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#hambledon

10 incidents tagged

⭐Mild

The 'Old Buffers' — Hambledon Nostalgia in the 1830s

n/a

1834-09-01

Through the 1830s a small group of surviving Hambledon veterans — William Beldham 'Silver Billy', John Nyren and a handful of others — were the last living link to the great Hambledon era of the 1770s and 1780s. Cowden Clarke's transcription of Nyren's recollections (1833) captured their world for posterity, and the 'old buffers' became a fixture of cricketing nostalgia for the rest of the Victorian period.

#hambledon#old-buffers#william-beldham
⭐Mild

John Nyren's *The Young Cricketer's Tutor* — First Major Cricket Book, 1833

n/a

1833-04-01

In April 1833 the publisher Effingham Wilson of the Royal Exchange brought out *The Young Cricketer's Tutor*, written by the elderly Hambledon player John Nyren and edited by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke. The slim duodecimo combined a manual of technique with a memoir of the great Hambledon men of the 1770s and 1780s and is generally regarded as the first significant book in cricket literature.

#john-nyren#young-cricketers-tutor#charles-cowden-clarke
⭐Mild

John Nyren's Nostalgic Hambledon Writings — *The Cricketers of My Time*, 1833

n/a

1833-04-15

The second half of John Nyren's 1833 *Young Cricketer's Tutor* — bound in as the appendix *The Cricketers of My Time* — was the first sustained piece of cricket prose ever written. Across some sixty pages Nyren remembered the great Hambledon men of the 1770s and 1780s with affection and precision, and in doing so created the literary mode — nostalgic, particular, character-driven — that has shaped cricket writing ever since.

#john-nyren#the-cricketers-of-my-time#hambledon
⭐Mild

Old John Small Dies — The Last of the Hambledon Men, 1826

n/a

1826-12-31

John Small the elder, Hampshire batsman of the great Hambledon era and inventor of the straight bat, died at Petersfield in 1826 at the age of 89. With his death the last of the original Hambledon Men was gone, severing the living link between modern Lord's-centred cricket and the village game that had dominated the eighteenth century.

#john-small#hambledon#1826
⭐Mild

Billy Beldham's Last Match — The Penultimate Hambledonian Plays for the Players, 1821

Gentlemen vs Players

1821-07-23

On 23-24 July 1821, in the chaotic Coronation Match between the Gentlemen and the Players at Lord's, William 'Silver Billy' Beldham — the last great Hambledon batsman still in important cricket — played his final recorded senior fixture at the age of 55. He scored 23 not out in the Players' innings and walked off the first-class stage that he had occupied since 1782, a career of 39 seasons unmatched in the early game.

#billy-beldham#silver-billy#hambledon
⭐Mild

William 'Silver Billy' Beldham — The Aging Master of Hambledon, 1810s

Hampshire, Surrey, MCC and various private elevens

1817-06-01

By the 1810s William 'Silver Billy' Beldham — born in 1766, the great Hambledon-era batsman whom John Nyren had called 'one of the most beautiful batsmen ever seen' — was the senior figure in English cricket. Already in his fifties, he was still good enough to be picked for senior matches at Lord's and to hold his own against professionals half his age. His final senior match came in 1821 at the age of 55. He lived another forty-one years, dying at Tilford in 1862, and gave to historians the most detailed verbal record of Hambledon cricket through his late conversations with the Reverend James Pycroft.

#william-beldham#silver-billy#hambledon
⭐Mild

Tom Walker 'Old Everlasting' — The Last Hambledon Hand in the 1800s

Hampshire / Surrey / occasional XIs

1808-07-01

Tom Walker, born at Hambledon in 1762 and nicknamed 'Old Everlasting' for the unhurried, immovable defensive batting that once let him face 170 balls from David Harris for one run, was the last Hambledon man still appearing in important cricket through the early 1800s. His attempted 'higher arm' bowling had been ruled foul play by the Hambledon Club committee in 1788 — a forgotten experiment that John Willes would revive in 1807 and that would eventually become roundarm.

#tom-walker#old-everlasting#hambledon
⭐Mild

Jack Small Junior — Hambledon's Last Hand at the First Gentlemen v Players, 1806

Gentlemen vs Players

1806-07-21

Jack Small junior, son of the great John Small senior who had scored cricket's first known century in 1775, played for the Players in both inaugural Gentlemen v Players matches in July 1806. He was 40, a sound batsman in his father's mould, and one of the last Hambledon hands still active at major level. His presence in the first Gentlemen v Players is the bridge that links the 1770s Hambledon era to the modern Lord's-centred game.

#jack-small#john-small-junior#gentlemen-vs-players
⭐Moderate

Death of David Harris — Hambledon's Greatest Bowler Dies at Crookham, May 1803

n/a

1803-05-19

On 19 May 1803, in the village of Crookham in north Hampshire, David Harris died at the age of 48. Hambledon's incomparable underarm bowler — described by John Nyren as 'masculine, erect and appalling' — had not played a major match since 1798, his career destroyed by gout. With his death the last great bowler of the Hambledon era passed into history, just as Lord Frederick Beauclerk and the new MCC generation were taking control of cricket.

#david-harris#hambledon#underarm-bowling
⭐Mild

John Nyren's Boyhood at the Bat and Ball — Future Hambledon Memoirist, 1800s

n/a

1800-06-01

While the Hambledon Club drifted into village obscurity through the 1800s, the boyhood of John Nyren — son of the old captain Richard Nyren, raised at the Bat and Ball Inn opposite Broadhalfpenny Down, taught the game by his uncle Richard Newland of Slindon — was already laying the foundation for the most influential cricket memoir ever written. Three decades later that boyhood would reach print as The Young Cricketer's Tutor (1833).

#john-nyren#hambledon#broadhalfpenny-down