Australia vs New Zealand
1 February 1981
Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl the last ball underarm along the ground to prevent New Zealand from hitting a six to tie the match.
Australia vs New Zealand
1981-02-01
Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl the last ball underarm along the ground to prevent New Zealand from hitting a six to tie, sparking outrage and eternal mockery.
Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) vs Port Phillip (Victoria)
1851-02-11
On 11-12 February 1851, eighteen years before the Federation that would create modern Australia, teams representing the colonies of Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip met at the Launceston Racecourse for what is now reckoned the first first-class cricket match played on Australian soil. About 2,500 spectators watched William Henty open the bowling underarm to Duncan Cooper; Van Diemen's Land won by three wickets.
MCC
1826-05-01
Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the autocratic clergyman-cricketer who had dominated English cricket since the 1790s, served as MCC president for 1826-27 — the very years in which the roundarm revolution he had spent his life resisting reached its decisive phase. Still occasionally taking the field in his late fifties, Beauclerk was the embodiment of the old underarm order, and his presidency oversaw the trial matches that would condemn it.
Hampshire vs MCC
1819-06-14
On 14-15 June 1819 James Aylward Junior — son of the Hambledon professional — scored 105 for Hampshire against MCC at Lord's. It was his first major century and announced the second generation of the Hampshire batting tradition. He was twenty-three; his father, present at the match, watched from the boundary.
Officers vs 21st Light Dragoons
1819-01-15
On 15 January 1819 officers of the Cape Town garrison played the rank-and-file of the 21st Light Dragoons at cricket on Green Point Common, on the open ground below Signal Hill. The match — recorded in the Cape Town Gazette — is the earliest documented cricket fixture in southern Africa and the founding event of South African cricket history.
Osbaldeston vs all comers
1819-06-09
In June 1819 George Osbaldeston — angered by his MCC ban of the previous year — posted an open single-wicket challenge at Lord's: he would play any one man in England for 100 guineas a side, to take place at any neutral ground. Beldham, Lambert and Beauclerk all declined; the challenge was eventually taken up by William Ward in a low-key match in August. Osbaldeston won. The challenge is one of the great public-relations gestures of Regency cricket.
Sussex vs Kent
1819-07-26
On 26-27 July 1819 Sussex played Kent on the Steine at Brighton — the first formal Sussex v Kent fixture since the Napoleonic Wars and the start of one of the longest-running rivalries in English county cricket. Sussex won by seven wickets, helped by 67 from George Brown and a 44 from John Hammond. The fixture was repeated annually thereafter and is the foundation entry of the modern Sussex-Kent series.
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1818-04-07
On 7 April 1818, two months before the cricket season opened, George Osbaldeston attended Tom Cribb's prize-fight exhibition on Hounslow Heath alongside Lord Byron and the bare-knuckle champion's other backers. Osbaldeston himself stripped briefly to spar three rounds with Cribb's understudy. The episode is a piece of the Regency cross-discipline sporting culture and a glimpse of cricket's place within a wider sporting elite.
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1818-11-05
In November 1818, between his cricket and hunting seasons, George Osbaldeston walked 200 miles in 36 hours on Newmarket Heath for a wager of 1,000 guineas. The feat — completed inside the time, with Osbaldeston resting only twice — was reported across the sporting press and is the most famous of his many cross-disciplinary athletic exploits. It is a piece of the Regency sporting culture that linked cricket to pedestrianism, prize-fighting and turf.
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1818-04-12
In April 1818 the MCC commissioned the first systematic relaying of the Lord's pitch since the ground's 1814 opening. The strip — laid hastily four years earlier on rough St John's Wood pasture — had been giving uneven bounce and cracking through the 1817 season. The April 1818 work, supervised by the head groundsman Steed, marked the beginning of organised cricket-pitch management at Lord's and the first investment in the playing surface as a distinct asset.
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1817-09-22
On 22 September 1817 William Lambert — by then the leading professional cricketer in England — appeared before the MCC committee at the Mary-Le-Bone Tavern and admitted accepting money to underperform in a single-wicket match. The committee voted his ban the following morning. Lambert never played in major cricket again. His confession is the founding document of cricket's anti-corruption record.
Surrey vs England
1817-08-21
On 21-22 August 1817 William 'Silver Billy' Beldham played his last major-match fixture: Surrey against England at Lord's. He was fifty-one, white-haired and the last of the Hambledon greats still appearing in major cricket. He scored 18 in the first innings and 9 in the second. Surrey lost. Beldham retired to his Wrecclesham smallholding and lived for another forty-five years; he was the last surviving player of the great 1780s Hambledon side.
