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The 1830s

Cricket controversies from 1830 to 1839

26 incidents documented

⭐Mild

Sussex County Cricket Club Formally Reconstituted — Brighton, 1839

Sussex

1839-03-01

Sussex County Cricket Club, founded at Brighton on 1 March 1839, was the first formally constituted county cricket club in the world. Built on the Sussex cricketing tradition that William Lillywhite and James Broadbridge had carried since the 1820s, the club provided the model — committee, subscriptions, ground, professional staff — that all subsequent county cricket clubs followed.

#sussex-ccc#brighton#1839
⭐Mild

Kent's Golden Era — The Strongest County of the Late 1830s

Kent

1839-08-01

From 1836 to the late 1840s Kent was the strongest county in England. The combination of Alfred Mynn's fast roundarm bowling, Fuller Pilch's batting (after his 1836 transfer from Norfolk), Ned Wenman's wicketkeeping and Felix's amateur stroke-play made Kent the side every other county feared. The Canterbury Cricket Week, founded in 1842, would become the showpiece of this golden era.

#kent#alfred-mynn#fuller-pilch
⭐Mild

William Lillywhite at Forty-Seven — Roundarm Mastery, 1839

Sussex, Players, South

1839-08-12

By 1839 William Lillywhite was 47 years old — an age at which most cricketers of any era have long since retired — and was still indisputably the leading bowler in England. The 1839 season saw him take wickets in every major fixture: Players vs Gentlemen at Lord's, North vs South, and the Sussex county matches. His longevity at the top of the bowling lists is one of the remarkable features of the late 1830s.

#william-lillywhite#the-nonpareil#1839
⭐Mild

Trent Bridge Cricket Ground Opens — Nottingham, 1838

Nottinghamshire

1838-05-26

William Clarke laid out a cricket ground on land behind the Trent Bridge Inn at Nottingham in 1838, the year after his marriage to the inn's proprietor, the widow Mary Chapman. The ground hosted its first major match in May 1838 and grew through the nineteenth century into one of cricket's great Test venues — and the only major Test ground in the world founded by a single individual on commercial initiative.

#trent-bridge#william-clarke#nottingham
⭐Mild

Nicholas Wanostrocht 'Felix' — Schoolmaster, Batsman and Author

Kent, Gentlemen of England

1838-06-01

Nicholas Wanostrocht — universally known by his pen-name 'Felix' — was the most cultured cricketer of the 1830s. The son of a Kent schoolmaster of Belgian descent, he ran a school in Camberwell, played for Kent as a left-handed amateur batsman of the first rank, painted, wrote, invented the catapulta bowling-machine, and would later produce the classic instructional text *Felix on the Bat* (1845).

#nicholas-wanostrocht#felix#kent
⭐Mild

Married vs Single — Women's Cricket Match, 1838

Married women vs Single women

1838-08-13

Through the late 1830s the rural Married vs Single women's cricket match — a tradition dating from at least the 1740s — continued to be played in several English villages. The 1838 fixture, reported in the Sporting Magazine, is one of the better-documented examples of women's cricket in a decade in which the men's first-class game was rapidly professionalising and the women's tradition was carrying on alongside.

#womens-cricket#married-vs-single#1838
⭐Mild

William Caffyn's Boyhood at Reigate — Cricket Apprenticeship in the Late 1830s

Reigate village cricket

1838-06-01

William Caffyn — later one of the great Surrey professionals of the 1850s, member of both the 1861-62 Stephenson and the 1863-64 Parr tours of Australia, and eventually the most influential coach in colonial Australian cricket — was a small boy at Reigate in the late 1830s, learning his cricket at a village green where his father ran a barber's shop. His memoir *71 Not Out* (1899) preserves a vivid picture of the cricketing world of his late-1830s boyhood.

#william-caffyn#reigate#surrey
⭐Mild

Mynn vs Dearman — Brighton Rematch, August 1837

Alfred Mynn (Kent) vs James Dearman (Yorkshire)

1837-08-21

In August 1837 the Sheffield batsman James Dearman, smarting from his innings-and-107 thrashing at Town Malling the previous September, demanded a return single-wicket match against Alfred Mynn. The rematch was played at Brighton on 21-22 August 1837 and went the same way as the first: Mynn won by an innings and 67 runs.

#alfred-mynn#james-dearman#single-wicket
⭐Mild

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

Kent, England

1837-07-01

Edward 'Ned' Wenman of Benenden in Kent was the wicketkeeper around whom the great Kent side of the late 1830s and 1840s was built. With Pilch and Mynn ahead of him in the order he was a useful lower-order batsman; behind the stumps he was reckoned the best wicketkeeper in England, taking Mynn's fast roundarm bowling without complaint and effecting more stumpings than any contemporary.

