#edgar willsher

6 incidents tagged

Kent's 1860s Decline — From Champion County to Sixteen-A-Side, 1860-1869

Kent vs other counties

1865-09-01

Kent, the most successful county of the 1830s and 1840s under Fuller Pilch's batting, fell into financial and competitive decline through the 1860s. With Pilch retired, Kent was sometimes forced to field elevens of up to sixteen by combining with local club cricketers from Whitstable, Faversham and Ashford. The 1862 Willsher walk-off was Kent's most consequential moment of the decade — but its leading bowler's career and the club's increasing reliance on him underline how thin the county's resources had become.

#kent#1860s#decline

⭐Serious

MCC Legalises Overarm Bowling — Law 10 Rewritten, June 1864

n/a

1864-06-10

On 10 June 1864 the Marylebone Cricket Club rewrote Law 10 to permit a bowler to deliver the ball with his arm at any height, provided the action was not a throw. The change ended a half-century of legislative cat-and-mouse over how high a bowler could carry his hand and turned overarm — already the dominant style in practice — into the only style cricket would know.

#mcc#law-change#overarm-bowling

🏏Serious

Edgar Willsher No-Balled Six Times — The Walk-Off That Legalised Overarm, 1862

England XI vs Surrey

1862-08-26

Bowling for an England XI against Surrey at the Oval on 26 August 1862, the Kent left-armer Edgar Willsher was no-balled six times in a row by umpire John Lillywhite for raising his hand above the shoulder. Willsher and the eight other professionals in the team marched off the field in protest, leaving the two amateurs stranded. Lillywhite quietly stood down the next day, and within two years the MCC had legalised overarm bowling.

#edgar-willsher#john-lillywhite#overarm-bowling

📋Moderate

The Overarm Bowling Debate — Professionals Push the Law's Limits Through the 1850s

MCC vs Professionals

1856-01-01

Through the 1850s, as the leading English professionals pushed their bowling arms steadily higher than the shoulder, the distinction between legal roundarm and illegal overarm became increasingly unenforceable. The MCC observed, debated and repeatedly declined to act, leaving umpires in an impossible position and creating a decade of informal overarm bowling that made the law a dead letter before it was formally repealed in 1864.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1850s

⭐Mild

Edgar Willsher — Kent's Left-Arm Fast Roundarm Bowler Emerges, 1855

Kent and All-England elevens

1855-06-01

Edgar Willsher of Rolvenden, Kent, emerged in the mid-1850s as one of the fastest left-arm roundarm bowlers in England, taking 1,393 first-class wickets across a career lasting until 1875. He was the central figure in the overarm bowling controversy of 1862, when he was repeatedly no-balled by umpire John Lillywhite at The Oval, but in the 1850s he was simply the most dangerous left-arm bowler in the country.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1850s

🔥Moderate

The Overarm Debate Begins — Bowlers Push the Law's Limits, 1840s

English professional bowlers and MCC

1845-06-01

Through the 1840s a growing number of English professional bowlers were experimenting with deliveries that raised the bowling arm above the established roundarm height, daring umpires to no-ball them. The debate that would culminate in Edgar Willsher's famous walk-off in 1862 and MCC's legalisation of overarm in 1864 had its roots in the 1840s, when the commercial success of the All-England Eleven touring matches put a premium on pace and hostility that roundarm could not always provide.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s