Edward 'Ned' Wenman — Kent's Wicketkeeper-Captain

Wicketkeeping in the 1830s was an unprotected trade. Pads and gloves either did not exist or were rudimentary leather strips. The wicketkeeper stood up to the stumps as a matter of course, even against fast bowling, because the only effective method of stumping was to be near enough to break the wicket immediately.

Wenman was born at Benenden in Kent in 1803 and grew up at the same village green where the Mynn brothers played. He came into the Kent eleven in the late 1820s as a wicketkeeper and a lower-order batsman, and through the 1830s established himself as the best gloveman in England. His task was a difficult one: he kept to Alfred Mynn's fast roundarm bowling without leg-pads or the modern wicketkeeping gloves (which were only beginning to appear in the late 1830s), and he had to take the rising ball from a notoriously rough Town Malling pitch. Contemporaries report that he stood up to the stumps even to Mynn — a feat unimaginable in the modern era — and took an unusual number of stumpings. He was also the captain of the Kent side through much of the late 1830s, leading the strongest county team of the era. He played for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord's regularly through the 1830s and 1840s and was a fixture in North vs South matches. His batting was workmanlike rather than brilliant: he was the man who came in at number seven and made forty when forty was needed.

Wenman continued as Kent's wicketkeeper-captain into the 1840s, retiring at the end of the decade. He returned to Benenden and ran a public house. He died in 1879.