Squire Osbaldeston Resigns From MCC and Is Barred for Life — 1818

Osbaldeston and Beauclerk had been single-wicket rivals since at least 1812. The 1810 'Play or Pay' incident, in which Lambert bowled wides at Beauclerk to win a match in which Osbaldeston had been ill, had already poisoned the relationship. Through the 1810s Osbaldeston's growing influence as an MCC patron rivalled Beauclerk's, and the committee was effectively split.

The 1817 ban on William Lambert — Osbaldeston's regular partner — had removed Osbaldeston's most reliable ally on the field. The 1818 match was scheduled in the knowledge that Osbaldeston would have to play alone or with a weaker partner.

Osbaldeston (1786-1866) was the wealthy heir to a Yorkshire estate at Hutton Buscel and a man whose appetite for sport bordered on the manic. He was a champion shot, a steeplechase rider, a tennis player, a billiards adept, and one of the strongest cricketers of his generation. His highest first-class score was 112 for MCC v Middlesex in 1816. He was also Lord Frederick Beauclerk's only serious rival as the leading amateur of the day, and the personal antipathy between them — fed by their rival single-wicket challenges through the 1810s — was an open secret at Lord's. The decisive break came in 1818. Accounts of the match itself are contradictory: most sources call it a single-wicket challenge in which Osbaldeston was paired with William Lambert, who had been banned by MCC the previous year. With Lambert ineligible, Osbaldeston had to play alone. He lost. Convinced that the rules had been bent against him by Beauclerk, he wrote a furious letter to the MCC committee and resigned his membership. When his temper cooled he tried, through E.H. Budd, to be reinstated. Beauclerk had the influence to block him and used it. The MCC committee resolved that Osbaldeston, having resigned in his own letter, could not be readmitted. He had effectively barred himself for life. Apart from a few county matches in the 1820s and his last appearance in 1830, his senior cricket career was over at the age of 31.

“He was a man whose temper was as fast as his bowling.”

Osbaldeston turned his energies to other sports. In 1831 he rode 200 miles in 8 hours 42 minutes using 28 horses, a feat that remains one of the great achievements of equestrian endurance. He served briefly in the House of Commons and continued to play occasional cricket on private grounds in Yorkshire. He died in 1866 having outlived Beauclerk by sixteen years. The MCC never formally reinstated him.