Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas Land (cricketer)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to Hambledon Club. There appears to be a rough consensus against keeping this. Unfortunately the consensus ends there. In such circumstances WP:ATD applies and I typically go with the least extreme course. Ad Orientem (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Thomas Land (cricketer)

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This was de-PRODed to start a more in-depth discussion. The original reason stands: "Fails WP:CRIN inclusion guidelines - did not play at first-class cricket, and his association with the Hambledon Club seems to be limited - it was formed after he left the village, and he appears to have just organised informal village matches prior to his departure."

I'll add that a WP:BEFORE search results in just a handful of single sentence mentions indicating that the topic fails WP:GNG. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:25, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Cricket-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2019 (UTC)


 *  Delete Selective Merge - lack of reliable sources that show any real notability tend to lead me towards delete here. I'm just not very sure he was all that notable. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:21, 20 January 2019 (UTC) Updated: I'm entirely happy with a merge as discussed below. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:41, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep Before the MCC, there was "Squire Land's Club" which was the foremost cricket club in the country. Thomas Land was the organiser of cricket in the area and so is one of the founding fathers of the sport.  But he wasn't just a cricketer – he was also master of foxhounds for the Hambledon Hunt.  The Hambledon Hounds were kenneled at his Park House in Hampshire, which still seems to be a listed building.  So, the subject was a local grandee and a key person for more than one sport.  I'm just getting started on this but reckon that, rather than deleting anything, we should be creating several more articles.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and so should not confine itself to narrow enthusiasms like cricket and warships.  Topics such as this are good background for comprehensive coverage of the period, helping us understand its rich history and heritage. Andrew D. (talk) 10:17, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you can find the sources then I'd support that. In the interim, if necessary, a redirect to Hambledown would be a reasonable solution. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:20, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Given Andrew D.'s comments, I would be inclined to keep if the article is improved along those lines by the close of this discussion, and otherwise to move to draft to provide further opportunity for such improvement. bd2412  T 17:13, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge to Hambledon Club, not enough for a standalone, but worthy of a mention in the Hambledon Club article. StickyWicket (talk) 15:07, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   09:40, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment If anyone has access to the book Start of Play: Cricket and Culture in Eighteenth- Century England by David Underdown (Allen Lane, 2000), both the Google Books search result ("There was of course no real squire in Hambledon at this date, but the Lands were prominent residents - it will be recalled that Thomas Land had been ...") and the snippet view suggest there is some coverage of Thomas Land. RebeccaGreen (talk) 10:08, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge to Hambledon Club, unless and until sufficient sources can be found to support a standalone article. I'm not sure that "Saturday died, in an advanced age, Thomas Land, Efq. of Hambledon, one of the moft celebrated fox-hunters in Great-Britain." is quite the length of obituary needed to satisfy WP:BIO, as I would guess most landed gentry would recieve a similar such note of their passing in the 18th century.--Pontificalibus 10:42, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak delete - I don't think there is a strong case for Land being encyclopedic, but it seems that the Land and his father were someone important regionally during the period. Here are two excerpts from the Underdown book:
 * ...The Waltham Blacks [Blacks were poachers, see Black Act 1723] drastically reduced the number of deer in the Hampshire forests, and even after 1723, when several of their leaders were executed, sporadic violence continued." Some of the violence occurred at Hambledon.
 * Among the leading inhabitants was a wealthy yeoman named Thomas Land, from one of those families who were climbing the social ladder towards gentility. He had been John Collins's colleague as churchwarden but was on the opposite side in the lawsuit over the alterations to the church, and it is possible that he disliked Collins's attempt to curry favour with the young men of the church choir. Young men were particularly vulnerable to the lure of deer-stealing, and Land may also have been unpopular with the poaching fraternity because of his apparently Whiggish politics - the Blacks tended to have Jacobite sympathies. At all events, not long after his breach with Collins a group of men broke into Land's coppice, collected straw and kindling, and set fire to the stacks of wood there. The suspects included at least two Hambledon men: Richard Martin,, a shoemaker, and Thomas Taylor, a blacksmith. A third suspect was a tailor from Bishop's Waltham, John Collins, junior, presumably a relative of the Hambledon churchwarden. All this suggests that there were people in Hambledon who were inclined to resist authority, ... [more on deer stealing] ... (p104)
 * ... The newspaper describes Hambledon as 'Squire Lamb's Club', presumably a misprint for 'Land'. There was of course no real squire in Hambledon at this date, but the Lands were prominent residents - it will be recalled that Thomas Land had been the victim of an arson attack by the 'Blacks' in 1723. This Thomas died in 1767, and the patron of the cricket club is more likely to have been his son, also named Thomas, who was born in 1714. However, it may be that Land's role in the club was being exaggerated by a newspaper unable to comprehend all the intricacies of the local social order. ... (p109)
 * My reading of both excerpts is that Land did not make an especially significant contribution to Cricket. He or his father may be encyclopedic due to local politics, and Underdown's book suggests there is more, but I can't find it. Smmurphy(Talk) 18:29, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.