#waterloo

Cricket After Waterloo — The Recovery of the Senior Game, 1815

Six weeks after the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 ended twenty-two years of Napoleonic war, English cricket began to revive. Six senior matches were played in the rest of the summer of 1815, more than in any of the previous four years combined. Two centuries were scored at the new Lord's. Soldiers returning from the Peninsula and Belgium rejoined the professional ranks. By the end of the season the sport had pulled back from the brink at which it had stood in 1813.