#silver billy

3 incidents tagged

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

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