#1809

7 incidents tagged

Origins of the Wide Ball Law — From Daddy White to MCC, 1809-1811

n/a

1811-05-13

Until 1811 there was no formal law against bowling wide. The MCC's revisions to the Laws of Cricket in 1809 began the move toward outlawing the wide ball, and the formal rule arrived in 1811 — partly in response to the practice (going back to 1771's Daddy White) of batsmen using disproportionately wide bats, partly in response to bowlers like William Lambert who had openly bowled wides to defeat opponents in single-wicket challenges.

#wide-ball#law-change#mcc

⭐Mild

John Wells's Retirement Match — Surrey v MCC, August 1809

Surrey vs MCC

1809-08-30

On 30-31 August 1809 John Wells of Farnham — the elder of the great Wells fast-bowling brothers — played his last major match: Surrey against MCC at the new Middle Ground at North Bank. He took 3 for 28 in the first innings and was carried from the field by the Surrey team at the close. He was forty-one and had bowled in major cricket for twenty years.

#regency-cricket#underarm#john-wells

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First MCC v Sussex Fixture at Brighton — September 1809

MCC vs Sussex

1809-09-04

On 4-5 September 1809 the MCC played its first fixture against a representative Sussex side, on the Steine at Brighton. The match — won by MCC by four wickets — formalised Sussex's status as a major cricket county and established the MCC v Sussex fixture that would run, with interruptions, for the next two centuries.

#regency-cricket#underarm#mcc

⭐Mild

Hampshire's Decline as a Major Cricket County — Season Review, 1809

Hampshire

1809-10-01

By the close of the 1809 season Hampshire — for half a century the strongest cricket county in England, the home of the Hambledon Club and the source of Beldham, Walker, Harris and Small — had ceased to field a competitive major-county side. The Hambledon Club had dissolved more than a decade earlier; its players were retiring; no organised replacement structure existed. The 1809 season is the conventional moment at which Hampshire's first great cricketing era ended.

#regency-cricket#underarm#hampshire

⭐Mild

Thomas Howard's Emergence — Fast Bowling After Harris, Surrey v England 1809

Surrey vs England

1809-07-04

On the newly opened Lord's Middle Ground in July 1809, Thomas Howard of Mitcham took 9 wickets in a Surrey v England fixture and announced himself as the leading fast underarm bowler in the country — the first since David Harris's death in 1803 to dominate a major match by pace alone. His performance gave Surrey a rare win over England and reset the bowling hierarchy of the late underarm era.

#regency-cricket#underarm#lord-s-old-ground

⭐Mild

MCC's First Recorded Tour — A Visit to Petworth, August 1809

MCC vs Petworth

1809-08-21

In August 1809 a Marylebone Cricket Club side travelled to Petworth Park in Sussex to play a side raised by the third Earl of Egremont — the earliest documented away tour by an MCC eleven. The match marked the beginning of the MCC's role as a touring side, a function the club would expand through the nineteenth century into international touring as MCC sides to Australia, India and beyond.

#regency-cricket#underarm#lord-s-old-ground

⭐Mild

Thomas Lord Opens His Middle Ground — St John's Wood, May 1809

n/a

1809-05-08

In May 1809 Thomas Lord, frustrated by his landlord Mr Portman's plan to raise the rent on his original Dorset Fields ground, opened a second ground at the North Bank in St John's Wood. The Middle Ground, leased from the Eyre family for eighty years, hosted St John's Wood Cricket Club through 1809-13 but was barely used by the MCC, who continued to play at the Old Ground until the 1810 lease expiry. Requisitioned in 1813 for the cutting of the Regent's Canal, the Middle Ground was abandoned and Lord moved his turf to a third site — the present Lord's — in 1814.

#thomas-lord#middle-ground#st-johns-wood