#military cricket

2 incidents tagged

Cricket in the British Camp at Brussels — Before Waterloo, May 1815

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.

#regency-cricket#underarm#waterloo

⭐Mild

Cricket in Wellington's Army — Spain, Summer 1812

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.

#regency-cricket#underarm#peninsular-war