Controversies in 1846

9 incidents documented

Alfred Mynn's Single-Wicket Championship — The Lion of Kent Unbeaten, 1840–1847

Alfred Mynn vs various challengers

1846-08-20

Through the early and mid-1840s Alfred Mynn, the Lion of Kent, was the unrivalled champion of single-wicket cricket — the high-stakes individual format in which leading professionals wagered on matches played one batsman against one bowler. Mynn's combination of fast roundarm bowling and heavy hitting made him formidable in the format; he defeated Fuller Pilch, William Hillyer and all other challengers, retiring from single-wicket competition around 1847 with his championship record intact.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

😂Mild

Women's Cricket in the 1840s — Village Matches and the Continuing Tradition

Women's cricket clubs, principally Surrey and Kent

1846-08-01

Women's cricket in the 1840s continued the tradition of village women's matches that had been established in the eighteenth century, with fixtures between women's sides from villages in Surrey and Kent drawing curious crowds who came as much to watch an unusual spectacle as to follow the cricket. The matches were informal and commercially insignificant but their persistence through the mid-Victorian era maintained a continuous women's cricket tradition that the late Victorian women's clubs would later build upon.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

The Cradle of International Cricket — Canada-USA Rivalry Develops, 1840s

Canada vs United States

1846-09-01

Following the historic 1844 Canada v USA international — the first international match in any team sport — the two nations played a series of further matches through the late 1840s that established North America as an incubator of international cricket. The Toronto Cricket Club and the New York clubs maintained a friendly but competitive rivalry, and the standard of cricket in both countries was genuinely high by mid-century standards.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

William Clarke Founds the All-England Eleven — 1846

n/a

1846-08-31

In late August 1846 the Nottinghamshire lob-bowler William Clarke, then a 48-year-old professional working as the practice bowler at Lord's, gathered eleven of England's leading professional cricketers and founded the All-England Eleven. The travelling side that resulted would, over the next two decades, take first-class standard cricket to every corner of the British Isles and create the commercial template for professional touring.

#william-clarke#all-england-eleven#aee

⭐Mild

Joseph Guy of Nottinghamshire — Stylist of the 1840s

Nottinghamshire / All-England Eleven

1846-08-01

Joseph Guy of Nottinghamshire — a graceful right-handed batsman whose style Lord Frederick Beauclerk likened to 'cricket of the most gentlemanly kind' — was a charter member of William Clarke's All-England Eleven in 1846 and one of the leading professional batsmen of the 1840s.

#joseph-guy#nottinghamshire#1846

⭐Mild

Cricket Takes Hold in the Australian Colonies — Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart in the 1840s

Tasmania vs Victoria

1846-12-16

On 11-12 February 1851 the first inter-colonial cricket match in Australia was played between Tasmania (then Van Diemen's Land) and Victoria at Launceston, but the cricket culture from which it grew had been put together in the 1840s — with the Melbourne Cricket Club founded in 1838, the first match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1853, and Sydney clubs playing each other from the early 1840s. Cricket was, by the end of the 1840s, the dominant summer game in every Australian colony.

#australia#tasmania#victoria

⭐Mild

Player Payment Structure of the All-England Eleven — £4-£6 a Match Plus Expenses, 1846-1849

All-England Eleven

1846-09-01

William Clarke paid his All-England Eleven professionals between £4 and £6 per match plus travelling expenses through the late 1840s — at a time when a skilled labourer earned around £1 a week. The pay was generous by the standards of the day, but Clarke kept the gate as promoter and the disparity between his earnings and his players' would, by the early 1850s, drive a series of breakaways and the eventual foundation of the United All-England Eleven.

#all-england-eleven#professional-cricket#player-payment

⭐Moderate

Alfred Mynn's Continued Recovery and the Folklore of the Leicester Leg — through the 1840s

Kent / All-England Eleven

1846-08-15

Alfred Mynn's near-amputation at Leicester in 1836 — when, having batted on with a leg blackened by repeated fast roundarm blows, he was reportedly carried back to London on the roof of a stage coach — passed into cricket folklore through the 1840s. By 1846 the story was retold at every Mynn match, and the Leicester injury had become as much a part of his identity as his bowling and single-wicket dominance.

#alfred-mynn#leicester-1836#kent

⭐Mild

Single-Wicket Cricket and Mynn's Championship — High-Stakes Cricket of the 1840s

Various

1846-09-15

Single-wicket cricket — an older form of the game in which two or three players a side competed under simplified rules, often for purses of £100 or more — flourished alongside the modern eleven-a-side game through the 1840s. Alfred Mynn was champion of England at single-wicket from 1838 to 1846 and his title-defence matches drew crowds and betting comparable with the Gentlemen v Players match.

#single-wicket#alfred-mynn#1846