Billy Beldham's Last Match — The Penultimate Hambledonian Plays for the Players, 1821

Beldham had played for Hampshire from 1782 and had been the leading professional batsman of the 1790s and 1800s. By 1821 he was the last Hambledon-era cricketer still active at the highest level; John Small junior, his only real contemporary, had retired some years earlier.

The Coronation Match was the Gentlemen v Players showpiece of the year and the Players' selection committee — heavy with Hampshire and Surrey men — gave Beldham a place in recognition of long service. He had probably already decided this would be his last important game.

William Beldham, born at Wrecclesham in Surrey on 5 February 1766, made his senior debut for Hampshire in 1782, joined the Hambledon Club, and went on to play more than 40 seasons of important cricket — the longest career of any cricketer of the Hambledon and early-MCC era. By 1821 he was 55 and almost the only surviving Hambledonian still playing at the highest level. The Players selected him for the Coronation Match against the Gentlemen at Lord's on 23-24 July 1821; he batted in the second half of the order and was 23 not out when the Gentlemen conceded the match midway through day two. Contemporary reports note that he was hampered by injury and could not 'run his notches' (i.e. his runs); had he been fully fit, his score would have been higher. The match itself, marked by Thomas Beagley's 113 and the Gentlemen's collapse, has been covered separately, but for Beldham personally it was the closing curtain. He retired to Tilford in Surrey, where he kept the Barley Mow public house, and lived until 1862, dying at the age of 96 — the last man alive who had played for Hambledon in its prime. Beldham's nickname 'Silver Billy' came from the colour of his hair, prematurely grey by his thirties; John Nyren, who saw him play, called him 'the most graceful batsman it has ever been my fortune to see'.

Beldham survived for another four decades. James Pycroft and others made pilgrimage to Tilford to interview him; his recollections, published in The Cricket Field (1851) and elsewhere, are a primary source for the Hambledon era. He was the last living link to the village cricket of the eighteenth century.