#alfred mynn

16 incidents tagged

Alfred Mynn — The Lion of Kent's Final Season, 1859

Kent and various sides

1859-08-31

The 1859 season was the final first-class summer of Alfred Mynn, the Lion of Kent — a 22-stone right-arm fast-roundarm bowler and powerful hitter who had been a household name since the 1830s. Mynn played his last serious cricket at the age of 52, two years before his death; his career closed at the same moment that Parr's twelve sailed for North America and the post-Mynn generation took the game overseas.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#1859

⭐Mild

Kent's Long Decline — A Decade After the Mynn-Pilch Golden Age, 1857

Kent County Cricket Club

1857-08-01

By the late 1850s Kent, the dominant county of the 1830s and early 1840s, had declined dramatically from its Mynn-Pilch-Felix peak. With Pilch retired (1854), Mynn ageing and the county's professional staff weakened by the departure of several players to the London-based touring elevens, Kent struggled to compete with Surrey and Nottinghamshire and finished most seasons at the bottom of the informal county table.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1850s

⭐Mild

Alfred Mynn's Single-Wicket Championship — The Lion of Kent Unbeaten, 1840–1847

Alfred Mynn vs various challengers

1846-08-20

Through the early and mid-1840s Alfred Mynn, the Lion of Kent, was the unrivalled champion of single-wicket cricket — the high-stakes individual format in which leading professionals wagered on matches played one batsman against one bowler. Mynn's combination of fast roundarm bowling and heavy hitting made him formidable in the format; he defeated Fuller Pilch, William Hillyer and all other challengers, retiring from single-wicket competition around 1847 with his championship record intact.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Moderate

Alfred Mynn's Continued Recovery and the Folklore of the Leicester Leg — through the 1840s

Kent / All-England Eleven

1846-08-15

Alfred Mynn's near-amputation at Leicester in 1836 — when, having batted on with a leg blackened by repeated fast roundarm blows, he was reportedly carried back to London on the roof of a stage coach — passed into cricket folklore through the 1840s. By 1846 the story was retold at every Mynn match, and the Leicester injury had become as much a part of his identity as his bowling and single-wicket dominance.

#alfred-mynn#leicester-1836#kent

⭐Mild

Single-Wicket Cricket and Mynn's Championship — High-Stakes Cricket of the 1840s

Various

1846-09-15

Single-wicket cricket — an older form of the game in which two or three players a side competed under simplified rules, often for purses of £100 or more — flourished alongside the modern eleven-a-side game through the 1840s. Alfred Mynn was champion of England at single-wicket from 1838 to 1846 and his title-defence matches drew crowds and betting comparable with the Gentlemen v Players match.

#single-wicket#alfred-mynn#1846

⭐Mild

Gentlemen v Players — The Showcase Fixture of the 1840s

Gentlemen vs Players

1844-07-01

Through the 1840s the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's was the showcase fixture of the English summer — amateurs against professionals, the best of the country against the best of the country, with the professionals winning more often than not. Alfred Mynn straddled the two teams as the great amateur player; Fuller Pilch led the Players' batting; the fixture was the model that all later representative cricket was built on.

#gentlemen-vs-players#lord-s#1844

⭐Mild

Canterbury Cricket Week Founded — Kent's Annual Festival Begins, August 1842

Kent and MCC elevens

1842-08-01

The first Canterbury Cricket Week was staged at the St Lawrence Ground in August 1842, combining top-class county cricket with theatrical performances by the Old Stagers amateur dramatic society. The event immediately established itself as the social and sporting centrepiece of the Kent cricket year and has been held annually ever since, making it the oldest cricket festival in existence.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

Alfred Mynn at His Peak — The Lion of Kent in the Early 1840s

Kent / All-England

1842-08-01

Alfred Mynn of Kent — six feet one and weighing more than twenty stone — was the dominant fast roundarm bowler of the early 1840s and the best all-round cricketer in England. His annual displays at Lord's, Town Malling and Canterbury, his peerless single-wicket record (he was champion of England 1838-46), and the carrying-off of his amputated leg in 1836 had made him the first popular cricket folk-hero of the Victorian age.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#round-arm

⭐Mild

Fuller Pilch's 153 Not Out for Kent v England — Town Malling, August 1841

Kent vs England

1841-08-23

Fuller Pilch, by general agreement the leading batsman in England, scored 153 not out for Kent against an England eleven at Town Malling in August 1841. It was the highest individual score made in a major fixture for several years and confirmed Pilch as the dominant batsman of the pre-Grace generation.

#fuller-pilch#kent#town-malling

⭐Mild

Kent's Golden Era — The Strongest County of the Late 1830s

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.

#kent#alfred-mynn#fuller-pilch

⭐Mild

Mynn vs Dearman — Brighton Rematch, August 1837

Alfred Mynn (Kent) vs James Dearman (Yorkshire)

1837-08-21

In August 1837 the Sheffield batsman James Dearman, smarting from his innings-and-107 thrashing at Town Malling the previous September, demanded a return single-wicket match against Alfred Mynn. The rematch was played at Brighton on 21-22 August 1837 and went the same way as the first: Mynn won by an innings and 67 runs.

#alfred-mynn#james-dearman#single-wicket

⭐Moderate

Alfred Mynn vs James Dearman — Single-Wicket Challenge, 1836

Alfred Mynn (Kent) vs James Dearman (Yorkshire)

1836-09-29

On 29 and 30 September 1836 the giant Kent fast bowler Alfred Mynn — already nicknamed 'the Lion of Kent' — met the Sheffield batsman James Dearman in a £100-a-side single-wicket challenge at Town Malling in Kent. Mynn, then 28 and weighing close to twenty stone, demolished Dearman: he scored 123 runs to Dearman's 0 and 16, and won by an innings and 107.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#james-dearman

⭐Mild

First North vs South Match — Lord's, July 1836

North of England vs South of England

1836-07-11

On 11 July 1836 the first match between the North and South of England was played at Lord's. Conceived as a rival showcase to Gentlemen vs Players and a vehicle for the leading professionals, the fixture became an annual highlight of the English summer for the next forty years and was for much of the mid-Victorian period the most prestigious match in the calendar.

#north-vs-south#1836#lord-s

⭐Serious

Alfred Mynn's Leg Injury at Leicester — Single-Wicket vs Curzon, August 1836

Alfred Mynn vs the North

1836-08-29

In August 1836, between his two thrashings of Dearman, Alfred Mynn played a single-wicket match at Leicester in which his right leg was repeatedly hit by fast roundarm bowling at the unprotected shin. The injuries festered on the long coach journey home and Mynn nearly lost the leg to gangrene; he was strapped to the roof of the stagecoach because he could not bend his knee, and surgeons in London debated amputation before saving the limb.

#alfred-mynn#single-wicket#1836

⭐Mild

Alfred Mynn 'The Lion of Kent' — The Giant of 1830s Cricket

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.

#alfred-mynn#lion-of-kent#kent

⭐Mild

Ned Wenman Debuts for Kent — A Wicket-Keeping Career Begins, 1825

Kent vs Sussex

1825-08-01

Edward 'Ned' Wenman, the carpenter and wheelwright from Benenden in Kent, made his important-match debut in a Kent v Sussex fixture in 1825 at the age of 22. He would go on to keep wicket — barehanded, without pads — to Alfred Mynn's express bowling for the great Kent eleven of the 1830s and 1840s, ending his career with 118 catches and 87 stumpings in 146 important matches.

#ned-wenman#kent#1825