William Clarke Founds the All-England Eleven — 1846

First-class cricket in 1846 was concentrated in a handful of London and southern grounds. Outside London, opportunities for leading professionals were sparse; outside the south, opportunities to see them play were almost non-existent. Clarke had the contacts (from Lord's), the venue management experience (from Trent Bridge), and the financial nous to bridge the gap.

Through the summer of 1846 Clarke wrote to professional cricketers and to provincial ground proprietors, sounding out availability and gate receipts. By August he had a roster and a fixture promise from the Sheffield ground.

Clarke was an unlikely impresario. Born at Nottingham in 1798, he had lost the sight of his right eye in a fives-court accident as a young man and bowled slow underarm 'lobs' that swung in the air and broke off the pitch. He had married Mary Chapman, the widow of the proprietor of the Trent Bridge Inn, in 1837, and had laid out the Trent Bridge cricket ground behind the inn the following year. Engaged as practice bowler at Lord's in 1846 at the age of 47, Clarke saw at first hand both the appetite for top-class cricket outside London and the financial squeeze on professional players, who relied on a small handful of fixtures each summer. His response was the All-England Eleven: a permanent travelling side of the best dozen professionals in the country, contracted to him personally, that would tour against local 18s and 22s for guaranteed match fees. The first AEE side, taking the field for the first time at Sheffield's Hyde Park ground on 31 August 1846 against a Twenty of Sheffield, included Clarke himself, Pilch, Felix, Joseph Guy, William Martingell, Tom Sewell senior, Vincent Hillyer and George Butler. Clarke paid each man £4 to £6 per match plus expenses, retained the gate as promoter, and acted as captain and chief bowler. Within three years the AEE was the central institution of professional English cricket.

“Clarke is the cleverest manager I ever saw, and the cleverest bowler too, in his way.”

The AEE played eight matches in its first season, expanded to a fuller schedule in 1847 and dominated professional cricket for the next ten years. Clarke himself died in 1856 and was succeeded by George Parr; a breakaway United All-England Eleven, founded in 1852 by John Wisden and James Dean over Clarke's autocratic management, ran in parallel. By 1860 the two travelling elevens between them were the principal source of income for English professional cricketers.