#george osbaldeston

12 incidents tagged

Squire Osbaldeston's 200-Mile Horse Ride at Newmarket — November 1831

n/a

1831-11-05

On 5 November 1831 George Osbaldeston rode 200 miles on Newmarket Heath in 8 hours 42 minutes, using a string of relay horses, for a wager of 1,000 guineas. The ride was the most celebrated single sporting feat of the Regency era — repeating in equestrian form the 1818 pedestrian feat and confirming Osbaldeston as the most flamboyant amateur sportsman of his generation. He had been an MCC committee member since his 1828 reconciliation with Beauclerk.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#george-osbaldeston

⭐Mild

Osbaldeston-Beauclerk Reconciliation — MCC Committee, March 1828

n/a

1828-03-19

In March 1828 the most public feud in Regency cricket — between Lord Frederick Beauclerk and George Osbaldeston — was formally ended at an MCC committee meeting. Beauclerk had pushed Osbaldeston out of the committee in 1818; Osbaldeston had retaliated with his 1819 all-comers challenge and a decade of public hostility. The March 1828 reconciliation, brokered by William Ward, brought Osbaldeston back into MCC affairs.

#roundarm-era#lord-frederick-beauclerk#george-osbaldeston

🥊Serious

George Osbaldeston Banned from MCC — A Squire's Twenty-Year Exile, 1818 onwards

MCC

1820-05-01

After being beaten at single-wicket by Sussex's George Brown in 1818, the all-round sportsman Squire George Osbaldeston resigned his MCC membership in a fury. When he later sought to be reinstated, his application was blocked personally by Lord Frederick Beauclerk; despite intercession by E.H. Budd and others, Osbaldeston was barred from MCC for the rest of his cricket career, an exile that effectively confined him to second-tier matches throughout the 1820s.

#george-osbaldeston#squire-osbaldeston#mcc

🚨Explosive

William Lambert's Shadow — The First Fixing Ban Hangs Over the 1820s

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1820-05-01

William Lambert of Surrey, the leading professional batsman of the 1810s and Squire Osbaldeston's regular single-wicket partner, was banned from Lord's for life in 1817 for allegedly throwing the England v Nottingham match — making him the first cricketer banned for match-fixing in history. His exile cast a long shadow over the 1820s, contributing to Osbaldeston's own resignation and to MCC's hostility to professional self-organisation.

#william-lambert#match-fixing#1817

⭐Mild

George Osbaldeston's All-Comers Single-Wicket Challenge — Lord's, June 1819

Osbaldeston vs all comers

1819-06-09

In June 1819 George Osbaldeston — angered by his MCC ban of the previous year — posted an open single-wicket challenge at Lord's: he would play any one man in England for 100 guineas a side, to take place at any neutral ground. Beldham, Lambert and Beauclerk all declined; the challenge was eventually taken up by William Ward in a low-key match in August. Osbaldeston won. The challenge is one of the great public-relations gestures of Regency cricket.

#regency-cricket#underarm#george-osbaldeston

⭐Mild

Osbaldeston Witnesses the Tom Cribb Prize-Fight — Inter-Sport Crossing, 1818

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1818-04-07

On 7 April 1818, two months before the cricket season opened, George Osbaldeston attended Tom Cribb's prize-fight exhibition on Hounslow Heath alongside Lord Byron and the bare-knuckle champion's other backers. Osbaldeston himself stripped briefly to spar three rounds with Cribb's understudy. The episode is a piece of the Regency cross-discipline sporting culture and a glimpse of cricket's place within a wider sporting elite.

#regency-cricket#underarm#george-osbaldeston

😂Mild

Squire Osbaldeston's Pedestrian Wager Between Cricket Matches — November 1818

n/a

1818-11-05

In November 1818, between his cricket and hunting seasons, George Osbaldeston walked 200 miles in 36 hours on Newmarket Heath for a wager of 1,000 guineas. The feat — completed inside the time, with Osbaldeston resting only twice — was reported across the sporting press and is the most famous of his many cross-disciplinary athletic exploits. It is a piece of the Regency sporting culture that linked cricket to pedestrianism, prize-fighting and turf.

#regency-cricket#underarm#george-osbaldeston

🥊Serious

Squire Osbaldeston Resigns From MCC and Is Barred for Life — 1818

MCC committee vs George Osbaldeston

1818-08-01

After losing a single-wicket match to Lord Frederick Beauclerk in 1818 in circumstances that he believed were rigged against him, the Yorkshire squire George Osbaldeston resigned from the Marylebone Cricket Club in a fit of temper. When he tried to rejoin some months later he found the door barred: Beauclerk, on the committee, refused his readmission. E.H. Budd's attempted intercession failed. Osbaldeston, one of the leading all-round sportsmen of the age, never played senior cricket of any standing again.

#george-osbaldeston#lord-frederick-beauclerk#mcc

😂Mild

Squire Osbaldeston's Fast Underarm — Wicketkeepers Stuff Their Shirts With Straw, 1810s

MCC and various private elevens

1816-07-01

Through the 1810s the Yorkshire squire George Osbaldeston was bowling underarm so fast that wicketkeepers reportedly stuffed straw down their shirts as makeshift body padding before facing him. There were no protective gloves, no helmets, no chest guards in 1815 cricket; the underarm ball, skidding low off Lord's pitches at speeds estimated to be the equivalent of a modern medium-pacer, could break ribs and crack collarbones. Osbaldeston's bowling produced more bruised wicketkeepers than any other in his era and gave Regency cricket one of its most enduring slapstick images.

#george-osbaldeston#fast-underarm#wicketkeeper

🔥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

⭐Mild

George 'Squire' Osbaldeston's Major-Match Debut — MCC v Middlesex, June 1810

MCC vs Middlesex

1810-06-21

On 21-22 June 1810 George Osbaldeston — the Yorkshire baronet who would become the most flamboyant amateur sportsman of the Regency — made his major-match cricket debut for MCC against Middlesex at the new Middle Ground. He was twenty-three, already famous for his hunting and his pugilism, and over the next decade he would establish himself as the fastest underarm bowler in England and the only serious rival to Lord Frederick Beauclerk.

#regency-cricket#underarm#george-osbaldeston

🥊Moderate

William Lambert Beats Lord Frederick Beauclerk by Bowling Wides — Single-Wicket, 1810

Lord Frederick Beauclerk / Thomas Howard vs George Osbaldeston / William Lambert

1810-07-01

A two-a-side single-wicket challenge match for fifty guineas a side became one of the most discussed cricket incidents of the early 1810s when Squire Osbaldeston fell ill on the morning of play. His partner William Lambert, the Surrey professional, pleaded for a postponement; Lord Frederick Beauclerk replied with the gambler's formula 'Play or Pay'. Lambert went out alone to face Beauclerk and Thomas Howard, deliberately bowled a string of wide deliveries to fluster Beauclerk, broke the cleric's temper and his concentration, and won the match by fifteen runs. The incident produced the rivalry that would shape Lambert's downfall seven years later.

#william-lambert#lord-frederick-beauclerk#george-osbaldeston