England
1916-08-01
Although first-class cricket stopped in England between 1915 and 1918, schoolboy cricket — including the Eton-Harrow and Oxford-Cambridge fixtures, where age and conditions allowed — continued in modified form through the war, providing a thread of continuity through four otherwise empty seasons.
Australia
1915-06-28
Victor Trumper, the most adored batsman of cricket's Golden Age and to many Australians the finest stylist the game has produced, died of Bright's disease at his Sydney home on 28 June 1915. He was 37 years old. The funeral procession through Sydney was one of the largest the city had ever seen.
England
1915-10-23
William Gilbert Grace, the Victorian giant who had effectively invented modern batsmanship and dominated English cricket for forty years, died at his home in Mottingham on 23 October 1915. He was 67. The Zeppelin raids over London in his final weeks were said by family to have agitated him beyond endurance.
England
1915-04-04
Andrew Ernest Stoddart, the only man to captain England at both cricket and rugby union and twice an Ashes-winning skipper in the 1890s, shot himself at his St John's Wood home on 4 April 1915. He was 52. His suicide was reported sympathetically in the press and quietly recorded by the inquest as the act of a man in poor health and worse spirits.
Tasmania
1915-09-25
Alfred Williams, a Tasmanian all-rounder who had played first-class cricket for the state before the war and enlisted with the AIF, was among the earliest Australian first-class cricketers to be killed on the Western Front, falling in action in late September 1915. He was in his late twenties.
England
1915-07-23
Edmund Wilson, a Cambridge Blue and amateur batsman who had played for Yorkshire before the war, was killed in action near Hooge in the Ypres salient in July 1915. He was 25.
England
1915-04-01
From spring 1915 the MCC closed Lord's to first-class fixtures and made the ground available to the war effort. The pavilion was used as a wartime club for officers, parts of the outfield were dug for vegetables, and at various points the ground hosted military drills, hay storage and ammunition depots.
England
1915-04-15
In April 1915 the MCC formally announced that no County Championship would be held in 1915. With Test cricket already gone, the suspension marked the start of four consecutive lost first-class seasons in England — the longest gap in the history of the County Championship.
England
1915-08-15
Frank Foster, the Warwickshire left-armer who had taken 32 wickets on the 1911-12 Ashes tour as Sydney Barnes' new-ball partner, was injured in a motorcycle accident on military duty in August 1915. He never played first-class cricket again. He was 26.