Gentlemen vs Players — The Class Divide in 1880s Cricket

The Gentlemen v Players match dated to 1806. By the 1880s it was the pinnacle of the English domestic season after the Roses match. Amateurs were entitled to 'expenses' which routinely exceeded what professionals were paid.

The 1881 Notts strike, the 1884 Australian tour pay dispute and the various WG Grace earnings controversies kept the class question in the press throughout the decade.

The amateur/professional distinction had been formalised in cricket since the 1830s. Amateurs played for love (officially) and were entitled to expenses; professionals played for wages. By the 1880s the convention was: amateurs entered the field through one gate, professionals through another; amateurs had their initials printed before the surname (W.G. Grace, A.G. Steel), professionals after (Shrewsbury, A.; Briggs, J.); the captain of any representative side, by long convention, was always an amateur.

The contradictions of the system were obvious. WG Grace, the most famous amateur in the game, had been paid £1,500 plus expenses for the 1873-74 Australian tour; he was paid £3,000 for the 1891-92 tour. His match fees and benefit payments through the 1880s amounted to a professional's wages many times over. He used 'expenses' as a polite fiction. The professional Shaw, Shrewsbury, Lillywhite trio could only earn comparable money by organising their own private tours.

The Notts strike of 1881 — Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury leading their fellow professionals against the Nottinghamshire committee — was the most open conflict of the decade. The strikers demanded contracts of employment and benefit funds. They were eventually readmitted but with apologies; the structural inequality persisted.

The Gentlemen v Players match itself was the showpiece. Played twice a year (Lord's and The Oval), it routinely drew 20,000-30,000 spectators in the 1880s. Through the decade, Gentlemen sides built around Grace, Steel, Lyttelton, Lord Harris and CT Studd faced Players sides built around Shrewsbury, Shaw, Briggs, Peel and Lohmann. The Players generally won.

“Amateurs and Professionals were segregated even when changing.”

“We professionals were paid; the gentlemen were paid more, but they called it expenses.”

The Gentlemen-Players distinction continued through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, both world wars and the post-war austerity. It was finally abolished in 1963 when MCC voted to end the formal distinction. The last Gentlemen v Players match was played at Scarborough in September 1962.

The Notts strikers — Shrewsbury and Shaw — went on to organise three private tours of Australia (1881-82, 1884-85, 1886-87) that earned them substantial sums and prefigured modern player-organised cricket in the Packer style.