Kent
1839-08-01
From 1836 to the late 1840s Kent was the strongest county in England. The combination of Alfred Mynn's fast roundarm bowling, Fuller Pilch's batting (after his 1836 transfer from Norfolk), Ned Wenman's wicketkeeping and Felix's amateur stroke-play made Kent the side every other county feared. The Canterbury Cricket Week, founded in 1842, would become the showpiece of this golden era.
Rugby School
1838-06-15
Under Thomas Arnold's headmastership (1828-1842), Rugby School's 'Big Side' cricket and football were formally organised as part of the school's daily routine. The Big Side cricket eleven, drawn from the senior houses, was the model later adopted across the major English public schools and the kernel from which the inter-school fixture lists of the Victorian era grew.
Kent, Gentlemen of England
1838-06-01
Nicholas Wanostrocht — universally known by his pen-name 'Felix' — was the most cultured cricketer of the 1830s. The son of a Kent schoolmaster of Belgian descent, he ran a school in Camberwell, played for Kent as a left-handed amateur batsman of the first rank, painted, wrote, invented the catapulta bowling-machine, and would later produce the classic instructional text *Felix on the Bat* (1845).
Reigate village cricket
1838-06-01
William Caffyn — later one of the great Surrey professionals of the 1850s, member of both the 1861-62 Stephenson and the 1863-64 Parr tours of Australia, and eventually the most influential coach in colonial Australian cricket — was a small boy at Reigate in the late 1830s, learning his cricket at a village green where his father ran a barber's shop. His memoir *71 Not Out* (1899) preserves a vivid picture of the cricketing world of his late-1830s boyhood.
Kent, England
1837-07-01
Edward 'Ned' Wenman of Benenden in Kent was the wicketkeeper around whom the great Kent side of the late 1830s and 1840s was built. With Pilch and Mynn ahead of him in the order he was a useful lower-order batsman; behind the stumps he was reckoned the best wicketkeeper in England, taking Mynn's fast roundarm bowling without complaint and effecting more stumpings than any contemporary.
Sussex
1837-06-15
Through the 1830s Sussex was, with Kent, one of the two leading counties in England. The county had been the cradle of roundarm bowling — Lillywhite and Jem Broadbridge had been the bowlers who forced the law change of 1828 — and through the 1830s the Sussex eleven, built around Lillywhite's bowling and Tom Box behind the stumps, was a regular winner against all comers.
MCC; Umpires
1835-06-15
William Caldecourt, a Lord's ground bowler in the 1810s and 1820s, became through the 1830s the senior figure of the MCC professional staff and the club's most-used standing umpire. Caldecourt's interpretations of the roundarm law — especially the shoulder-height limit after the 1835 revision — effectively set the practical boundary that other umpires followed.
Sussex; Players
1835-08-01
James Broadbridge of Duncton was the second half — alongside William Lillywhite — of the Sussex roundarm bowling partnership that dominated the late 1820s and 1830s. Where Lillywhite was the relentless metronome, Broadbridge bowled with sharper turn and a higher arm, often pushing the limits of the shoulder-height rule. Through the 1830s the two formed the most-feared opening attack in England.
n/a
1835-08-01
The leg-before-wicket law had existed in cricket's code since 1774 — and had been tightened in 1839 to require the ball to pitch in line — but in the 1830s it was rarely applied. Umpires of the era were generally unwilling to give a batsman out leg-before unless the ball had hit the pad in the most blatant manner; lbw dismissals were a small fraction of those given by modern umpires.
Sussex; Players
1834-07-12
James Dean (later distinguished as 'Senior' after his son entered the game) emerged in the mid-1830s as one of Sussex's most reliable all-rounders — a slow roundarm bowler and steady lower-middle-order batter. Born at Duncton in 1816, Dean would go on to become a founder of the All-England Eleven in 1846, but his career began in the 1830s as a teenaged Sussex professional.
Sussex, MCC, England
1834-07-01
Through the 1830s William Lillywhite of Sussex — universally known as 'the Nonpareil' for his accuracy — was the most successful bowler in England. He had been one of the two Sussex bowlers (with Jem Broadbridge) who forced the legalisation of roundarm in 1828; through the 1830s he refined the new style into an instrument of unprecedented control, taking hundreds of wickets a season at a length other bowlers could not match.
n/a
1834-09-01
Through the 1830s a small group of surviving Hambledon veterans — William Beldham 'Silver Billy', John Nyren and a handful of others — were the last living link to the great Hambledon era of the 1770s and 1780s. Cowden Clarke's transcription of Nyren's recollections (1833) captured their world for posterity, and the 'old buffers' became a fixture of cricketing nostalgia for the rest of the Victorian period.
Kent, Players of England
1834-08-01
Alfred Mynn of Goudhurst in Kent — six feet one inch tall, eighteen to twenty stone in his prime, and capable of bowling fast roundarm at speeds contemporaries described as terrifying — emerged through the 1830s as cricket's first true giant. Nicknamed 'the Lion of Kent', he was the central fast bowler of his era, the pre-eminent single-wicket cricketer, and the figure around whom the great Kent eleven of the late 1830s and 1840s was built.
Yorkshire, North
1833-09-05
Tom Marsden of Sheffield was the leading northern batsman of the early 1830s and the man who carried Yorkshire cricket through the decade. A left-handed bat of unusual power, he had scored 227 in a single innings as early as 1826 — at the time the highest individual score in English cricket. By the early 1830s he was the natural counterweight to Pilch in any North vs South discussion.
Sussex; Players
1832-06-10
Thomas Box of Ardingly took over the Sussex wicketkeeping gloves in the early 1830s and held them for an extraordinary thirty years — a tenure unmatched in the nineteenth century. Standing up to William Lillywhite's roundarm at the height of its powers, Box developed a reputation for clean takes and stumpings off length deliveries that no later keeper of the era surpassed.
MCC; Players
1831-05-20
James Saunders was one of the MCC's regular ground bowlers through the 1830s — paid by the club to bowl at members in practice and to play as a professional in MCC fixtures. The roster of MCC ground staff in this period (Caldecourt, Bayley, Saunders, Cobbett) effectively formed England's first standing professional unit. Saunders's tenure is preserved in the MCC wage books.
Surrey; MCC; Players
1830-06-01
James Cobbett of Surrey was the leading professional all-rounder of the early-to-mid 1830s — a hard-hitting batter and accurate roundarm bowler who appeared regularly for the Players in the Gentlemen v Players fixture. He was widely regarded as the best Surrey cricketer between William Lambert's withdrawal in 1817 and the rise of William Caffyn in the 1840s.
Sussex; Players
1830-07-15
George Brown of Brighton, often called 'Brown of Brighton', was reputed to be the fastest bowler of the 1830s — and possibly of the entire roundarm era. Stories of his pace bordered on the apocryphal: a long-stop wearing a coat stuffed with straw, a dog killed by a delivery that beat the wicketkeeper, balls that 'bounded over the spectators' heads'. Even allowing for legend, Brown was demonstrably faster than any contemporary.
Norfolk, Kent, England
1830-06-01
Through the 1830s the Norfolk-born professional Fuller Pilch was the most consistent batsman in England. Standing six feet tall and using a long forward stride that contemporaries called 'Pilch's poke' — the front foot pushed almost to the pitch of the ball before the bat came down — he reduced the new roundarm bowling to manageable terms when most batsmen were still being shelled out cheaply, and held the title of best bat in England for the better part of two decades.