#single wicket

12 incidents tagged

Alfred Mynn's Continued Recovery and the Folklore of the Leicester Leg — through the 1840s

Kent / All-England Eleven

1846-08-15

Alfred Mynn's near-amputation at Leicester in 1836 — when, having batted on with a leg blackened by repeated fast roundarm blows, he was reportedly carried back to London on the roof of a stage coach — passed into cricket folklore through the 1840s. By 1846 the story was retold at every Mynn match, and the Leicester injury had become as much a part of his identity as his bowling and single-wicket dominance.

#alfred-mynn#leicester-1836#kent

⭐Mild

Single-Wicket Cricket and Mynn's Championship — High-Stakes Cricket of the 1840s

Various

1846-09-15

Single-wicket cricket — an older form of the game in which two or three players a side competed under simplified rules, often for purses of £100 or more — flourished alongside the modern eleven-a-side game through the 1840s. Alfred Mynn was champion of England at single-wicket from 1838 to 1846 and his title-defence matches drew crowds and betting comparable with the Gentlemen v Players match.

#single-wicket#alfred-mynn#1846

⭐Mild

Alfred Mynn at His Peak — The Lion of Kent in the Early 1840s

Kent / All-England

1842-08-01

Alfred Mynn of Kent — six feet one and weighing more than twenty stone — was the dominant fast roundarm bowler of the early 1840s and the best all-round cricketer in England. His annual displays at Lord's, Town Malling and Canterbury, his peerless single-wicket record (he was champion of England 1838-46), and the carrying-off of his amputated leg in 1836 had made him the first popular cricket folk-hero of the Victorian age.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#round-arm

⭐Mild

Mynn vs Dearman — Brighton Rematch, August 1837

Alfred Mynn (Kent) vs James Dearman (Yorkshire)

1837-08-21

In August 1837 the Sheffield batsman James Dearman, smarting from his innings-and-107 thrashing at Town Malling the previous September, demanded a return single-wicket match against Alfred Mynn. The rematch was played at Brighton on 21-22 August 1837 and went the same way as the first: Mynn won by an innings and 67 runs.

#alfred-mynn#james-dearman#single-wicket

⭐Moderate

Alfred Mynn vs James Dearman — Single-Wicket Challenge, 1836

Alfred Mynn (Kent) vs James Dearman (Yorkshire)

1836-09-29

On 29 and 30 September 1836 the giant Kent fast bowler Alfred Mynn — already nicknamed 'the Lion of Kent' — met the Sheffield batsman James Dearman in a £100-a-side single-wicket challenge at Town Malling in Kent. Mynn, then 28 and weighing close to twenty stone, demolished Dearman: he scored 123 runs to Dearman's 0 and 16, and won by an innings and 107.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#james-dearman

⭐Serious

Alfred Mynn's Leg Injury at Leicester — Single-Wicket vs Curzon, August 1836

Alfred Mynn vs the North

1836-08-29

In August 1836, between his two thrashings of Dearman, Alfred Mynn played a single-wicket match at Leicester in which his right leg was repeatedly hit by fast roundarm bowling at the unprotected shin. The injuries festered on the long coach journey home and Mynn nearly lost the leg to gangrene; he was strapped to the roof of the stagecoach because he could not bend his knee, and surgeons in London debated amputation before saving the limb.

#alfred-mynn#single-wicket#1836

⭐Mild

Tom Marsden of Sheffield — Yorkshire's Leading Batsman of the Early 1830s

Yorkshire, North

1833-09-05

Tom Marsden of Sheffield was the leading northern batsman of the early 1830s and the man who carried Yorkshire cricket through the decade. A left-handed bat of unusual power, he had scored 227 in a single innings as early as 1826 — at the time the highest individual score in English cricket. By the early 1830s he was the natural counterweight to Pilch in any North vs South discussion.

#tom-marsden#sheffield#yorkshire

⭐Mild

Fuller Pilch — England's Leading Batsman of the 1830s

Norfolk, Kent, England

1830-06-01

Through the 1830s the Norfolk-born professional Fuller Pilch was the most consistent batsman in England. Standing six feet tall and using a long forward stride that contemporaries called 'Pilch's poke' — the front foot pushed almost to the pitch of the ball before the bat came down — he reduced the new roundarm bowling to manageable terms when most batsmen were still being shelled out cheaply, and held the title of best bat in England for the better part of two decades.

#fuller-pilch#norfolk#kent

🥊Serious

George Osbaldeston Banned from MCC — A Squire's Twenty-Year Exile, 1818 onwards

MCC

1820-05-01

After being beaten at single-wicket by Sussex's George Brown in 1818, the all-round sportsman Squire George Osbaldeston resigned his MCC membership in a fury. When he later sought to be reinstated, his application was blocked personally by Lord Frederick Beauclerk; despite intercession by E.H. Budd and others, Osbaldeston was barred from MCC for the rest of his cricket career, an exile that effectively confined him to second-tier matches throughout the 1820s.

#george-osbaldeston#squire-osbaldeston#mcc

🚨Explosive

William Lambert's Shadow — The First Fixing Ban Hangs Over the 1820s

n/a

1820-05-01

William Lambert of Surrey, the leading professional batsman of the 1810s and Squire Osbaldeston's regular single-wicket partner, was banned from Lord's for life in 1817 for allegedly throwing the England v Nottingham match — making him the first cricketer banned for match-fixing in history. His exile cast a long shadow over the 1820s, contributing to Osbaldeston's own resignation and to MCC's hostility to professional self-organisation.

#william-lambert#match-fixing#1817

🥊Serious

Squire Osbaldeston Resigns From MCC and Is Barred for Life — 1818

MCC committee vs George Osbaldeston

1818-08-01

After losing a single-wicket match to Lord Frederick Beauclerk in 1818 in circumstances that he believed were rigged against him, the Yorkshire squire George Osbaldeston resigned from the Marylebone Cricket Club in a fit of temper. When he tried to rejoin some months later he found the door barred: Beauclerk, on the committee, refused his readmission. E.H. Budd's attempted intercession failed. Osbaldeston, one of the leading all-round sportsmen of the age, never played senior cricket of any standing again.

#george-osbaldeston#lord-frederick-beauclerk#mcc

🥊Moderate

William Lambert Beats Lord Frederick Beauclerk by Bowling Wides — Single-Wicket, 1810

Lord Frederick Beauclerk / Thomas Howard vs George Osbaldeston / William Lambert

1810-07-01

A two-a-side single-wicket challenge match for fifty guineas a side became one of the most discussed cricket incidents of the early 1810s when Squire Osbaldeston fell ill on the morning of play. His partner William Lambert, the Surrey professional, pleaded for a postponement; Lord Frederick Beauclerk replied with the gambler's formula 'Play or Pay'. Lambert went out alone to face Beauclerk and Thomas Howard, deliberately bowled a string of wide deliveries to fluster Beauclerk, broke the cleric's temper and his concentration, and won the match by fifteen runs. The incident produced the rivalry that would shape Lambert's downfall seven years later.

#william-lambert#lord-frederick-beauclerk#george-osbaldeston