He kept to Alfred Mynn, the so-called 'Lion of Kent', who bowled fast roundarm in the 1830s and 1840s with a thunderous arm action; Wenman did so without pads or gloves. Modern wicket-keepers would consider the assignment lunatic. Wenman is credited with 118 catches and 87 stumpings in 146 first-class matches, retired in 1844 (when a benefit match was played for him at Hemsted Park near Benenden), came back in 1846 and finally finished in 1854. He was central to the Kent eleven that dominated English cricket in the late 1830s and 1840s alongside Mynn, Felix, Pilch and Hillyer.

Wenman's bare-handed keeping became the standard against which later wicket-keepers were measured well into the 1860s. He played 15 times for the Players against the Gentlemen between 1830 and 1844 (and once for the Gentlemen as a 'given man' in 1829, an early example of the cross-status arrangements that the early fixture used to balance the sides).