Eleven vs Eighteen, Twenty-Two of Locals — The Odds Format of AEE Tours, 1846-49

Eleven-on-eleven cricket between an England side and a provincial local team would have been a heavy mismatch in the 1840s. The odds format provided a competitive structure that allowed the AEE to play any local side anywhere in the country.

Clarke understood the commercial logic from the start. His winter 1846-47 fixture-list correspondence with local clubs always specified 'eighteen of [town]' or 'twenty-two of [town]' as the home side.

The odds format had been used in country-house cricket for decades. Clarke's contribution was to apply it systematically as the basis of every AEE fixture: the local club fielded eighteen or twenty-two players (sometimes selected from the host town, sometimes including a few professional 'given men' to stiffen the side); the AEE fielded its eleven. The local side typically batted with all eighteen or twenty-two, taking long innings; the AEE bowled fewer overs but had to take more wickets. Eighteens were the standard for stronger venues (Sheffield, Manchester); twenty-twos for weaker (smaller country towns). The format meant that even an inexperienced local side could give the AEE a decent contest — the local club typically won perhaps a quarter of fixtures — and the closeness of the contest was what drew crowds and gate. From 1846 to 1862 the AEE played hundreds of matches at odds; the same format was adopted for the Stephenson and Parr tours of Australia in 1861-62 and 1863-64, and for the Aboriginal tour of 1868. Only when colonial cricket reached eleven-a-side parity in the 1870s did odds cricket fade.

Odds cricket faded in England through the 1860s as county cricket became established and in Australia through the 1870s as colonial sides reached parity. By the first Test in 1877 odds cricket at international level was effectively over.