#william lillywhite

11 incidents tagged

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

Sussex County Cricket Club Formally Reconstituted — Brighton, 1839

Sussex

1839-03-01

Sussex County Cricket Club, founded at Brighton on 1 March 1839, was the first formally constituted county cricket club in the world. Built on the Sussex cricketing tradition that William Lillywhite and James Broadbridge had carried since the 1820s, the club provided the model — committee, subscriptions, ground, professional staff — that all subsequent county cricket clubs followed.

#sussex-ccc#brighton#1839

⭐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

First North vs South Match — Lord's, July 1836

North of England vs South of England

1836-07-11

On 11 July 1836 the first match between the North and South of England was played at Lord's. Conceived as a rival showcase to Gentlemen vs Players and a vehicle for the leading professionals, the fixture became an annual highlight of the English summer for the next forty years and was for much of the mid-Victorian period the most prestigious match in the calendar.

#north-vs-south#1836#lord-s

⭐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

⭐Serious

MCC Permits the Elbow — Roundarm Bowling Halfway Legalised, 1828

n/a

1828-05-01

Months after the inconclusive Sussex v England trial matches, the MCC amended Rule 10 of the Laws of Cricket in 1828 to permit a bowler to raise his hand level with his elbow at the moment of delivery. The change was a compromise — it stopped short of legalising shoulder-height roundarm — but it shifted the legal frontier and gave umpires implicit licence to look the other way at deliveries that crossed it.

#mcc#roundarm-bowling#1828

⭐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