1813 English cricket season

1813 English cricket season

← 1812 1814 →

1813 was the 27th season of cricket in England since the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Lord's Middle Ground was requisitioned by Parliament for the building of the Regent's Canal. Details of only one match are known. ^{[note 1]}

Honours

• Most runs ^{[note 2]} – Robert Robinson 78 (HS 78)
• Most wickets – E H Budd and William Lambert 5 apiece

Events

• With the Napoleonic War at its height, cricket continued to be badly impacted by the consequent loss of both manpower and investment. First-class matches had become few and far between since 1810 and only one is recorded in 1813:
  • 7–9 June — Lord F Beauclerk's XI v E Bligh's XI @ Lord's Middle Ground ^[3]
• The Nottingham Review commented: "The manly and athletic game at cricket for which the boys of Sherwood have been so long and so justly famed, it was thought, had fallen into disuse, if not disgrace...." The reference to "disgrace" is interesting for there is a view expressed by Rowland Bowen that the game had gone out of fashion in addition to the wartime problems it faced.
• The site of Lord's Middle Ground was requisitioned by Parliament for the building of the Regent's Canal. Thomas Lord contacted the Eyre family, erstwhile owners of the ground, and persuaded them to lease to him another parcel of land in St John's Wood, about half a mile further north at a place called North Bank. This site had previously been a duckpond. In the winter of 1813–14, Lord again had his turf literally dug up and removed.

First mentions

Counties

• Cornwall

Notes

1. Some eleven-a-side matches played before 1864 have been rated "first-class" by certain sources, but there was no such standard at the time. The term came into common use from around 1864, when overarm bowling was legalised, and was formally defined as a standard by a meeting at Lord's, in May 1894, of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the county clubs which were then competing in the County Championship. The ruling was effective from the beginning of the 1895 season, but pre-1895 matches of the same standard have no official definition of status because the ruling is not retrospective. However, matches of a similar standard since the beginning of the 1864 season are generally considered to have an unofficial first-class status. ^[1] Pre-1864 matches which are included in the ACS' "Important Match Guide" may generally be regarded as top-class or, at least, historically significant. ^[2] For further information, see First-class cricket.
2. Scorecards created in the first quarter of the 19th century are not necessarily accurate or complete; therefore any summary of runs, wickets or catches can only represent the known totals and computation of averages is ineffectual.

References

1. ACS 1982, pp. 4–5.
2. ACS 1981, pp. 1–40.
3. Haygarth, p.367.

Bibliography

• ACS (1981). A Guide to Important Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles 1709–1863. Nottingham: ACS.
• ACS (1982). A Guide to First-class Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles. Nottingham: ACS.
• Haygarth, Arthur (1862). Scores & Biographies, Volume 1 (1744–1826). Lillywhite.

Further reading

• Altham, H. S. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914). George Allen & Unwin.
• Birley, Derek (1999). A Social History of English Cricket. Aurum.
• Bowen, Rowland (1970). Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
• Major, John (2007). More Than A Game. HarperCollins.