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1816-07-07
On 7 July 1816 Richard Brinsley Sheridan — playwright, parliamentarian and one of cricket's most enthusiastic Regency supporters — died in London. Sheridan had joined the MCC in the 1790s and was a regular at Dorset Square and the Middle Ground. His death is one of the small markers of the Regency cricket establishment's mortality.
MCC vs Hampshire
1816-06-19
On 19-20 June 1816 the MCC played Hampshire at the new Lord's ground — the first fixture between the two sides since Hampshire's collapse as a major county in 1809. The match was raised by William Ward as a deliberate attempt to revive Hampshire cricket. MCC won by an innings, but the fixture marked the start of Hampshire's slow recovery as a recognised county side.
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1816-05-15
In May 1816 the MCC completed the first pavilion at the new Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood — a small two-storey wooden building containing dressing rooms and, on the ground floor, a panelled members' room that became known as the Long Room. The 1816 Long Room was the direct ancestor of the present pavilion's most famous space and the first dedicated indoor cricket room at Lord's.
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1816-05-01
In 1816, with John Willes and a small but growing band of Kent and Sussex bowlers persistently raising their arm above the elbow, the MCC revised Law 10 to spell out that bowling must be 'underhand, with the hand below the elbow' and that any horizontal extension of the arm should be called no-ball. The reform was a deliberate effort to suppress roundarm. It failed. Within twelve years the law had to be rewritten in roundarm's favour.
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1815-09-01
By 1815 the Lewes bat-maker Cox — running his workshop from the High Street — had established himself as the principal Sussex supplier of cricket bats and balls. With William Small's Petersfield workshop continuing to dominate Hampshire and the home counties, Cox's emergence at Lewes confirmed the geographic spread of cricket equipment manufacture and the distinct Sussex style of bat — slightly straighter and lighter than the Petersfield model.
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1815-04-01
Around 1815 the Petersfield bat-maker William Small — son of the Hambledon professional John Small Senior — began producing cricket bats with a recognisable 'shoulder', tapering from a thicker blade up to a narrower handle. The design replaced the curved, club-like underarm bat that had been standard since the eighteenth century and is the immediate ancestor of the modern cricket bat shape.
Officers vs Other Ranks
1815-05-28
On 28 May 1815, three weeks before the battle of Waterloo, officers and other ranks of the British army played a cricket match in a meadow outside Brussels. The Officers won by an innings. The match was recorded in a letter home from Captain Alexander Cavalié Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery — whose Journal of the Waterloo Campaign is one of the great military memoirs of the period. The fixture is the most famous documented military cricket match of the Napoleonic era.
Middlesex vs Epsom
1815-08-25
On 24-25 August 1815, in a Middlesex v Epsom match at the new Lord's, the Surrey amateurs Felix Ladbroke and Frederick Woodbridge scored 116 and 107 respectively — the first centuries made on the third Lord's ground at St John's Wood. The match was an unremarkable end-of-season fixture, but the dual hundreds, on a pitch barely sixteen months old, showed that the new ground could yield big scores in a way that the old grounds had never reliably done.
MCC vs Hampshire
1814-07-21
On 21 July 1814 Lord Frederick Beauclerk took 7 wickets in an innings against Hampshire at the new Lord's — bowling his slow underarm lobs. It was his career-best return at Lord's and one of the finest individual bowling performances in the early St John's Wood years. MCC won the match by an innings.
Surrey vs England
1814-08-15
On 15-16 August 1814 William Lambert scored 107 not out for Surrey against England at the new Lord's ground in St John's Wood — the first century by a professional batter at the new ground and one of the great innings of Lambert's career. The match was Surrey's first major fixture at the new Lord's and the innings was widely reported as confirmation of Lambert's status as the leading all-round cricketer in England.
Kent vs MCC
1813-09-09
On 9-10 September 1813 Kent played the MCC at the Vine, Sevenoaks — the first post-war major match at the historic Kent ground and the start of the Vine's revival as a regular major venue. The Vine had hosted little major cricket since 1808; the September 1813 fixture marked its return to the front rank.