#ned-wenman#edward-wenman#kent
⭐Mild

Sussex — The Roundarm County of the 1830s

Sussex

1837-06-15

Through the 1830s Sussex was, with Kent, one of the two leading counties in England. The county had been the cradle of roundarm bowling — Lillywhite and Jem Broadbridge had been the bowlers who forced the law change of 1828 — and through the 1830s the Sussex eleven, built around Lillywhite's bowling and Tom Box behind the stumps, was a regular winner against all comers.

#sussex#william-lillywhite#jem-broadbridge
⭐Moderate

Alfred Mynn vs James Dearman — Single-Wicket Challenge, 1836

Alfred Mynn (Kent) vs James Dearman (Yorkshire)

1836-09-29

On 29 and 30 September 1836 the giant Kent fast bowler Alfred Mynn — already nicknamed 'the Lion of Kent' — met the Sheffield batsman James Dearman in a £100-a-side single-wicket challenge at Town Malling in Kent. Mynn, then 28 and weighing close to twenty stone, demolished Dearman: he scored 123 runs to Dearman's 0 and 16, and won by an innings and 107.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#james-dearman
⭐Mild

First North vs South Match — Lord's, July 1836

North of England vs South of England

1836-07-11

On 11 July 1836 the first match between the North and South of England was played at Lord's. Conceived as a rival showcase to Gentlemen vs Players and a vehicle for the leading professionals, the fixture became an annual highlight of the English summer for the next forty years and was for much of the mid-Victorian period the most prestigious match in the calendar.

#north-vs-south#1836#lord-s
⭐Moderate

Fuller Pilch's Transfer from Norfolk to Kent — 1836

Norfolk to Kent

1836-04-01

Early in 1836 the Norfolk batsman Fuller Pilch — by then unanimously regarded as the leading batsman in England — was engaged as a paid professional by the Town Malling club in Kent at a salary of around £100 a year, plus the tenancy of a public house. The move marked the start of Kent's golden era under Alfred Mynn and was one of the earliest high-profile professional engagements in cricket.

#fuller-pilch#norfolk#kent
⭐Serious

Alfred Mynn's Leg Injury at Leicester — Single-Wicket vs Curzon, August 1836

Alfred Mynn vs the North

1836-08-29

In August 1836, between his two thrashings of Dearman, Alfred Mynn played a single-wicket match at Leicester in which his right leg was repeatedly hit by fast roundarm bowling at the unprotected shin. The injuries festered on the long coach journey home and Mynn nearly lost the leg to gangrene; he was strapped to the roof of the stagecoach because he could not bend his knee, and surgeons in London debated amputation before saving the limb.

#alfred-mynn#single-wicket#1836
⭐Mild

First Gentlemen vs Players Match Won by the Players — 1836

Gentlemen of England vs Players of England

1836-07-04

Through the 1820s the Gentlemen of England had usually beaten the Players because the match-rules tilted heavily in the amateurs' favour (often the Gentlemen were given extra batsmen or the Players had to use given men). In 1836, with the rules levelled and the Players fielding their full strength of Lillywhite, Pilch, Mynn and Cobbett, the professionals at last won the match cleanly — the start of decades of professional dominance.

#gentlemen-vs-players#1836#lord-s
⭐Serious

MCC Laws Revision — Roundarm Permitted to Shoulder Height, 1835

n/a

1835-05-19

On 19 May 1835 the Marylebone Cricket Club rewrote Law 10 a second time, raising the permitted height of the bowler's hand from the elbow (the 1828 limit) to the shoulder. The change ratified what most leading bowlers — Lillywhite, Broadbridge, the Lillywhite imitators in Kent and Surrey — had already been doing in practice and was the second of three law changes (1828, 1835, 1864) by which underarm cricket gave way to overarm.

#mcc#law-change#1835
⭐Moderate

The Follow-On Rule — Introduced into the Laws, 1835

n/a

1835-05-19

The same MCC laws revision of May 1835 that raised the bowling-arm limit also introduced cricket's first formal follow-on rule. Originally the side that batted second was compelled to follow on if it trailed by a stipulated margin, with no captain's discretion; the threshold and the discretion would be amended several times in later decades.

#mcc#follow-on#1835
🏏Mild

The LBW Law in the 1830s — Existing but Rarely Applied

n/a

1835-08-01

The leg-before-wicket law had existed in cricket's code since 1774 — and had been tightened in 1839 to require the ball to pitch in line — but in the 1830s it was rarely applied. Umpires of the era were generally unwilling to give a batsman out leg-before unless the ball had hit the pad in the most blatant manner; lbw dismissals were a small fraction of those given by modern umpires.

