#napoleonic wars

2 incidents tagged

Cricket After Waterloo — The Recovery of the Senior Game, 1815

Various

1815-08-01

Six weeks after the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 ended twenty-two years of Napoleonic war, English cricket began to revive. Six senior matches were played in the rest of the summer of 1815, more than in any of the previous four years combined. Two centuries were scored at the new Lord's. Soldiers returning from the Peninsula and Belgium rejoined the professional ranks. By the end of the season the sport had pulled back from the brink at which it had stood in 1813.

#napoleonic-wars#waterloo#1815

🔥Moderate

Cricket on Life Support — The Three Wartime Matches of 1811-1813

Various private elevens at Lord's Middle Ground

1813-06-09

In the three years between 1811 and 1813, with the Napoleonic War at its height and the country bleeding men and money, only three senior cricket matches were played in England — all of them at Lord's Middle Ground in Marylebone. The fixture lists of the previous century shrank to a handful of private challenges between the elevens of Aislabie, Beauclerk, Osbaldeston and Bligh. County cricket effectively ceased to exist; the great clubs of Kent, Surrey and Hampshire scarcely fielded a senior side. Cricket survived only through the obstinacy of a few amateurs at Lord's.

#napoleonic-wars#lord-frederick-beauclerk#george-osbaldeston