Between 1847 and 1849 the All-England Eleven extended its fixture list from the north and midlands into the West Country, the Welsh borders and East Anglia. Visits to Manchester, Bristol, Derby, Newcastle, Norwich, Stourbridge and dozens of other towns turned cricket from a southern English diversion into a recognisably national game and triggered a wave of local club foundations.
In 1846 first-class cricket was concentrated in London and a handful of southern grounds. The new railways, the rising prosperity of northern industrial towns, and Clarke's promotional drive combined to make a national fixture list possible for the first time.
The 1847 inaugural national tour had proved the model. Clarke spent the winter of 1847-48 expanding the list of host clubs and lengthening the season into August and September.
Clarke's eleven played around 25 fixtures in 1847; that rose to 30 in 1848 and 34 in 1849. The geographical spread widened in step. Manchester first hosted the eleven in 1847 (at Hyde Park, near the present Old Trafford); Bristol in 1848 (where the local team included a teenage E.M. Grace's older relatives and laid the seed of Gloucestershire cricket); Derby, Norwich, Stourbridge, Bath and Plymouth all received their first AEE visit in this period. Each fixture brought together a local 18 or 22 against the eleven and drew crowds of two to five thousand, with the gate generally going to the local club to underwrite improvements to ground, pavilion and equipment. The financial template — local club paid Clarke a guaranteed fee of £55 to £70 per match plus expenses, kept the gate, and used the day to stage its own equivalent of a county fete — gave provincial clubs both a benchmark and a windfall. Within five years Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle and Bristol all had clubs strong enough to challenge for first-class fixtures. The AEE matches also normalised the sight of professional cricketers in a town: spectators who had only read about Pilch, Mynn or Lillywhite saw them in the flesh.
1847: First AEE visits to Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle
1848: First AEE visits to Bristol and Derby
1848-49: First AEE visits to Norwich, Stourbridge, Bath and Plymouth
Each fixture: 18 or 22 of locals vs eleven, gate to host club
Local clubs use AEE day to fund pavilion and ground improvements
1849: Fixture list reaches 34 matches
1847
First AEE visits to Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle
1848
First AEE visits to Bristol, Derby, Norwich
1849
Fixture list reaches 34 matches
By 1850 every major industrial town in England had hosted the AEE at least once. The local clubs that descended from these visits — Manchester, Stockton, Newcastle and others — became the nuclei of the future county cricket clubs of Lancashire, Durham, Northumberland, Norfolk and Gloucestershire.
The travelling eleven that, more than any other single agent, made cricket a national game.
Lancashire CCC (1864), Yorkshire CCC (1863), Derbyshire (1870), Gloucestershire (1870) and most other northern and western county clubs were founded on the back of cricket cultures that AEE visits had nurtured in the 1840s and 1850s.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.