On 3 October 1811 — at the height of the Napoleonic War, when senior men's cricket had nearly dried up — Hampshire and Surrey women's elevens played a three-day match at Balls Pond on Newington Green for a stake of 500 guineas a side. It was the first recorded county-level women's cricket match in the world. Hampshire won by fifteen notches.
Women had played cricket in southern England for at least sixty years. The Reading Mercury of 1745 recorded a match between Bramley and Hambledon women. Sussex villages staged annual women's matches on commons. By 1811, however, no county-level women's match had ever been formally arranged. The Napoleonic War, ironically, may have helped: with the men's professional ranks decimated, gentleman patrons looking for cricket entertainment turned to women's elevens.
The match was advertised in the London papers a fortnight beforehand. The Hampshire side trained on a private ground at Alton; the Surrey side practised at Newington itself. Both elevens were mostly drawn from the rural south, and contemporary accounts note that they bowled and batted in white dresses with coloured ribbons.
Women's cricket in the late eighteenth century had been an established curiosity. Single-wicket and full-side games had been played in Sussex villages and on Surrey commons since at least 1745, and the Hambledon-era diaries of John Nyren mention several women bowlers of high quality. The 1811 match at Newington Green, however, was the first staged on a properly contested county basis. The promoters were two unnamed noblemen who put up the prize money — 500 guineas a side, a sum equivalent to about £40,000 in modern values. The match was played over three days, 3-5 October 1811, on the field at Balls Pond, then a London suburb on the edge of Islington. Hampshire fielded a side captained by Anna Newland of Alton; Surrey were led by a Mrs Crocker. The cricket was reported by the Sporting Magazine as 'spirited and even', with several catches rated 'as good as men's cricket can show'. Hampshire won by fifteen notches — that is, fifteen runs in the underarm scoring of the day. The reporting press treated the match as a novelty: there were ribald jokes in some London papers and a respectful, almost surprised tone in others. The 500 guineas were paid out and the players returned home; no second county match of comparable status followed for almost a century.
Autumn 1811: Two noblemen subscribe 500 guineas a side as prize money
3 October 1811: Match begins at Balls Pond, Newington Green
Hampshire bowled by Anna Newland of Alton; Surrey by Mrs Crocker
Sporting Magazine reports the catches 'as good as men's cricket'
5 October 1811: Hampshire win by fifteen notches
Prize money paid out to the winners
1745
First recorded women's match (Bramley v Hambledon)
Autumn 1811
Two noblemen put up 500 guineas a side
3-5 Oct 1811
Hampshire v Surrey at Balls Pond — Hampshire win by 15 notches
1887
White Heather Club founded — women's cricket revival
1998
MCC formally acknowledges women's cricket history
“The match was played with great spirit and the catches were as good as men's cricket can show.”
No further county-level women's matches of comparable status followed in the next several decades. Women's village cricket continued in Sussex and Hampshire but the gentlemen patrons returned their attention to the men's game once the Napoleonic War ended in 1815. Organised women's cricket would not be revived at county level until the founding of the White Heather Club in 1887 and the formation of the Women's Cricket Association in 1926.
A striking flash of what women's cricket might have become a hundred years earlier than it eventually did. The Napoleonic War context made the match more remarkable still: women's county cricket existed when the men's barely did.
The 1811 match is now recognised as the founding date of women's county cricket. The MCC, which long ignored women's cricket entirely, formally cited the match in its 1998 acknowledgement of women's cricket history. England women's cricket dates many of its institutional firsts from the slow recovery that began in the late nineteenth century, but the line of descent runs back to the Hampshire eleven that took fifteen notches off Surrey on the Newington Green in October 1811.
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.