1826 English cricket season

1826 English cricket season

← 1825 1827 →

1826 was the 40th season of cricket in England since the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The revival of inter-county cricket gathered pace and William Clarke made his known first-class debut. ^{[note 1]}

Honours

• Most runs – Tom Marsden 227 @ 227.00 (HS 227: he had just the one first-class innings)
• Most wickets – William Lillywhite 27 (BB 9–?)

Important matches

• A total of seven important matches were recorded in 1826, including four inter-county matches. ^[5]

Events

• The Lord's pavilion, gutted by fire in July 1825, was rebuilt in time for MCC's annual dinner on Thursday 11 May.
• Inter-county cricket flourished again, mainly through the efforts of the Sussex county organisation based on the Midhurst club. Sussex played matches against Kent and a combined Hampshire/Surrey team.
• 24 to 26 July — Yorkshire's first great player Tom Marsden scored 227 for Sheffield and Leicester v Nottingham at the Darnall New Ground in Sheffield. A report said that Marsden batted over eight hours, approximately 4½ hours on the 25th and 3½ hours on the 26th.
• 5 May — a significant event that would in time accelerate the spread of cricket throughout England was the passage of an Act of Parliament that authorised creation of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway and effectively began the "railway boom".
• 31 December — death of John Small, the great Hambledon batsman

Notes

1. Some eleven-a-side matches played from 1772 to 1863 have been rated "first-class" by certain sources. ^[1] However, the term only came into common use around 1864, when overarm bowling was legalised. It 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. ^[2] Matches of a similar standard since the beginning of the 1864 season are generally considered to have an unofficial first-class status. ^[3] Pre-1864 matches which are included in the ACS' "Important Match Guide" may generally be regarded as top-class or, at least, historically significant. ^[4] For further information, see First-class cricket.

References

1. "First-Class matches in England in 1772" . CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 November 2025.
2. Wisden (1948). Preston, Hubert (ed.). Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (85th ed.). London: Sporting Handbooks Ltd. p. 813. OCLC   851705816.
3. ACS 1982, pp. 4–5.
4. ACS 1981, pp. 1–40.
5. ACS

Bibliography

• ACS (1981). A Guide to Important Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles 1709–1863. Nottingham: ACS. OCLC   85045528.
• ACS (1982). A Guide to First-class Cricket Matches Played in the British Isles. Nottingham: ACS. OCLC   10586869.
• Haygarth, Arthur (1996) [1862]. Scores & Biographies, Volume 1 (1744–1826). Kennington: Frederick Lillywhite. ISBN   978-19-00592-23-9.
• Warner, Pelham (1946). Lords: 1787–1945. London: Harrap. OCLC   877106024.

Further reading

• Altham, H. S.; Swanton, E. W. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914) (5th ed.). London: George Allen & Unwin. OCLC   894274808.
• Birley, Derek (1999). A Social History of English Cricket. London: Aurum Press. ISBN   978-18-54107-10-7 – via Internet Archive.
• Bowen, Rowland (1970). Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. ISBN   978-04-13278-60-9.
• Major, John (2007). More Than A Game. London: HarperCollins. ISBN   978-00-07183-64-7 – via Internet Archive.