On 5 November 1831 George Osbaldeston rode 200 miles on Newmarket Heath in 8 hours 42 minutes, using a string of relay horses, for a wager of 1,000 guineas. The ride was the most celebrated single sporting feat of the Regency era — repeating in equestrian form the 1818 pedestrian feat and confirming Osbaldeston as the most flamboyant amateur sportsman of his generation. He had been an MCC committee member since his 1828 reconciliation with Beauclerk.
Osbaldeston, by then forty-five, had been preparing the wager for months. He laid out a 4-mile course on Newmarket Heath and arranged for a relay of 28 horses. He started at 7am on 5 November and completed the 200 miles at 3.42pm — under nine hours including all changes. The feat was reported across the British and continental press. He won the 1,000-guinea wager and the side bets. The ride is one of the most-cited sporting events of the early Victorian period.
1818
200-mile pedestrian wager
1828
Reconciliation with Beauclerk; rejoins MCC committee
5 Nov 1831
200-mile horse ride at Newmarket
1866
Osbaldeston dies
The most celebrated single sporting feat of the era — and a reminder of cricket's place within the wider Regency-Victorian sporting culture.
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1831-03-09
On 9 March 1831 Thomas 'Old Everlasting' Walker — the most famous defensive batter of the Hambledon school and one of the last surviving regulars of the great 1780s side — died at Churt, Surrey, in his early seventies. With Beldham still alive but long retired, Walker's death effectively closed the personal lineage of Hambledon cricket as a presence in the contemporary game.
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1831-06-25
The earliest documented cricket match at Christ's Hospital School — the historic 'Bluecoat' charity school in central London — was a house fixture played in the summer of 1831. Cricket had been informal at Christ's Hospital from the late eighteenth century; the 1831 match is the earliest preserved with a full account in the school's surviving records.
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1832-11-15
In November 1832 the Cape Town Cricket Club was formally constituted with a committee, a subscription roll and a leased ground at Green Point Common. The founding was the institutional successor to the garrison cricket that had been documented in 1819 and is the foundation entry of organised civilian cricket in South Africa. Cape Town CC is one of the oldest constituted cricket clubs in the southern hemisphere.