MCC vs Surrey
1813-07-26
On 26 July 1813 the weekly sporting paper Bell's Life in London printed a complete batter-by-batter scorecard of the previous week's MCC v Surrey match — the earliest documented printed scorecard in the British press. The publication of full scoresheets in the popular sporting press transformed cricket's reach: from this point major matches reached an audience of tens of thousands of readers, far beyond the few hundred who attended in person.
MCC vs Epsom
1813-09-04
On 4-5 September 1813 the MCC played Epsom in the final match at Lord's Middle Ground at North Bank — Thomas Lord's second cricket ground, opened only four years earlier in 1809. The site had been compulsorily purchased for an extension of the Regent's Canal. The closure forced Lord to find a third site, which he duly opened on St John's Wood Road in 1814 — the present Lord's.
Cambridge Town vs Cambridge University
1813-08-11
On 11-12 August 1813 a Cambridge University XI played a Cambridge Town side on Parker's Piece — the earliest documented Town v Gown cricket match in Cambridge. The match is a milestone in the development of university cricket: it was the first time the undergraduates had played a non-college outside opponent, and it set the pattern for the inter-town fixtures that became central to Cambridge cricket through the nineteenth century.
Officers vs Civilians
1812-12-15
By the close of 1812 cricket was being played regularly in both Madras and Bombay — the earliest documented fixtures in either Presidency. Garrison officers and civilian East India Company servants ran the matches; the Madras Gazette and Bombay Courier preserved the earliest scoresheets. The Calcutta game (documented 1804) had been joined by all three Presidency capitals.
Officers vs Sergeants
1812-07-22
On 22 July 1812 — six weeks after the United States declared war on Britain — officers and sergeants of the Halifax garrison played a cricket match below Citadel Hill in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The fixture is the earliest documented cricket match in Canada and the founding event of Canadian cricket history.
Officers vs 28th Foot
1812-07-15
In summer 1812, two days before the battle of Salamanca, officers of Wellington's army played a cricket match against the rank-and-file of the 28th Regiment of Foot on a flat field outside the city. The match — the earliest documented cricket fixture played by British troops on the European mainland — was recorded in an officer's diary that survives in the National Army Museum. It is the foundation entry of military cricket overseas.
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1811-07-04
The 1811 Lord's season was the leanest of the Middle Ground years. With the Napoleonic blockade at its tightest, willow scarce, professionals diverted to militia service and the betting public's purses thin, only fourteen major matches were played at Lord's all summer. The 1811 season is the clearest measure of cricket's wartime contraction.
Hambledon vs Petersfield
1811-08-24
On 24 August 1811 Hambledon village played Petersfield on Broadhalfpenny Down — the last village fixture played there before the ground was given over almost wholly to grazing. The match marked the close of continuous cricket on the most famous strip in the eighteenth-century game. Cricket would not be regularly played at Broadhalfpenny again until the late nineteenth-century revival.
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1810-12-14
On 14 December 1810 Thomas Lord signed the lease on a seven-acre site on St John's Wood Road that would, four years later, become the third and final Lord's Cricket Ground. The lease — for an initial 80 years from the Eyre Estate — was negotiated as insurance against the increasingly likely loss of the Middle Ground at North Bank. The site Lord secured in December 1810 has hosted cricket continuously ever since.
MCC vs Middlesex
1810-05-08
On 8 May 1810 the MCC played Middlesex on the original Lord's ground at Dorset Square — the last major match on the site Thomas Lord had opened in 1787. The Portman Estate's notice to terminate, served in October 1808, took effect at the close of play. The Dorset Square ground was given over to building work within weeks; cricket at Lord's continued at the new Middle Ground at North Bank.
MCC vs Middlesex
1810-06-21
On 21-22 June 1810 George Osbaldeston — the Yorkshire baronet who would become the most flamboyant amateur sportsman of the Regency — made his major-match cricket debut for MCC against Middlesex at the new Middle Ground. He was twenty-three, already famous for his hunting and his pugilism, and over the next decade he would establish himself as the fastest underarm bowler in England and the only serious rival to Lord Frederick Beauclerk.
Surrey vs MCC
1809-08-30
On 30-31 August 1809 John Wells of Farnham — the elder of the great Wells fast-bowling brothers — played his last major match: Surrey against MCC at the new Middle Ground at North Bank. He took 3 for 28 in the first innings and was carried from the field by the Surrey team at the close. He was forty-one and had bowled in major cricket for twenty years.
MCC vs Sussex
1809-09-04
On 4-5 September 1809 the MCC played its first fixture against a representative Sussex side, on the Steine at Brighton. The match — won by MCC by four wickets — formalised Sussex's status as a major cricket county and established the MCC v Sussex fixture that would run, with interruptions, for the next two centuries.
