Controversies in 1845

12 incidents documented

Cricket in Trinidad — Queen's Park and the West Indian Game Takes Root, 1840s

Trinidad cricket clubs

1845-06-01

Cricket in Trinidad developed rapidly in the 1840s under the influence of the British colonial administration and the plantocracy, with the Queen's Park Savannah in Port of Spain emerging as the principal ground. The game in this era was rigidly racially stratified — played by white colonials and soldiers — but the open savannah format and the social prestige attached to cricket meant it spread gradually to the mixed-race and Afro-Caribbean community, laying the ground for the West Indian cricket revolution of the twentieth century.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

Nicholas Felix — Artist, Author and Batsman: His Playing Peak in the 1840s

Kent and various representative elevens

1845-07-01

Nicholas Felix — whose real name was Nicholas Wanostrocht — was in the 1840s simultaneously the author of Felix on the Bat, the most important batting manual of the period, and an active first-class batsman for Kent and representative sides. As a schoolmaster-amateur who played for the love of the game, he combined technical elegance with the artistic sensibility that made his watercolour sketches of contemporaries the most beautiful cricket portraits of the era.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

George Parr's Early Career — The Lion of the North Emerges, 1845–1847

Nottinghamshire and All-England elevens

1845-07-01

George Parr of Nottinghamshire made his first-class debut in 1844 and by 1845–47 had established himself as the most promising young batsman in England, succeeding Fuller Pilch as the country's leading run-scorer in the 1850s. In the mid-1840s his leg-side hitting — which would eventually send a famous elm branch into orbit at Trent Bridge — was already drawing comment from critics who regarded him as the game's next great figure.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

Cricket in America's Golden Age — Philadelphia and the Game's US Peak, 1840s

US cricket clubs, principally Philadelphia

1845-09-01

The 1840s were the peak decade of American cricket's first golden age. In Philadelphia, Boston and New York, cricket clubs with hundreds of members staged regular inter-city matches before crowds that sometimes rivalled English county fixtures. The Canada v USA international of 1844 was merely the formal expression of a cricket culture that had been building for two decades; by 1845 American cricket looked poised to become a major international force.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

🔥Moderate

The Overarm Debate Begins — Bowlers Push the Law's Limits, 1840s

English professional bowlers and MCC

1845-06-01

Through the 1840s a growing number of English professional bowlers were experimenting with deliveries that raised the bowling arm above the established roundarm height, daring umpires to no-ball them. The debate that would culminate in Edgar Willsher's famous walk-off in 1862 and MCC's legalisation of overarm in 1864 had its roots in the 1840s, when the commercial success of the All-England Eleven touring matches put a premium on pace and hostility that roundarm could not always provide.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

North v South — The Annual Fixture That Defined English Cricket, 1840s

North of England vs South of England

1845-08-01

The annual North v South match, revived in the 1836 season, was by the 1840s the most important representative fixture in English cricket — the closest equivalent to a Test match, in which the best northern professionals (Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire) faced the best southern ones (Surrey, Sussex, Kent) before large crowds at Lord's and at northern venues. The match selected itself, determined form and was the yardstick against which professional reputations were measured.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

Cricket in New South Wales — The Sydney Scene Before the Gold Rush, 1840s

Sydney cricket clubs

1845-01-01

Cricket in New South Wales in the 1840s was a more organised and commercially vigorous affair than its Victorian counterpart, reflecting Sydney's longer colonial history. The Australian Cricket Club and its successors played regularly at Hyde Park and the Domain, staging matches between military garrison sides and civilian clubs that drew substantial crowds long before the gold rush brought tens of thousands of new immigrants to Victoria.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

Surrey County Cricket Club Formally Founded — Horns Tavern, Kennington, August 1845

n/a

1845-08-22

On 22 August 1845, around a hundred Surrey cricketers met at the Horns Tavern in Kennington and resolved to constitute themselves as the Surrey County Cricket Club. The meeting confirmed the lease of a market garden at Kennington — what would become the Oval — and laid the foundations for one of the strongest first-class counties of the next two centuries.

#surrey-ccc#horns-tavern#kennington

⭐Mild

Nicholas Wanostrocht Publishes Felix on the Bat — 1845

n/a

1845-05-01

Nicholas Wanostrocht, the schoolmaster who played first-class cricket for Kent under the pseudonym 'Felix', published Felix on the Bat in 1845 — the first systematic coaching manual on batting, illustrated with his own lithographed plates. It defined the technical vocabulary of forward and back play that English coaching would use for the next century.

#felix#nicholas-wanostrocht#felix-on-the-bat

⭐Mild

Tom Box of Sussex — The Wicketkeeper of the Pre-Pad Era, 1840s

Sussex / All-England Eleven

1845-07-15

Tom Box of Sussex was the leading wicketkeeper in England through the 1840s — keeping wicket without the pads, gloves or specialised gear of later eras and standing up to the fast bowling of Mynn, Redgate and the young John Wisden. He played first-class cricket for 25 years and dropped only one stumping chance in his entire career, according to the Lillywhites' near-contemporary count.

#tom-box#sussex#wicketkeeper

⭐Mild

Lillywhite's Companion to the Bat — 1845

n/a

1845-06-01

Alongside Felix on the Bat, the Lillywhite family published the Companion to the Bat in 1845 — a short instructional pamphlet on batting and bowling that ran in successive editions through the 1840s and 1850s and helped to establish the Lillywhite name as the dominant force in cricket publishing before Wisden.

#lillywhite-family#1845#cricket-publishing

⭐Mild

I Zingari Founded — The First Wandering Amateur Club, July 1845

n/a

1845-07-04

On 4 July 1845, four young Cambridge graduates dined at the Blenheim Hotel in Bond Street and founded I Zingari — Italian for 'the gypsies' — as a wandering amateur cricket club without a home ground. The first such club in cricket, I Zingari pioneered the country-house touring tradition that became the dominant form of amateur cricket for the next century.

#i-zingari#1845#wandering-club