#lbw#law-change#1830s
⭐Mild

William Lillywhite 'The Nonpareil' — Sussex's Roundarm Master Through the 1830s

Sussex, MCC, England

1834-07-01

Through the 1830s William Lillywhite of Sussex — universally known as 'the Nonpareil' for his accuracy — was the most successful bowler in England. He had been one of the two Sussex bowlers (with Jem Broadbridge) who forced the legalisation of roundarm in 1828; through the 1830s he refined the new style into an instrument of unprecedented control, taking hundreds of wickets a season at a length other bowlers could not match.

#william-lillywhite#the-nonpareil#sussex
⭐Mild

The 'Old Buffers' — Hambledon Nostalgia in the 1830s

n/a

1834-09-01

Through the 1830s a small group of surviving Hambledon veterans — William Beldham 'Silver Billy', John Nyren and a handful of others — were the last living link to the great Hambledon era of the 1770s and 1780s. Cowden Clarke's transcription of Nyren's recollections (1833) captured their world for posterity, and the 'old buffers' became a fixture of cricketing nostalgia for the rest of the Victorian period.

#hambledon#old-buffers#william-beldham
⭐Mild

Alfred Mynn 'The Lion of Kent' — The Giant of 1830s Cricket

Kent, Players of England

1834-08-01

Alfred Mynn of Goudhurst in Kent — six feet one inch tall, eighteen to twenty stone in his prime, and capable of bowling fast roundarm at speeds contemporaries described as terrifying — emerged through the 1830s as cricket's first true giant. Nicknamed 'the Lion of Kent', he was the central fast bowler of his era, the pre-eminent single-wicket cricketer, and the figure around whom the great Kent eleven of the late 1830s and 1840s was built.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#kent
⭐Mild

John Nyren's *The Young Cricketer's Tutor* — First Major Cricket Book, 1833

n/a

1833-04-01

In April 1833 the publisher Effingham Wilson of the Royal Exchange brought out *The Young Cricketer's Tutor*, written by the elderly Hambledon player John Nyren and edited by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke. The slim duodecimo combined a manual of technique with a memoir of the great Hambledon men of the 1770s and 1780s and is generally regarded as the first significant book in cricket literature.

#john-nyren#young-cricketers-tutor#charles-cowden-clarke
⭐Mild

John Nyren's Nostalgic Hambledon Writings — *The Cricketers of My Time*, 1833

n/a

1833-04-15

The second half of John Nyren's 1833 *Young Cricketer's Tutor* — bound in as the appendix *The Cricketers of My Time* — was the first sustained piece of cricket prose ever written. Across some sixty pages Nyren remembered the great Hambledon men of the 1770s and 1780s with affection and precision, and in doing so created the literary mode — nostalgic, particular, character-driven — that has shaped cricket writing ever since.

#john-nyren#the-cricketers-of-my-time#hambledon
⭐Mild

Tom Marsden of Sheffield — Yorkshire's Leading Batsman of the Early 1830s

Yorkshire, North

1833-09-05

Tom Marsden of Sheffield was the leading northern batsman of the early 1830s and the man who carried Yorkshire cricket through the decade. A left-handed bat of unusual power, he had scored 227 in a single innings as early as 1826 — at the time the highest individual score in English cricket. By the early 1830s he was the natural counterweight to Pilch in any North vs South discussion.

#tom-marsden#sheffield#yorkshire
⭐Mild

First Match at the Saffrons, Eastbourne — 1832

Eastbourne club fixtures

1832-08-01

In 1832 the first recorded cricket match was played on the meadow at Eastbourne known as the Saffrons, named for the saffron crocuses once grown there. The ground would become one of the longest continuously used cricket venues in England and the regular home of Eastbourne Cricket Club, hosting Sussex county fixtures and, in the twentieth century, Australian touring sides.

#the-saffrons#eastbourne#1832
⭐Mild

Fuller Pilch — England's Leading Batsman of the 1830s

Norfolk, Kent, England

1830-06-01

Through the 1830s the Norfolk-born professional Fuller Pilch was the most consistent batsman in England. Standing six feet tall and using a long forward stride that contemporaries called 'Pilch's poke' — the front foot pushed almost to the pitch of the ball before the bat came down — he reduced the new roundarm bowling to manageable terms when most batsmen were still being shelled out cheaply, and held the title of best bat in England for the better part of two decades.

#fuller-pilch#norfolk#kent