Hampshire
1809-10-01
By the close of the 1809 season Hampshire — for half a century the strongest cricket county in England, the home of the Hambledon Club and the source of Beldham, Walker, Harris and Small — had ceased to field a competitive major-county side. The Hambledon Club had dissolved more than a decade earlier; its players were retiring; no organised replacement structure existed. The 1809 season is the conventional moment at which Hampshire's first great cricketing era ended.
Surrey vs England
1809-07-04
On the newly opened Lord's Middle Ground in July 1809, Thomas Howard of Mitcham took 9 wickets in a Surrey v England fixture and announced himself as the leading fast underarm bowler in the country — the first since David Harris's death in 1803 to dominate a major match by pace alone. His performance gave Surrey a rare win over England and reset the bowling hierarchy of the late underarm era.
MCC vs Petworth
1809-08-21
In August 1809 a Marylebone Cricket Club side travelled to Petworth Park in Sussex to play a side raised by the third Earl of Egremont — the earliest documented away tour by an MCC eleven. The match marked the beginning of the MCC's role as a touring side, a function the club would expand through the nineteenth century into international touring as MCC sides to Australia, India and beyond.
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1808-08-15
In August 1808 a small group of surviving Hambledon Club veterans gathered at the Bat & Ball Inn at Broadhalfpenny Down — the inn that had served as the club's headquarters in its great years — for an informal reunion. Beldham, Walker, Aburrow, Sueter and a handful of fielders met for the day; a young John Nyren attended and made the notes that would become the basis of his 1833 memoir.
Brighton vs Hove
1808-07-19
On 19 July 1808 a Brighton club side played a Hove village side on a strip laid out behind the church at Hove — the earliest documented cricket match at Hove, and the founding entry of a venue that would, by the late nineteenth century, become the headquarters of Sussex County Cricket Club.
Lambert vs three opponents
1808-08-08
On 8 August 1808 William Lambert played a single-wicket match at Lord's against three opponents — bowling, batting and fielding alone against a side of three. He won by 11 runs. The match is one of the most famous individual feats of the underarm era and the first major demonstration of Lambert's all-round ability that would, ten years later, see him called the finest cricketer in England.
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1808-10-04
On 4 October 1808 the Portman Estate served formal notice on Thomas Lord that his lease on the Dorset Square ground — the original Lord's, opened in 1787 — would not be renewed. The land was wanted for housing. Lord had eight months to find a new ground. He did, and opened the Middle Ground at North Bank in May 1809; but the Dorset Square notice is the moment at which the original Lord's was lost.
Surrey vs England
1808-06-13
William Ward — the City banker who would, twelve years later, score 278 at Lord's and, in 1825, save the ground itself by buying its lease — made his first major-match appearance for Surrey against England in June 1808. He scored 18 in a low-scoring defeat. The debut is the entry point of one of the great careers of the Regency era and of one of the most important administrators in the history of Lord's.
Christ Church vs Magdalen College
1807-06-15
On 15 June 1807 Christ Church played Magdalen College at Bullingdon Green outside Oxford — the earliest documented inter-college cricket match in the history of Oxford University. The fixture is the foundation entry of Oxford cricket and the earliest documented use of Bullingdon Green, the common ground that served as Oxford's principal cricket venue for the first half of the nineteenth century.
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1807-11-11
At the MCC committee elections of 11 November 1807 Lord Frederick Beauclerk — already the leading amateur cricketer in England — was elected to the steering subcommittee and emerged as the dominant figure in MCC administration. From November 1807 until his death in 1850 Beauclerk effectively ran the club: arranging fixtures, setting stakes, controlling selection and administering the laws.
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1807-05-13
In May 1807 the MCC committee — alarmed by the runaway side-betting that had attached to single-wicket and county matches through the early 1800s — passed a resolution capping the principal stake on any MCC-arranged major match at 500 guineas. The rule did not stop side betting in the gallery, but it cut the headline stakes on the central fixtures sharply and is the first MCC regulation explicitly aimed at reducing betting influence on major cricket.
England vs Kent
1807-07-14
John Bligh, fourth Earl of Darnley, hosted a major England v Kent fixture on the lawn at Cobham Hall on 14-15 July 1807 — one of the last great patron-funded country-house matches of the underarm era. The young Ivo Bligh, who would as Lord Darnley a generation later bring the Ashes urn back from Australia, was a child of three watching from the terrace. The fixture is the Cobham Hall ground's most important first-class entry.
