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1845-05-01
Nicholas Wanostrocht, the schoolmaster who played first-class cricket for Kent under the pseudonym 'Felix', published Felix on the Bat in 1845 — the first systematic coaching manual on batting, illustrated with his own lithographed plates. It defined the technical vocabulary of forward and back play that English coaching would use for the next century.
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1840-06-01
Nicholas Wanostrocht ('Felix'), the Kent batsman and schoolmaster, patented in 1837 the catapulta — a mechanical contraption that propelled a cricket ball at a batsman by means of a sprung Indian-rubber arm. The first bowling machine in cricket history, it was demonstrated at Lord's, used at Felix's school for batting practice, and described in his 1845 manual.
Kent, Gentlemen of England
1838-06-01
Nicholas Wanostrocht — universally known by his pen-name 'Felix' — was the most cultured cricketer of the 1830s. The son of a Kent schoolmaster of Belgian descent, he ran a school in Camberwell, played for Kent as a left-handed amateur batsman of the first rank, painted, wrote, invented the catapulta bowling-machine, and would later produce the classic instructional text *Felix on the Bat* (1845).