On 4-5 June 1838 William Clarke — proprietor of the newly-opened Trent Bridge ground — played his first major match for Nottingham against Sheffield at the new venue. He took 6 for 41 with his slow underarm bowling and scored 23 with the bat. The performance announced Clarke as a major-match player and confirmed Trent Bridge as a serious cricket venue from its opening.
Clarke had been playing for Nottingham at the Forest ground since 1824. By 1838 he was forty, married into the Trent Bridge Inn, and had opened the new ground beside the inn that May. The June 1838 fixture against Sheffield was Trent Bridge's third major match and Clarke's first as a major-match player rather than as ground proprietor. His 6 for 41 — slow underarm with extraordinary control of flight and pace — was the start of a major-match bowling career that would last twenty years.
1798
Clarke born at Nottingham
1824
Joins Nottingham CC
May 1838
Opens Trent Bridge
4-5 Jun 1838
First major-match appearance — 6 for 41
1846
Founds the All-England Eleven
1856
Clarke dies
The major-match debut of one of Victorian cricket's central figures and the establishment of Trent Bridge as a serious venue.
Modern Nottinghamshire cricket and the touring-eleven tradition both descend from Clarke. His 1838 major-match debut at his own new ground is the start of that arc.
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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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1831-11-05
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.
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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.