Beauclerk vs all comers
1806-05-19
On 19 May 1806 Lord Frederick Beauclerk — Regency cricket's swaggering amateur — posted an open single-wicket challenge at Lord's: he would play any man in England for 50 guineas a side. The challenge was nailed to the pavilion door and ran in the cricket press for three weeks. Beldham accepted, and the resulting match in June became one of the famous fixtures of the season.
MCC vs Middlesex
1806-08-25
On 25 August 1806 Edward Hayward Budd — eighteen years old and four years into his major-match career — scored 110 for the MCC against Middlesex at Lord's. It was his first major century, and the start of a thirty-year career as the most powerful straight hitter of the underarm era. Budd would, in the 1820s, regularly hit balls clear out of the Lord's ground.
Beauclerk vs Beldham
1806-06-09
On 9 June 1806 Lord Frederick Beauclerk — Regency cricket's swaggering amateur — challenged William Beldham, the most respected professional in the country, to a single-wicket match for stakes of 50 guineas. The match was played in front of a paying Lord's crowd. Beauclerk won by twelve runs, helped by a much-debated stumping decision against Beldham in the first innings. The contest is one of the great single-wicket fixtures of the period.
Trinity College vs St John's College
1805-05-22
On 22 May 1805 a Trinity College XI played St John's College on Parker's Piece in Cambridge — the earliest documented inter-college cricket match in the history of the university. The match is the foundation entry of Cambridge University cricket and the earliest documented use of Parker's Piece, the common ground that would become one of the most important early grounds in English cricket.
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1805-04-14
In April 1805 the MCC committee passed a resolution formally adopting the Mary-Le-Bone Tavern in High Street as the club's permanent headquarters. The tavern — already used informally for committee meetings since 1788 — became the site at which all major cricket matches were arranged, all stakes were settled and all rule disputes were resolved. It was the de facto governing body of cricket for the next twenty years.
Kent vs England
1805-08-19
On 19-20 August 1805 the Vine ground at Sevenoaks — leased to the Sackville family of Knole and given over to cricket since 1734 — hosted a Kent v England fixture that was, by the standards of the day, a near-Test match. Kent were captained by John Bligh and supported by the Duke of Dorset's tenants; England were raised by the Earl of Winchilsea. The match is the most important first-class fixture played at the Vine in the new century and a marker of Kent's continuing strength.
Officers vs Civilians
1804-01-08
On 8 January 1804 the Sydney Gazette — the first newspaper printed in Australia — reported a cricket match played in Hyde Park, Sydney, between officers of the colony and a side of civilians. It is the earliest documented cricket match in Australia and the founding event of Australian cricket history. The fixture predates the formal Australian colonial competition by more than half a century.
Sussex vs Surrey
1804-07-30
George Brown of Brighton — who would later, in the 1818 underarm era, become the fastest bowler in England and the man whose pace allegedly killed a long stop — took his first major-match wickets for Sussex against Surrey on the Steine in July 1804. He took 4 for 32 in the first innings. The performance announced Sussex's first home-grown fast bowler and the future scourge of Lord's batters.
Old Etonians vs Calcutta
1804-01-15
In January 1804 a side of Old Etonian East India Company officers played a representative Calcutta XI on the Old Course in Calcutta — the earliest match for which a substantial scoresheet survives in British India. The Calcutta Cricket Club had been founded in 1792, but the 1804 fixture is the oldest with a recorded individual scorecard. It is the foundational document of Indian cricket history.
Surrey
1804-06-04
Through the 1804 season John and Joseph 'Joey' Wells of Farnham — brothers and Surrey professionals — formed the most successful underarm fast-bowling pair in the country. Together they took 79 wickets in major matches that summer, drove Surrey to a string of victories, and effectively replaced the late David Harris as the dominant pace attack of the post-Hambledon era.
Surrey vs England
1804-07-23
On the Greenwich ground in July 1804, William 'Silver Billy' Beldham — by then in his fortieth year and the most admired batter in England — made an unbeaten 144 for Surrey against an England XI. It was his highest score in major cricket, played on a rough out-ground in three consecutive sessions, and is one of the largest individual scores recorded in the underarm era.
