#sussex

24 incidents tagged

The Gillette Cup — Cricket's First Limited-Overs Trophy, September 1963

Sussex vs Worcestershire

1963-09-07

On 7 September 1963 at Lord's, Sussex beat Worcestershire by 14 runs to win the inaugural Gillette Cup — the first organised one-day knockout competition between first-class counties. The 65-overs-a-side format, introduced to revive flagging county attendances, attracted a full Lord's crowd and laid the template for every limited-overs tournament that followed.

#gillette cup#limited overs#one-day

⭐Mild

K.S. Duleepsinhji's Emergence — 333 v Northamptonshire, 1929

Sussex v Northamptonshire

1929-05-15

On 15 May 1929 the 24-year-old K.S. Duleepsinhji — Ranji's nephew and the second member of the family to play county cricket for Sussex — made 333 against Northamptonshire at Hove, then a Sussex record and the highest score made on the south coast in county cricket.

#duleepsinhji#sussex#england

⭐Mild

Maurice Tate's Reinvention — Off-Spinner to Fast-Medium, 1923

Sussex and England

1923-09-15

Through 1922 and 1923, on the advice of his Sussex captain Arthur Gilligan, the 28-year-old off-spinner Maurice Tate switched to fast-medium swing bowling. The change produced 219 wickets in 1923, his Test debut against South Africa at Edgbaston in 1924, and the bowling career that became the model for the English fast-medium swing tradition.

#maurice-tate#sussex#england

⭐Mild

C.B. Fry Captains England in the Triangular — 1912

England

1912-08-22

Charles Burgess Fry, the polymath athlete who had played football for England and held the world long-jump record, captained England through the 1912 Triangular Tournament — winning all six Tests, taking England to the title and ending his Test career undefeated as captain.

#cb-fry#england#1912

⭐Moderate

K.S. Ranjitsinhji's Sussex Years and Departure for Nawanagar, 1900-1907

Sussex, England

1907-03-07

Through the early 1900s K.S. Ranjitsinhji captained Sussex (1899-1903), played 15 Tests for England, and continued to redefine batting through the leg glance. In March 1907 he succeeded as Jam Sahib of Nawanagar and effectively withdrew from full-time first-class cricket. He returned briefly in 1908 and 1912 but his Sussex career was over by the time he became a ruler.

#ranjitsinhji#sussex#england

⭐Moderate

C.B. Fry — Six Consecutive First-Class Centuries, 1901

Sussex, Rest of England

1901-09-15

Between 14 August and 11 September 1901 the Sussex amateur Charles Burgess Fry scored six first-class hundreds in successive innings: 106 v Hampshire, 209 v Yorkshire, 149 v Middlesex, 105 v Surrey, 140 v Kent and 105 for Rest of England v Yorkshire. The sequence remains the joint record (later equalled by Don Bradman in 1938-39) for consecutive first-class hundreds.

#cb-fry#sussex#1901

⭐Moderate

Ranjitsinhji's 3,000 Runs in a Season — A First in 1899

Sussex CCC and others

1899-08-31

In the 1899 first-class season K.S. Ranjitsinhji scored 3,159 runs at 63.18 — the first batsman ever to pass 3,000 first-class runs in a single season. Sussex, captained by him, finished fifth in the Championship for their highest-ever placing to that point. The 3,000-run mark was retro-engineered as a benchmark for the era; only ten more batsmen have ever passed it, and none in the last 65 years.

#ranjitsinhji#1899#3000-runs

⭐Moderate

C.B. Fry Arrives — Oxford Captain, Long-Jump Record-Holder, Sussex Debutant, 1894

Oxford University, Sussex

1894-05-21

Charles Burgess Fry was 22 in 1894, an Oxford undergraduate who had broken the British long-jump record (23 feet 5 inches in 1892) and equalled the world record (23 feet 6½ inches on 4 March 1893). He was elected Oxford cricket captain for 1894 and made his first-class Sussex debut the same summer, beginning a partnership with Ranjitsinhji that would dominate English batting for fifteen years and produce a man often cited as the greatest all-round Englishman of his era.

