#schools cricket

4 incidents tagged

Eton v Harrow Banned — The Headmasters Suspend the Fixture, 1829-1831

Eton vs Harrow

1829-07-01

After several years of escalating crowd misbehaviour and post-match excess, the headmasters of Eton and Harrow agreed in 1829 to suspend their schools' annual cricket match at Lord's. The fixture, which Lord Byron had played in for Harrow in the inaugural game of 1805 and which had been annual since 1822, was not played again until 1832. The interruption is the only voluntary suspension in the long history of the oldest schoolboy fixture in the world.

#eton#harrow#1829

⭐Mild

Winchester v Harrow at Lord's — The Match Before the Pavilion Burned, July 1825

Winchester vs Harrow

1825-07-28

The first cricket match between Winchester and Harrow schools was completed at Lord's on 28 July 1825. Hours after the players had left, the pavilion caught fire and burned to the ground, taking with it the MCC's archive of scorebooks and records. The combination — first match of a new fixture, last night of the original pavilion — gave the day a peculiar place in cricket's institutional memory.

#winchester#harrow#1825

⭐Mild

Eton v Harrow Becomes Annual — The Fixture Settles at Lord's, 1822

Eton vs Harrow

1822-08-02

The Eton v Harrow cricket match, first played at Lord's in 1805 with Lord Byron in the Harrow side and resumed in 1818, became an annual fixture from 1822 — the foundation date of what would become the longest-running schools cricket fixture in the world. The annual rhythm, briefly interrupted by the 1829-31 ban, has otherwise survived almost unbroken to the modern era.

#eton#harrow#1822

⭐Mild

The First Eton v Harrow Match — Byron Bats with a Runner, August 1805

Eton vs Harrow

1805-08-02

On Friday 2 August 1805, sixteen schoolboys from Eton and Harrow played the first match between the two schools at Thomas Lord's Old Ground in Dorset Square. Eton won by an innings and two runs. Among the Harrow side was 17-year-old George Gordon Byron, batting with a runner because of his clubbed right foot. The fixture, repeated in 1818 and made annual from 1822, would become the longest-running schools rivalry in cricket and the longest-running fixture at Lord's.

#eton-vs-harrow#1805#lord-byron