Sussex and All-England
1854-08-21
William Lillywhite, nicknamed 'The Nonpareil' and 'Old Lilly', the Sussex professional roundarm bowler who had been instrumental in the 1820s campaign to legalise roundarm bowling and had dominated English bowling through the late 1820s and 1830s, died at Hove on 21 August 1854, aged 63. His death closed the first chapter of the roundarm era he had helped create.
English professional bowlers generally
1844-07-01
By the 1840s, underarm bowling — the style that had dominated cricket for its first century — had all but vanished from first-class cricket, replaced by the roundarm action legalised in 1835. A handful of veteran players, most notably William Lillywhite the Nonpareil, continued to bowl underarm with great effect, but their era was visibly passing. The 1840s were the decade in which the game completed its transition from one bowling epoch to another.
Sussex / All-England
1844-07-01
By the early 1840s William Lillywhite, the Sussex bricklayer who had pushed roundarm bowling into the law book in 1828, was past 50 but still the most accurate bowler in England. Engaged at Lord's as practice bowler from 1844, he played first-class cricket until 1853 and, in his final decade, embodied the bridge between the underarm cricket of the eighteenth century and the overarm game his son John would help bring in.
MCC
1839-05-15
In 1839 the MCC formally engaged William Lillywhite and James Broadbridge as paid practice bowlers at Lord's — bringing the Sussex roundarm pair, by now in their forties, onto the MCC ground staff. The arrangement marked the moment at which the world's leading club institutionalised roundarm bowling at its own headquarters, a decade after the law had been changed.
Sussex
1839-03-01
Sussex County Cricket Club, founded at Brighton on 1 March 1839, was the first formally constituted county cricket club in the world. Built on the Sussex cricketing tradition that William Lillywhite and James Broadbridge had carried since the 1820s, the club provided the model — committee, subscriptions, ground, professional staff — that all subsequent county cricket clubs followed.
Sussex, Players, South
1839-08-12
By 1839 William Lillywhite was 47 years old — an age at which most cricketers of any era have long since retired — and was still indisputably the leading bowler in England. The 1839 season saw him take wickets in every major fixture: Players vs Gentlemen at Lord's, North vs South, and the Sussex county matches. His longevity at the top of the bowling lists is one of the remarkable features of the late 1830s.
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.
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.
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.
Sussex
1829-07-15
By the close of the 1829 season William Lillywhite and Jem Broadbridge — both Sussex roundarm bowlers — had established themselves as the leading bowling pair in England. Together they took 134 wickets in major matches that summer. Their dominance, on the back of the 1828 legalisation of roundarm to the elbow, was the moment roundarm definitively replaced underarm at the top of English cricket.
n/a
1828-05-01
Months after the inconclusive Sussex v England trial matches, the MCC amended Rule 10 of the Laws of Cricket in 1828 to permit a bowler to raise his hand level with his elbow at the moment of delivery. The change was a compromise — it stopped short of legalising shoulder-height roundarm — but it shifted the legal frontier and gave umpires implicit licence to look the other way at deliveries that crossed it.
Sussex vs England
1827-07-25
To resolve the running argument over roundarm bowling, the MCC sanctioned three matches in the summer of 1827 between Sussex — whose bowlers Lillywhite and Broadbridge would deliver roundarm — and an England XI bowling only underarm. Played at Sheffield (4-6 June), Lord's (18-19 June) and Brighton (23-25 July), the series was meant to test whether roundarm should be legalised. Sussex won the first two and lost the third, the trial was declared inconclusive, and the law was nudged a step further the following year.
Sussex
1827-09-01
Through the mid-1820s Sussex established themselves as the strongest county side in England, on the strength of the roundarm bowling of Lillywhite and Broadbridge. The Sussex team was acclaimed by the press as 'champion county' from 1826 onwards — the first time the title was applied informally to a single county side and the seed of the formal County Championship that would emerge sixty years later.
Sussex
1825-05-01
William Lillywhite — known to history as 'The Nonpareil' for his unrivalled accuracy and command — emerged from Sussex club cricket in the mid-1820s as the most influential bowler of his generation. With his partner Jem Broadbridge he made roundarm the dominant bowling style of the era, drove Sussex to their claim as champion county, and forced the MCC to amend the Laws of Cricket in 1828 and again in 1835.
Sussex
1825-06-01
Jem Broadbridge of Duncton, three years younger than Lillywhite and his partner at the other end, was the second of Sussex's twin roundarm spearheads of the 1820s. A right-arm fast-medium bowler and hard-hitting batsman, he was according to Haygarth 'for some seasons the best general cricketer in England, both as batsman, bowler and single wicket player'. He walked the 60-mile round trip from Duncton to Brighton to play for Sussex.
Sussex vs Hampshire
1823-07-21
On 21-22 July 1823 William Lillywhite of Goring — twenty-one years old, a tile-maker by trade and the future 'Nonpareil' of roundarm bowling — played his first major match for Sussex against Hampshire at Brighton. He took 3 for 28 in the first innings. The performance was the start of one of the great careers in roundarm-era cricket.