#cb-fry#1894#oxford

⭐Moderate

C. Aubrey Smith — 'Round-the-Corner' and First England Captain in South Africa

England v South Africa

1889-03-12

Charles Aubrey Smith was a tall fast-medium Sussex amateur with one of the strangest run-ups in cricket history — a sweeping curve that started from deep mid-off or even from behind the umpire and brought him in at the crease from an unexpected angle. WG Grace remarked it was 'rather startling when he suddenly appears at the bowling crease'. In March 1889, Smith captained the first English side to play a Test in South Africa, took 5/19 in the first innings of that Test, and remains the only player ever to captain England in his one and only Test appearance.

#aubrey-smith#round-the-corner#fast-bowler

⭐Mild

James Lillywhite — First England Test Captain and Tour Promoter, 1877

Australia vs England

1877-03-15

James Lillywhite junior of Sussex, captain and promoter of the touring English professionals, became the first England Test captain when his side took the field at Melbourne on 15 March 1877. England lost the match by 45 runs but won the rematch a fortnight later, levelling the unofficial series.

#james-lillywhite#first-england-captain#1877

⭐Mild

John Lillywhite — Umpire, Publisher and the 'Green Lily', 1848-1875

Sussex, Middlesex; later umpire and publisher

1865-04-01

John Lillywhite — Sussex roundarm bowler, umpire of the 1862 Willsher walk-off, and founder in 1865 of John Lillywhite's Cricketers' Companion (the 'Green Lily') — sat at the centre of the 1860s cricket establishment. Son of William 'Nonpareil' Lillywhite, brother to Fred and James, he played first-class cricket from 1848 to 1873, umpired 29 first-class matches, and established the family's central London emporium at Euston Square in 1863.

#john-lillywhite#umpire#publisher

⭐Mild

John Wisden's Playing Career — From the 'Little Wonder' to Retirement, 1846-1863

Sussex, Kent, Middlesex; All-England Eleven; United All-England Eleven

1863-09-01

Long before John Wisden's name appeared on the spine of an almanack, he was the most feared fast bowler of his generation. At five feet four he was the smallest fast bowler in first-class history; nicknamed the 'Little Wonder' by umpire Bob Thoms, he took more than 1,000 first-class wickets at 6.66 between 1846 and 1863. In 1850 at Lord's he took all ten North-South wickets in an innings — every one bowled, the only ten-bowled innings in first-class history.

#john-wisden#little-wonder#sussex

⭐Mild

John Wisden Emerges as a Bowler — Sussex and AEE, late 1840s

Sussex / All-England Eleven

1849-08-01

John Wisden of Sussex — five feet four and weighing under nine stone — broke into first-class cricket in 1845 as a fast roundarm bowler and within four years was a fixture in the All-England Eleven. By 1849, aged 23, he was being talked of as the most promising young bowler in England; the publishing empire and the all-ten-bowled feat would come later.

#john-wisden#sussex#1849

⭐Mild

Tom Box of Sussex — The Wicketkeeper of the Pre-Pad Era, 1840s

Sussex / All-England Eleven

1845-07-15

Tom Box of Sussex was the leading wicketkeeper in England through the 1840s — keeping wicket without the pads, gloves or specialised gear of later eras and standing up to the fast bowling of Mynn, Redgate and the young John Wisden. He played first-class cricket for 25 years and dropped only one stumping chance in his entire career, according to the Lillywhites' near-contemporary count.

#tom-box#sussex#wicketkeeper

⭐Mild

William Lillywhite, the Nonpareil — Aging Master of Roundarm in the 1840s

Sussex / All-England

1844-07-01

By the early 1840s William Lillywhite, the Sussex bricklayer who had pushed roundarm bowling into the law book in 1828, was past 50 but still the most accurate bowler in England. Engaged at Lord's as practice bowler from 1844, he played first-class cricket until 1853 and, in his final decade, embodied the bridge between the underarm cricket of the eighteenth century and the overarm game his son John would help bring in.

#william-lillywhite#nonpareil#round-arm

⭐Mild

William Lillywhite at Forty-Seven — Roundarm Mastery, 1839

Sussex, Players, South

1839-08-12

By 1839 William Lillywhite was 47 years old — an age at which most cricketers of any era have long since retired — and was still indisputably the leading bowler in England. The 1839 season saw him take wickets in every major fixture: Players vs Gentlemen at Lord's, North vs South, and the Sussex county matches. His longevity at the top of the bowling lists is one of the remarkable features of the late 1830s.

