Officers vs Civilians
1829-09-12
On 12 September 1829 a cricket match was played at St John's, Newfoundland, between officers of the garrison and a civilian side — the earliest documented cricket fixture in Newfoundland and one of the earliest in North America outside Halifax. The match is reported in the Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser of 19 September 1829.
Officers vs 21st Light Dragoons
1819-01-15
On 15 January 1819 officers of the Cape Town garrison played the rank-and-file of the 21st Light Dragoons at cricket on Green Point Common, on the open ground below Signal Hill. The match — recorded in the Cape Town Gazette — is the earliest documented cricket fixture in southern Africa and the founding event of South African cricket history.
Officers vs Other Ranks
1815-05-28
On 28 May 1815, three weeks before the battle of Waterloo, officers and other ranks of the British army played a cricket match in a meadow outside Brussels. The Officers won by an innings. The match was recorded in a letter home from Captain Alexander Cavalié Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery — whose Journal of the Waterloo Campaign is one of the great military memoirs of the period. The fixture is the most famous documented military cricket match of the Napoleonic era.
Officers vs Sergeants
1812-07-22
On 22 July 1812 — six weeks after the United States declared war on Britain — officers and sergeants of the Halifax garrison played a cricket match below Citadel Hill in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The fixture is the earliest documented cricket match in Canada and the founding event of Canadian cricket history.
Officers vs 28th Foot
1812-07-15
In summer 1812, two days before the battle of Salamanca, officers of Wellington's army played a cricket match against the rank-and-file of the 28th Regiment of Foot on a flat field outside the city. The match — the earliest documented cricket fixture played by British troops on the European mainland — was recorded in an officer's diary that survives in the National Army Museum. It is the foundation entry of military cricket overseas.