#1811

4 incidents tagged

Cricket on Life Support — The Three Wartime Matches of 1811-1813

Various private elevens at Lord's Middle Ground

1813-06-09

In the three years between 1811 and 1813, with the Napoleonic War at its height and the country bleeding men and money, only three senior cricket matches were played in England — all of them at Lord's Middle Ground in Marylebone. The fixture lists of the previous century shrank to a handful of private challenges between the elevens of Aislabie, Beauclerk, Osbaldeston and Bligh. County cricket effectively ceased to exist; the great clubs of Kent, Surrey and Hampshire scarcely fielded a senior side. Cricket survived only through the obstinacy of a few amateurs at Lord's.

#napoleonic-wars#lord-frederick-beauclerk#george-osbaldeston

🏏Moderate

MCC Codifies the Wide-Ball Penalty — A Law Born From a Single-Wicket Trick, 1811

n/a

1811-05-01

Stung by William Lambert's 1810 single-wicket trick of bowling deliberate wides at Lord Frederick Beauclerk to make him lose his temper, the MCC committee in 1811 added a penalty for wide deliveries. From that season on the wide added a run to the batting side, transforming the wide from a tactical nuisance into a punishable error and laying the legal foundation for one of cricket's longest-running rules.

#mcc#wide-ball#law-change

⭐Mild

Hampshire v Surrey for 500 Guineas — The First Women's County Cricket Match, 1811

Hampshire (women) vs Surrey (women)

1811-10-03

On 3 October 1811 — at the height of the Napoleonic War, when senior men's cricket had nearly dried up — Hampshire and Surrey women's elevens played a three-day match at Balls Pond on Newington Green for a stake of 500 guineas a side. It was the first recorded county-level women's cricket match in the world. Hampshire won by fifteen notches.

#women-s-cricket#hampshire#surrey

⭐Moderate

Origins of the Wide Ball Law — From Daddy White to MCC, 1809-1811

n/a

1811-05-13

Until 1811 there was no formal law against bowling wide. The MCC's revisions to the Laws of Cricket in 1809 began the move toward outlawing the wide ball, and the formal rule arrived in 1811 — partly in response to the practice (going back to 1771's Daddy White) of batsmen using disproportionately wide bats, partly in response to bowlers like William Lambert who had openly bowled wides to defeat opponents in single-wicket challenges.

#wide-ball#law-change#mcc