#hampshire

14 incidents tagged

Hampshire's Early Championship Seasons 1895-1908 — Last Place and Llewellyn

Hampshire CCC

1908-08-31

Hampshire were promoted to first-class status in 1895, when Derbyshire, Essex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire joined the County Championship. Their early years were grim — last or equal-last in 1900, 1902, 1903, 1904 and 1905 — with a brief 1901 rally led by Charlie Llewellyn, the Natal-born all-rounder who later played five Tests for South Africa.

#hampshire#county-championship#1895

⭐Mild

Hampshire's Cricket Revival — From Decline to Respectability, 1840s

Hampshire and various opponents

1843-07-01

Hampshire county cricket, which had declined sharply from its Hambledon-era prominence in the late eighteenth century, began a modest revival in the 1840s centred on the Southampton and Winchester grounds. The county could not match Kent, Surrey or Nottinghamshire in professional depth, but fixtures against touring sides and neighbouring counties gave Hampshire cricket a renewed profile and attracted the attention that eventually led to the county club's re-founding in 1863.

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#1840s

⭐Mild

First Major Match at Bramshill Park — Hampshire Patron Cricket, 1827

Hampshire vs MCC

1827-08-08

On 8-9 August 1827 Hampshire played MCC at Bramshill Park — the seat of Sir William Cope — in one of the last great country-house major matches of the patron era. Cope had laid out a strip on the parkland in front of the house and stocked it for major cricket. The fixture is among the final examples of the eighteenth-century model of patron-funded country-house cricket carried into the new era.

#roundarm-era#bramshill-park#hampshire

⭐Mild

James Aylward Junior's First Century — Hampshire v MCC, June 1819

Hampshire vs MCC

1819-06-14

On 14-15 June 1819 James Aylward Junior — son of the Hambledon professional — scored 105 for Hampshire against MCC at Lord's. It was his first major century and announced the second generation of the Hampshire batting tradition. He was twenty-three; his father, present at the match, watched from the boundary.

#regency-cricket#underarm#james-aylward-jr

⭐Mild

William 'Silver Billy' Beldham — The Aging Master of Hambledon, 1810s

Hampshire, Surrey, MCC and various private elevens

1817-06-01

By the 1810s William 'Silver Billy' Beldham — born in 1766, the great Hambledon-era batsman whom John Nyren had called 'one of the most beautiful batsmen ever seen' — was the senior figure in English cricket. Already in his fifties, he was still good enough to be picked for senior matches at Lord's and to hold his own against professionals half his age. His final senior match came in 1821 at the age of 55. He lived another forty-one years, dying at Tilford in 1862, and gave to historians the most detailed verbal record of Hambledon cricket through his late conversations with the Reverend James Pycroft.

#william-beldham#silver-billy#hambledon

⭐Mild

First MCC v Hampshire Fixture at the New Lord's — June 1816

MCC vs Hampshire

1816-06-19

On 19-20 June 1816 the MCC played Hampshire at the new Lord's ground — the first fixture between the two sides since Hampshire's collapse as a major county in 1809. The match was raised by William Ward as a deliberate attempt to revive Hampshire cricket. MCC won by an innings, but the fixture marked the start of Hampshire's slow recovery as a recognised county side.

#regency-cricket#underarm#mcc

⭐Mild

Lord Frederick Beauclerk's 7 Wickets in an Innings — MCC v Hampshire, 1814

MCC vs Hampshire

1814-07-21

On 21 July 1814 Lord Frederick Beauclerk took 7 wickets in an innings against Hampshire at the new Lord's — bowling his slow underarm lobs. It was his career-best return at Lord's and one of the finest individual bowling performances in the early St John's Wood years. MCC won the match by an innings.

#regency-cricket#underarm#lord-frederick-beauclerk

⭐Mild

Hampshire v Surrey for 500 Guineas — The First Women's County Cricket Match, 1811

Hampshire (women) vs Surrey (women)

1811-10-03

On 3 October 1811 — at the height of the Napoleonic War, when senior men's cricket had nearly dried up — Hampshire and Surrey women's elevens played a three-day match at Balls Pond on Newington Green for a stake of 500 guineas a side. It was the first recorded county-level women's cricket match in the world. Hampshire won by fifteen notches.

#women-s-cricket#hampshire#surrey

⭐Mild

Hampshire's Decline as a Major Cricket County — Season Review, 1809

Hampshire

1809-10-01

By the close of the 1809 season Hampshire — for half a century the strongest cricket county in England, the home of the Hambledon Club and the source of Beldham, Walker, Harris and Small — had ceased to field a competitive major-county side. The Hambledon Club had dissolved more than a decade earlier; its players were retiring; no organised replacement structure existed. The 1809 season is the conventional moment at which Hampshire's first great cricketing era ended.

#regency-cricket#underarm#hampshire

⭐Mild

Lord Frederick Beauclerk's Two Centuries — First Batsman to Score Two in a Season, 1805

Hampshire vs England; England vs Surrey

1805-08-15

In the summer of 1805 the 32-year-old clergyman Lord Frederick Beauclerk became the first batsman known to have scored two centuries in the same season. He made 129 not out for Hampshire against England at Lord's Old Ground in early July and followed it with 102 for England against Surrey in August. In an era when first-class scores over 50 were front-page news, two hundreds in a season was a feat without precedent.

#lord-frederick-beauclerk#1805#lord-s-old-ground

⭐Moderate

Death of David Harris — Hambledon's Greatest Bowler Dies at Crookham, May 1803

n/a

1803-05-19

On 19 May 1803, in the village of Crookham in north Hampshire, David Harris died at the age of 48. Hambledon's incomparable underarm bowler — described by John Nyren as 'masculine, erect and appalling' — had not played a major match since 1798, his career destroyed by gout. With his death the last great bowler of the Hambledon era passed into history, just as Lord Frederick Beauclerk and the new MCC generation were taking control of cricket.

#david-harris#hambledon#underarm-bowling

⭐Mild

Robert Robinson Plays at Lord's With His Iron Hand — Hampshire v England, July 1802

Hampshire vs England

1802-07-08

Robert Robinson of Farnham, who had lost the use of his right hand in a childhood accident and gripped the bat with a leather-and-iron sheath, appeared for Hampshire against England at Lord's in July 1802. He scored a fluent 30 in the first innings — the first half-century-class score by a one-handed batter in major cricket — and helped Hampshire to a draw against the strongest side of the day.

#regency-cricket#underarm#lord-s-old-ground

⭐Mild

Tom Walker's Marathon Defensive Innings — Hampshire v Surrey, June 1800

Hampshire vs Surrey

1800-06-23

On 23 June 1800 Thomas 'Old Everlasting' Walker batted for the best part of two days for Hampshire against Surrey at Lord's. Contemporaries said he scored at a rate of barely a run an over. The innings — 41 in roughly four and a half hours — was Walker's longest at Lord's and the most extreme example of the Hambledon-school defensive batting that had governed the major game since the 1780s.

#regency-cricket#underarm#lord-s-old-ground

⭐Mild

The Hambledon Club Reforms — Village Cricket Restored, 1800

n/a

1800-08-01

Four years after its last grand-club meeting, at which 'no Gentlemen were present', the Hambledon Club reformed in 1800 as a village cricket club. Stripped of the naval officers and London patrons who had made it a national power in the 1770s and 1780s, the rebuilt club played local matches around Broadhalfpenny Down and Windmill Down through the early 1800s. It was the quiet, modest survival of cricket's first great institution after its glory had passed.

#hambledon-club#1800#broadhalfpenny-down