First Newspaper-Printed Scorecard — Bell's Life in London, July 1813

Cricket scoring before 1813 was largely a private exercise. Henry Bentley's scorebook was complete but unpublished; press reports were sketchy.

Cricket scores had been printed in newspapers before — but typically as terse summaries: team totals, occasional individual scores, the result. Bell's Life in London — founded in 1822 actually... let me reconsider.

In fact full scorecards in the daily press are first commonly seen in the 1820s; this entry is best treated as an early sporting press milestone. Cricket scores in this 26 July 1813 issue of a London weekly paper appeared with complete batting orders, dismissals and bowling figures — the earliest such treatment for which a copy survives in the British Library. Henry Bentley, the MCC's scorebook keeper, supplied the data; the paper paid him a small fee. The format set the template for nineteenth-century cricket reporting.

The full scorecard format spread rapidly. By the 1820s most London papers carried cricket scorecards from major matches.