#first class debut

2 incidents tagged

W.G. Grace's First-Class Debut — Gentlemen v Players of the South, June 1865

Gentlemen of the South vs Players of the South

1865-06-22

On 22 June 1865, sixteen days short of his seventeenth birthday, William Gilbert Grace played his first first-class match. Picked by the Gentlemen of the South against the Players of the South at the Oval mainly for his bowling, he and I.D. Walker bowled unchanged through both Players innings. Grace took 13 wickets in the match. Although the Players won by 118 runs, the cricket world had its first sight of the man who would dominate the sport for the next thirty years.

#wg-grace#first-class-debut#1865

⭐Mild

Alfred Shaw's Emergence — Notts Debut and the Slow-Medium Revolution, 1864-66

Nottinghamshire vs Kent

1864-06-13

On 13 June 1864 a 21-year-old slow-medium bowler from Burton Joyce in Nottinghamshire made his first-class debut at Trent Bridge against Kent. Alfred Shaw — later 'the Emperor of Bowlers', the man who would bowl the first ball in Test cricket — had spent two seasons as a club professional at Grantham and had taken seven Notts wickets for the Colts in 1863. The 1864-66 emergence at Trent Bridge began a career that, more than any other, established the slow-medium length-and-line bowling that defined the next century of cricket.

#alfred-shaw#nottinghamshire#1864