#william-lillywhite#the-nonpareil#1839

⭐Mild

Sussex — The Roundarm County of the 1830s

Sussex

1837-06-15

Through the 1830s Sussex was, with Kent, one of the two leading counties in England. The county had been the cradle of roundarm bowling — Lillywhite and Jem Broadbridge had been the bowlers who forced the law change of 1828 — and through the 1830s the Sussex eleven, built around Lillywhite's bowling and Tom Box behind the stumps, was a regular winner against all comers.

#sussex#william-lillywhite#jem-broadbridge

⭐Mild

William Lillywhite 'The Nonpareil' — Sussex's Roundarm Master Through the 1830s

Sussex, MCC, England

1834-07-01

Through the 1830s William Lillywhite of Sussex — universally known as 'the Nonpareil' for his accuracy — was the most successful bowler in England. He had been one of the two Sussex bowlers (with Jem Broadbridge) who forced the legalisation of roundarm in 1828; through the 1830s he refined the new style into an instrument of unprecedented control, taking hundreds of wickets a season at a length other bowlers could not match.

#william-lillywhite#the-nonpareil#sussex

⭐Mild

First Match at the Saffrons, Eastbourne — 1832

Eastbourne club fixtures

1832-08-01

In 1832 the first recorded cricket match was played on the meadow at Eastbourne known as the Saffrons, named for the saffron crocuses once grown there. The ground would become one of the longest continuously used cricket venues in England and the regular home of Eastbourne Cricket Club, hosting Sussex county fixtures and, in the twentieth century, Australian touring sides.

#the-saffrons#eastbourne#1832

⭐Serious

The Roundarm Trial Matches — Sussex v England, Summer 1827

Sussex vs England

1827-07-25

To resolve the running argument over roundarm bowling, the MCC sanctioned three matches in the summer of 1827 between Sussex — whose bowlers Lillywhite and Broadbridge would deliver roundarm — and an England XI bowling only underarm. Played at Sheffield (4-6 June), Lord's (18-19 June) and Brighton (23-25 July), the series was meant to test whether roundarm should be legalised. Sussex won the first two and lost the third, the trial was declared inconclusive, and the law was nudged a step further the following year.

#roundarm-bowling#1827#sussex

⭐Mild

Sussex 'Champion County' — The First Informal Claim, 1825-1827

Sussex

1827-09-01

Through the mid-1820s Sussex established themselves as the strongest county side in England, on the strength of the roundarm bowling of Lillywhite and Broadbridge. The Sussex team was acclaimed by the press as 'champion county' from 1826 onwards — the first time the title was applied informally to a single county side and the seed of the formal County Championship that would emerge sixty years later.

#sussex#champion-county#1820s

⭐Mild

William 'The Nonpareil' Lillywhite — The Emergence of Cricket's First Great Bowler, 1820s

Sussex

1825-05-01

William Lillywhite — known to history as 'The Nonpareil' for his unrivalled accuracy and command — emerged from Sussex club cricket in the mid-1820s as the most influential bowler of his generation. With his partner Jem Broadbridge he made roundarm the dominant bowling style of the era, drove Sussex to their claim as champion county, and forced the MCC to amend the Laws of Cricket in 1828 and again in 1835.

#william-lillywhite#nonpareil#sussex

⭐Mild

Jem Broadbridge — 'Our Jem' and the Other Half of Sussex's Roundarm Revolution

Sussex

1825-06-01

Jem Broadbridge of Duncton, three years younger than Lillywhite and his partner at the other end, was the second of Sussex's twin roundarm spearheads of the 1820s. A right-arm fast-medium bowler and hard-hitting batsman, he was according to Haygarth 'for some seasons the best general cricketer in England, both as batsman, bowler and single wicket player'. He walked the 60-mile round trip from Duncton to Brighton to play for Sussex.

#jem-broadbridge#sussex#roundarm-bowling

⭐Mild

William Lambert — First to Score Two Centuries in a Match, Sussex v Epsom, July 1817

Sussex vs Epsom

1817-07-04

Between 2 and 5 July 1817 at the new Lord's, the Surrey-born professional William Lambert scored 107 not out and 157 for Sussex against Epsom — the first batsman known to have made two centuries in the same match. Sussex won by 427 runs. Three weeks later Lambert was banned from Lord's for match-fixing and never played a senior match again. The Sussex v Epsom innings, made on a low-scoring underarm pitch by a man at the height of his powers, stood as the only instance of two centuries in a match for almost seventy years.

#william-lambert#two-centuries-in-match#sussex