William Caffyn — The Reigate Professional and Surrey's Star All-Rounder of the 1850s

Surrey's rise as a county had been built on professional recruitment. Caffyn from Reigate, Lockyer from Croydon, Mortlock from Croydon and others were brought in by the Oval committee in the early 1850s. Caffyn was the most versatile of them.

The 1855 and 1856 seasons saw Caffyn establish himself as the leading scorer for Surrey. By 1857 he was a fixture in the UAEE side and a candidate for any English representative team. The Winchester engagement in 1858 added winter income and prestige.

William Caffyn was born at Reigate on 2 February 1828 and made his first-class debut for Surrey in 1849. Through the early 1850s he was a steady county batsman; by 1855 he had developed into a free-stroking middle-order player and a useful roundarm bowler. He was a regular member of the United All-England Eleven from its founding in 1852 and a key figure in F.P. Miller's Champion County Surrey side from 1854 onwards. In 1858 Caffyn took up a winter coaching engagement at Winchester College, the first of four winters spent there, and the model for the professional-coach role that would shape English public school cricket for the rest of the century. He was selected for Parr's North America tour in 1859, the Stephenson tour to Australia in 1861-62 and the Parr tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1863-64. After the second Australian trip he decided to emigrate, taking up a coaching post at the Melbourne Cricket Club and later at the Warwick Club in Sydney. He stayed in Australia until 1871, returning briefly to England before settling there permanently. His memoir 'Seventy-One Not Out', published in 1899, is one of the most readable and historically important Victorian cricket autobiographies.

“Caffyn was a very fine batsman, free and attractive in style, and the Oval and Fenner's at Cambridge were the grounds that suited him best.”

Caffyn's emigration in 1864 was decisive for Australian cricket: as coach at the Melbourne Cricket Club and the Warwick Club in Sydney through the late 1860s and early 1870s, he taught the technique that produced Charles Bannerman, the Bannerman brothers, F.R. Spofforth's contemporaries and the first generations of the Test era. He returned permanently to England in 1871.