Controversies in 1835

6 incidents documented

William Caldecourt — MCC Professional and Standing Umpire, 1830s

MCC; Umpires

1835-06-15

William Caldecourt, a Lord's ground bowler in the 1810s and 1820s, became through the 1830s the senior figure of the MCC professional staff and the club's most-used standing umpire. Caldecourt's interpretations of the roundarm law — especially the shoulder-height limit after the 1835 revision — effectively set the practical boundary that other umpires followed.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#william-caldecourt

⭐Mild

James Broadbridge — The Other Half of Sussex's Roundarm Pair, 1830s

Sussex; Players

1835-08-01

James Broadbridge of Duncton was the second half — alongside William Lillywhite — of the Sussex roundarm bowling partnership that dominated the late 1820s and 1830s. Where Lillywhite was the relentless metronome, Broadbridge bowled with sharper turn and a higher arm, often pushing the limits of the shoulder-height rule. Through the 1830s the two formed the most-feared opening attack in England.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#james-broadbridge

⭐Mild

Earliest Documented Cricket at Charterhouse School — 1835

n/a

1835-07-10

The earliest documented cricket match at Charterhouse School — then on its London Smithfield site — was an inter-form fixture played in the summer of 1835. Charterhouse cricket had been informal through the late eighteenth century; the 1835 match is the earliest with surviving documentation in the school's records. Charterhouse would, by the late nineteenth century, become a notable cricketing school.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#charterhouse-school

⭐Serious

MCC Laws Revision — Roundarm Permitted to Shoulder Height, 1835

n/a

1835-05-19

On 19 May 1835 the Marylebone Cricket Club rewrote Law 10 a second time, raising the permitted height of the bowler's hand from the elbow (the 1828 limit) to the shoulder. The change ratified what most leading bowlers — Lillywhite, Broadbridge, the Lillywhite imitators in Kent and Surrey — had already been doing in practice and was the second of three law changes (1828, 1835, 1864) by which underarm cricket gave way to overarm.

#mcc#law-change#1835

⭐Moderate

The Follow-On Rule — Introduced into the Laws, 1835

n/a

1835-05-19

The same MCC laws revision of May 1835 that raised the bowling-arm limit also introduced cricket's first formal follow-on rule. Originally the side that batted second was compelled to follow on if it trailed by a stipulated margin, with no captain's discretion; the threshold and the discretion would be amended several times in later decades.

#mcc#follow-on#1835

🏏Mild

The LBW Law in the 1830s — Existing but Rarely Applied

n/a

1835-08-01

The leg-before-wicket law had existed in cricket's code since 1774 — and had been tightened in 1839 to require the ball to pitch in line — but in the 1830s it was rarely applied. Umpires of the era were generally unwilling to give a batsman out leg-before unless the ball had hit the pad in the most blatant manner; lbw dismissals were a small fraction of those given by modern umpires.

#lbw#law-change#1830s