Beldham vs Walker
1803-08-22
On 22 August 1803 the two greatest survivors of the Hambledon batting school — William 'Silver Billy' Beldham and Tom 'Old Everlasting' Walker — played a single-wicket match at Lord's for stakes of 25 guineas. Beldham, faster-scoring and more elegant, won by 14 runs. The fixture is one of the few well-documented direct contests between the two senior professionals of the period.
Middlesex vs Surrey
1803-06-15
In a Middlesex v Surrey match at Lord's in June 1803, the Buckinghamshire professional William Fennex did something contemporaries called 'astonishing': he advanced down the pitch to drive the ball before it pitched. Until that moment batters had played strictly from the crease, blocking length balls and waiting for the loose ball to cut. Fennex's running attack is the first recorded use of the technique that became the foundation of modern off-side play.
Kent vs England
1802-07-07
Sir Horatio Mann, the Kent baronet who had been one of the great patrons of late-eighteenth-century cricket, raised his last full England-strength match at Bishopsbourne in July 1802. His finances had collapsed after years of cricket spending; the 1802 fixture was effectively a farewell. Mann died twelve years later largely forgotten, but the Bishopsbourne match marks the close of an era of lordly cricket patronage that had begun in the 1760s.
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1802-05-01
In May 1802 Henry Bentley, a Lord's professional and occasional umpire, began the systematic scorebook that he would maintain for the next twenty-one years. His ledger — eventually published in 1823 as A Correct Account of All the Cricket Matches — is the single most important primary source for major cricket between 1786 and 1822 and the foundation of all later Regency-era statistics.
Hampshire vs England
1802-07-08
Robert Robinson of Farnham, who had lost the use of his right hand in a childhood accident and gripped the bat with a leather-and-iron sheath, appeared for Hampshire against England at Lord's in July 1802. He scored a fluent 30 in the first innings — the first half-century-class score by a one-handed batter in major cricket — and helped Hampshire to a draw against the strongest side of the day.
Sussex vs Hampshire
1801-08-12
On 12-13 August 1801, the open green of the Steine in Brighton — already a fashionable Regency promenade thanks to the Prince of Wales's patronage of the town — hosted its first documented major cricket match: Sussex against Hampshire. The Prince himself, residing at the Marine Pavilion, watched from the eastern boundary. The match marked Brighton's arrival as a senior cricket town and the beginning of Sussex as a recognised major county side.
Surrey vs England
1801-06-15
John Hammond of Storrington, a 22-year-old Sussex professional, kept wicket for England against Surrey at Lord's in June 1801 — his first major appearance behind the stumps. He took two stumpings and a catch and was praised by contemporaries for his quiet hands. He would keep wicket in major matches for twenty years and is remembered as the leading Regency wicketkeeper.
Surrey vs England
1801-07-20
On 20-21 July 1801 a 22-year-old village professional named William Lambert appeared for Surrey against England at Thomas Lord's first ground in Dorset Square. Listed tenth in the order, he scored 0 and 5 in a low-scoring defeat. Within a decade he would be ranked alongside Beauclerk and Beldham as the finest all-rounder in England, and in 1817 he would become the first man to score two centuries in the same major match.
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1800-07-19
Joseph 'Joey' Ring of Hambledon — left-arm fast underarm bowler and one of the last surviving regulars of the great Hambledon side of the 1780s — died at Hambledon in July 1800 in his early forties. His death is one of the markers historians use for the end of the Hambledon era proper: of the eleven who beat England at Sevenoaks in 1777, only Beldham, Walker and a handful of fielders were still in major cricket.
Hampshire vs Surrey
1800-06-23
On 23 June 1800 Thomas 'Old Everlasting' Walker batted for the best part of two days for Hampshire against Surrey at Lord's. Contemporaries said he scored at a rate of barely a run an over. The innings — 41 in roughly four and a half hours — was Walker's longest at Lord's and the most extreme example of the Hambledon-school defensive batting that had governed the major game since the 1780s.
England XI vs Rutland & Leicestershire
1800-08-12
In August 1800 George Finch-Hatton, ninth Earl of Winchilsea — co-founder of the MCC and the most important patron of late-Hambledon cricket — staged one of his last great country-house matches at his Rutland seat, Burley-on-the-Hill. He brought down a near-Test-strength England XI to play a combined Rutland and Leicestershire side in front of a paying gallery on the lawn below the great house. The fixture is one of the clearest pieces of evidence we have that the patron-led model of major cricket survived into the new century, even as the MCC at Lord's was beginning to absorb its functions.