William Beldham's Last Major Match — Surrey v England, August 1817

Beldham had been a Hambledon professional since the 1780s and had bridged the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in major cricket — the only player to do so at the highest level.

Beldham had played major cricket since 1787 — a thirty-year career across two centuries. By 1817 his contemporaries were dead or retired: Walker had played his last in 1812, Harris had died in 1803, Aylward Senior was in retirement at Petersfield. Beldham's August 1817 appearance was, contemporaries knew, almost certainly his last. He went in at no. 4 in both innings; his 18 was the third-top score for Surrey. After the match he announced his retirement. He returned to Wrecclesham and tended his small farm; he survived until 1862, dying at the age of ninety-six.

“I sometimes hear of the new style of bowling, and I cannot say I should have liked it. We had enough to do with the underhand.”

Beldham lived into the high Victorian era. He was interviewed in old age by the cricket writer James Pycroft, whose The Cricket Field (1851) preserved Beldham's recollections of the Hambledon side.