Wisden and Dean Break Away — The Founding of the United All-England Eleven, 1852

Clarke's All-England Eleven had been a commercial revolution when it was founded in 1846, giving professional cricketers a regular summer income. By 1852, however, the players had begun to notice how much of the gate money Clarke kept for himself, and his refusal to play at Lord's — where the MCC controlled the takings — had created a southern grievance.

Wisden was already the senior bowler of the AEE; Dean, a Sussex-born Surrey cricketer, was its leading roundarm bowler in the south. Their joint resignation in August 1852 was the trigger; within weeks they had recruited enough fellow southerners to mount a credible rival.

William Clarke had founded the All-England Eleven in 1846 and turned it into the most lucrative organisation in the country, taking professionals on touring exhibition matches against odds of 18 or 22 across northern England, the Midlands and Wales. By the early 1850s the AEE was the only realistic source of summer income for many of the leading players, and Clarke's grip on the purse-strings had become a grievance. The professionals received a flat match fee — usually £4 per game plus expenses — while Clarke retained the surplus from gate receipts that often ran to several hundred pounds. Clarke also refused to play matches at Lord's and chose his sides personally. In August 1852, after a season of friction, Wisden and Dean led a breakaway. They invited the disaffected, principally southern professionals — among them William Martingell, Will Mortlock, William Lillywhite (briefly) and several Sussex and Surrey men — to join a rival United All-England Eleven, of which Wisden and Dean would be joint secretaries and the players would split profits more equitably. Clarke responded by blackballing any player who joined the UAEE from his own fixtures and by refusing to allow AEE and UAEE to meet. The split lasted until Clarke's death in 1856; his successor George Parr ended the boycott and from 1857 the two sides played their annual match.

“Some of the professionals, led by John Wisden and Jemmy Dean, were dissatisfied by Clarke's ungenerous and undemocratic behaviour and sought larger wages.”

The two sides toured separately for four seasons. Clarke's death in August 1856 ended the boycott; Parr, a more conciliatory captain, agreed at once to an annual fixture, which began at Lord's on 1 June 1857. Both organisations continued to operate side by side through the 1860s, before being slowly displaced by the rise of the county clubs.