William 'The Nonpareil' Lillywhite — The Emergence of Cricket's First Great Bowler, 1820s

Lillywhite came from a Sussex labouring family and made his first appearances in club matches in the late 1810s. He combined his cricket career with running a public house in Brighton.

By 1822 he was drawing notice for the steadiness of his roundarm action, and by 1825 he was the leading bowler for Sussex. Broadbridge, four years younger and from a more prosperous background, made up the other end. Together they were the most feared opening pair of the decade.

Born at Westhampnett, Sussex, on 13 June 1792, Lillywhite was already approaching his thirties when he took up serious cricket. His career proper began in 1825 (the conventional starting date used by cricket historians, though he had appeared in lesser fixtures earlier) and ran until his benefit match in 1853. Lillywhite bowled right-arm fast-medium roundarm with an action that contemporaries described as the most rhythmical they had ever seen. He was a small man, less than 5 feet 5 inches tall, and stocky; he bowled all day in a top hat and a black suit and was famous for never tiring. By the late 1820s he was the chief weapon of Sussex, the strongest county in England, and he was the central figure in the trial matches of 1827. Despite the formal inconclusiveness of the trials, his reputation was made; by 1830 the umpires were not no-balling him whatever the height of his arm. Through the 1830s and 1840s he took 100 wickets in a season repeatedly — three consecutive seasons between 1842 and 1844 — and ended his career with over 1,500 first-class wickets, a tally only Alfred Mynn's would seriously rival. The nickname 'Nonpareil' (without equal) was used of him from at least the early 1840s, partly to distinguish him from Fuller Pilch, whom contemporaries called the 'nonpareil hitter'.

Lillywhite was idolised in his lifetime as the model professional. His sons John, James and Frederick all became cricketers and publishers; the Lillywhite name dominated cricket annuals from the 1840s until the rise of Wisden in the 1870s. John Lillywhite would, four decades later, no-ball Edgar Willsher and force the next great law change.