Surrey's 21-Year Oval Lease and Champion County Years — F.P. Miller's Captaincy, 1855

The Oval had only been a cricket ground since 1845, when the Surrey Club was constituted to lease the site from the Duchy of Cornwall. The early years were precarious; only the 1855 lease guaranteed long-term tenancy. Miller's captaincy began in 1851, when the club had not yet built up the professional staff that would later dominate the country.

Miller spent his first three seasons (1851-53) building the Surrey eleven around emerging professionals — Caffyn from Reigate, Lockyer from Croydon, Mortlock from Croydon — and persuading the committee to invest in their wages. The 1854 season produced the first acclaimed Champion County title.

The Oval had been laid out as a cricket ground in 1845 on a former market garden in Kennington owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. Surrey CCC was constituted to lease it that same year. By the early 1850s the club faced the question of whether the Duchy would renew the tenancy on terms it could afford; in 1855 a 21-year lease was secured, giving the club the security on which it built the Champion County run of the 1850s. Miller, an amateur of considerable means and unusual cricket sense, was elected captain in 1851 and held the post until 1866. He led a side dominated by professionals — William Caffyn, Tom Lockyer, Will Mortlock, Julius Caesar, George Griffith and H.H. Stephenson — and is reckoned by writers from David Lemmon onward as one of the great captains of the nineteenth century. In 1857 Surrey won every one of their nine fixtures, an achievement unmatched at county level for several decades. Jem Grundy of Nottinghamshire said that Miller's captaincy was 'worth fifty runs in the field'; Wisden later bracketed him with John Shuter, Percy Fender and Stuart Surridge as Surrey's greatest leaders.

“His captaincy was worth fifty runs in the field.”

Surrey's professional strength under Miller was the talent pool from which the touring Englands of 1859, 1861-62 and 1863-64 were drawn — Caffyn, Lockyer, Mortlock, Stephenson, Griffith and Mudie all toured. The Oval lease secured in 1855 ran to 1876 and was renewed thereafter; the ground would host the first Test in England in September 1880 and remains Surrey's home today.