William Lillywhite at Forty-Seven — Roundarm Mastery, 1839

Bowlers of the 1820s and 1830s typically peaked young and burned out fast — the new roundarm action put strain on shoulders and backs that the underarm style had not. Lillywhite's longevity, in part because his action was a smooth low-roundarm rather than a high one, was unusual.

Lillywhite, born in 1792, had come to first-class cricket late but had been at the top of the bowling lists since the late 1820s. Through the 1830s, in his late thirties and forties, he showed no signs of decline. The 1839 season — when he was 47 — saw him bowling at Lord's and the Oval as effectively as ever. His method, by then refined over fifteen years, was to bowl a relentless length just outside off-stump with the slight movement off the seam that the rough pitches of the era allowed. Batsmen who had played him for years still found him hard to score off, and his partnership with Jem Broadbridge in the Sussex side and with Lillywhite's own son John (who played for Sussex from 1850 onwards) gave the county its bowling backbone. Lillywhite would continue at the top for another decade. He took his thousandth first-class wicket in 1853 — the first bowler to reach the milestone — at the age of 61.

Lillywhite continued to play through the 1840s and into the early 1850s. He died in 1854, the first bowler to have taken 1,000 first-class wickets and the patriarch of the Lillywhite cricketing dynasty.