#1812

4 incidents tagged

Earliest Documented Cricket at Madras and Bombay — East India Company Garrisons, 1812

Officers vs Civilians

1812-12-15

By the close of 1812 cricket was being played regularly in both Madras and Bombay — the earliest documented fixtures in either Presidency. Garrison officers and civilian East India Company servants ran the matches; the Madras Gazette and Bombay Courier preserved the earliest scoresheets. The Calcutta game (documented 1804) had been joined by all three Presidency capitals.

#regency-cricket#underarm#madras

⭐Mild

Earliest Documented Cricket at Halifax, Nova Scotia — Garrison Match, July 1812

Officers vs Sergeants

1812-07-22

On 22 July 1812 — six weeks after the United States declared war on Britain — officers and sergeants of the Halifax garrison played a cricket match below Citadel Hill in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The fixture is the earliest documented cricket match in Canada and the founding event of Canadian cricket history.

#regency-cricket#underarm#halifax

⭐Mild

Cricket in Wellington's Army — Spain, Summer 1812

Officers vs 28th Foot

1812-07-15

In summer 1812, two days before the battle of Salamanca, officers of Wellington's army played a cricket match against the rank-and-file of the 28th Regiment of Foot on a flat field outside the city. The match — the earliest documented cricket fixture played by British troops on the European mainland — was recorded in an officer's diary that survives in the National Army Museum. It is the foundation entry of military cricket overseas.

#regency-cricket#underarm#peninsular-war

🔥Moderate

Cricket on Life Support — The Three Wartime Matches of 1811-1813

Various private elevens at Lord's Middle Ground

1813-06-09

In the three years between 1811 and 1813, with the Napoleonic War at its height and the country bleeding men and money, only three senior cricket matches were played in England — all of them at Lord's Middle Ground in Marylebone. The fixture lists of the previous century shrank to a handful of private challenges between the elevens of Aislabie, Beauclerk, Osbaldeston and Bligh. County cricket effectively ceased to exist; the great clubs of Kent, Surrey and Hampshire scarcely fielded a senior side. Cricket survived only through the obstinacy of a few amateurs at Lord's.

#napoleonic-wars#lord-frederick-beauclerk#george-osbaldeston