Alfred Mynn's Leg Injury at Leicester — Single-Wicket vs Curzon, August 1836

Pads, gloves and helmets did not exist as cricket equipment in the 1830s. Batsmen relied on quick footwork and a degree of stoic acceptance. Fast bowlers under the new roundarm law were already striking shins and ankles routinely; serious injuries were common but rarely reported in the press.

Single-wicket cricket of the 1830s was played without leg protection of any kind. The 'pad' as we know it was a generation in the future; batsmen wore ordinary trousers and ordinary boots. Bowlers, increasingly fast under the new roundarm law, frequently struck the shin and ankle, and a serious injury was always one delivery away. Alfred Mynn was the worst-sufferer of the era because he was so often the headline attraction and so often faced fast bowling at one wicket. In August 1836, in a single-wicket match at Leicester arranged by northern promoters, Mynn was struck repeatedly on the right shin by deliveries that rose sharply from the rough Leicester pitch. He continued batting; the contemporary code of the cricket professional was that one did not show pain, and Mynn finished his innings. The leg was already badly bruised and bleeding at the end of the day. The journey home to Kent was made on the outside of a stagecoach because Mynn could no longer bend his knee — he was reportedly strapped to the roof and lay on his back for the entire journey. By the time he reached London the leg was severely infected. Surgeons at St Bartholomew's Hospital debated whether amputation was the only way to save his life; Mynn was nursed for several months and the leg was eventually saved, but he lost most of the next playing season. The episode entered cricket folklore as the ur-example of the brutality of unprotected single-wicket cricket and of the toughness of the Victorian professional.

“He was strapped to the roof of the coach and brought to London more dead than alive.”

“Few men have suffered for cricket as Alfred Mynn suffered, and fewer still have come back from it.”

Mynn returned to first-class cricket in late 1837 — well enough to thrash Dearman a second time at Brighton — but the leg never fully recovered. He carried a pronounced limp for the rest of his career and was prone to recurrent infections in the same leg. His later size and weight (close to twenty stone in his prime) compounded the problem.