George Parr — 'The Lion of the North' Established as England's Premier Batsman, 1855

With Pilch gone and Mynn ageing, the question of who was England's best batsman was briefly open. Parr settled it in 1855 with a series of dominant innings against the strongest county opposition.

George Parr was born at Radcliffe on Trent, Nottinghamshire, in May 1826. He had been the leading batsman in the north since the early 1850s and Pilch's consensus successor from 1854 onward. Parr's batting was founded on a devastating pull to leg — so powerful and so often employed against anything short of a length outside off stump that contemporaries called him 'the pull-king'. He scored 6,082 first-class runs at 20.08, modest by later standards but exceptional by the standards of his day on uncovered rough pitches. His highest score was 130 for Nottinghamshire against Surrey at The Oval in July 1859. He captained the All-England Eleven after Clarke's death in 1856, led the first two English tours to Australia (1861–62 and 1863–64) — though illness prevented him from going on the first, and he captained the second — and was throughout the late 1850s and 1860s the equivalent of what would now be called England's number-three batsman. He retired in 1871 and died at Radcliffe in June 1891.