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Controversies in 1814

3 incidents documented

⭐Serious

Lord's Moves to St John's Wood — Thomas Lord's Third Ground, May 1814

n/a

1814-05-07

In the spring of 1814 the Yorkshireman Thomas Lord, evicted from his Middle Ground in Marylebone by the route of the Regent's Canal, dug up his sacred turf for the second time in three years and laid it down on a former duck pond on Colonel Henry Eyre's estate at St John's Wood. The new ground — Lord's third — opened in May 1814. It has stood on the same site for more than two hundred years and is now the senior cricket ground in the world.

#lord-s#thomas-lord#st-johns-wood
⭐Mild

First Match at the Modern Lord's — MCC v Hertfordshire, 22 June 1814

Marylebone Cricket Club vs Hertfordshire

1814-06-22

On Wednesday 22 June 1814, three weeks after the new ground had opened to club practice, Marylebone Cricket Club played Hertfordshire in the first formal match on the third Lord's ground at St John's Wood. MCC won by an innings and 27 runs. The fixture, intended as a low-key inaugural rather than a great public occasion, has since become the recognised birth-date of the modern Lord's and a landmark in the history of the sport.

#mcc#hertfordshire#lord-s
⭐Mild

Christiana Willes — The Sister Who Bowled Roundarm in the Garden, 1810s

n/a (private practice and family cricket)

1814-06-15

Christiana Willes (1786-1873) was the younger sister of John Willes of Tonford, the Kent gentleman who pushed roundarm bowling into senior cricket. According to a 1907 memoir by her son Edward Hodges and earlier testimony recorded by Arthur Haygarth, Christiana bowled to her brother in a barn at Tonford during the 1810s, and the higher arm action she used in those practice sessions was the prototype that John adopted in matches. The story has been embellished — particularly the popular claim that her wide skirts forced her to bowl roundarm — but the underlying record places Christiana at the technical origin of one of cricket's most consequential bowling reforms.

#christiana-willes#john-willes#roundarm-bowling