Joseph Guy of Nottinghamshire — Stylist of the 1840s

Notts cricket in the 1830s and 1840s was led by William Clarke at Trent Bridge. Guy emerged from the same Nottingham cricketing community and was always associated with the Trent Bridge ground.

Guy played for the Players against the Gentlemen from the late 1830s and was an established first-class batsman by the early 1840s.

Guy was born at Radford, Nottingham in 1813 and was already a leading Notts batsman by the time Clarke laid out the Trent Bridge ground in 1838. He bowled little and kept rarely; his place was as a top-order batsman, often at three, in the Notts and AEE elevens. Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the most famous amateur of the previous generation, is credited with calling Guy's style 'cricket of the most gentlemanly kind' — high praise from a man not given to professional flattery. Guy joined Clarke's eleven at its foundation in 1846 and travelled with it through its first decade, scoring valuable runs against the heavy odds the eleven faced in every match. His career declined in the early 1850s as the next generation — George Parr, Tom Hayward — pushed him out of the side, and he retired in 1854. He died in 1873.

“Joe Guy, all elegance, like cricket in a silver bowl.”

Guy's retirement in 1854 came as the AEE was at its peak; his place was taken by the next generation of Notts batsmen, principally Parr and Daft.