England
1916-07-01
Major William Booth — Major was his given name, not a rank — Yorkshire all-rounder and Test cricketer, was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, while serving with the 15th (Leeds Pals) West Yorkshire Regiment. He was 29.
Warwickshire
1916-07-22
Percy Jeeves, the Warwickshire fast-medium bowler whose name P.G. Wodehouse borrowed for the most famous butler in English fiction, was killed in action at High Wood on the Somme on 22 July 1916. He was 28 and had no known grave.
England
1916-09-03
Kenneth Hutchings, the dashing Kent batsman who had toured Australia with England in 1907-08 and scored 126 at Melbourne, was killed by a shell at Ginchy on the Somme on 3 September 1916. He was 33.
Worcestershire
1916-07-07
William 'Billy' Burns, the Worcestershire fast bowler and middle-order batsman who once took a hat-trick against Gloucestershire and bowled out the Australians at Worcester in 1909, was killed near Contalmaison during the Battle of the Somme on 7 July 1916. He was 32.
England
1916-08-01
Although first-class cricket stopped in England between 1915 and 1918, schoolboy cricket — including the Eton-Harrow and Oxford-Cambridge fixtures, where age and conditions allowed — continued in modified form through the war, providing a thread of continuity through four otherwise empty seasons.
England, Australia services
1916-07-15
From 1915 onwards, charity and services cricket became the only first-rank cricket in England — featuring matches between Royal Navy, Army, RFC, Dominion troops and ad-hoc 'England' XIs raised from cricketers not in uniform. The proceeds went to war funds and the matches kept the game in the public eye.
England and beyond
1916-04-15
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1916, published in spring 1916 and edited by Sydney Pardon, ran the longest obituary section in the publication's history — listing dozens of first-class cricketers killed in the first eighteen months of war and including W.G. Grace, Victor Trumper and A.E. Stoddart in a single calendar year.