1869 English cricket season

1869 English cricket season

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1869 was the 83rd season of cricket in England since the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The Cambridgeshire club went into demise, though a team called Cambridgeshire later played in two specially arranged matches, in 1869 against Yorkshire and in 1871 against Surrey. After that, Cambridgeshire ceased to be a first-class team. The problem was attributed to the lack of available amateurs to back up the famous trio of Bob Carpenter, the first Tom Hayward and George Tarrant, along with the absence of useful patronage and the difficulty of obtaining membership which led to a debt deemed unpayable. ^[1]

1869 was also the season when W. G. Grace began a record-setting run of batting triumphs. For the first of three consecutive seasons, he established a new record for most runs in a season, and his six centuries doubled the previous record. ^{[note 1]}

Playing record (by county)

County	Played	Won	Lost	Drawn
Cambridgeshire	1	0	1	0
Kent	7	4	2	1
Lancashire	4	2	2	0
Middlesex	2	1	1	0
Nottinghamshire	6	5	1	0
Surrey	12	3	7	2
Sussex	7	1	5	1
Yorkshire	5	4	1	0
[a]

^[6]

Leading batsmen (qualification 15 innings)

1869 English season leading batsmen [7]
Name	Team	Matches	Innings	Not outs	Runs	Highest score	Average	100s	50s
WG Grace	Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)	15	24	1	1320	180	57.39	6	3
Roger Iddison	Lancashire Yorkshire	9	15	5	353	112	35.30	1	0
Harry Jupp	Surrey	22	41	5	1129	106 not out	31.36	2	7
Isaac Walker	Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Middlesex	12	18	0	540	90	30.00	0	5
Henry Charlwood	Sussex	10	18	1	483	155	28.41	1	2

Leading bowlers (qualification 800 balls)

1869 English season leading bowlers [8]
Name	Team	Balls bowled	Runs conceded	Wickets taken	Average	Best bowling	5 wickets in innings	10 wickets in match
Thomas Hearne	Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)	1614	439	47	9.34	6/12	4	0
George Freeman	Yorkshire	2161	584	60	9.73	8/29	6	2
William Hickton	Lancashire	1301	448	39	11.48	6/27	5	2
Tom Emmett	Yorkshire	2169	721	60	12.01	9/23	7	2
Jem Shaw	Nottinghamshire All England Eleven	2633	810	65	12.46	8/20	9	3

Notable events

• 3 June: Although Parr, Carpenter and Hayward declined to play, the schism between the northern and southern professionals ended and the North v South match resumed at Kennington Oval. Freeman and Wootton were too good for the South, who lost by nine wickets on a pitch ruined by a very wet May. ^[9]
• 23 and 24 June: Charles Francis takes 17 for 40 for Rugby against Marlborough on a typically rough Lord's pitch, ^[10] the best bowling figures in a public school game. Although he played no first-class cricket before 1870, in a review in 1919 when Greville Stevens played for the Gentlemen as a schoolboy, Francis was described as one of only five public school bowlers between 1840 and 1914 ^[b] good enough for the Gentlemen. ^[11]
• 13 July: Tom Emmett becomes the first bowler to take sixteen wickets during a single day in first-class cricket, when against the dying Cambridgeshire club he takes 16 for 38 on a cut-up wicket described as "about as serviceable for cricket as a ploughed field". ^[12] This feat has since been accomplished by James Southerton, Thomas Wass (twice), Bert Vogler, Colin Blythe, Jack White, Hedley Verity and Tom Goddard (the last to do so in 1939). ^[13]
• 16 and 17 July: The Gentlemen of the South, scoring 553 against the Players of the South, achieve the highest total in first-class cricket, beating the four-year-old MCC record of 523 ^[14]
  • W.G. Grace and Bransby Cooper achieved a first-wicket record of 283 runs, which was not beaten until Herbie Hewett and Lionel Palairet scored 346 for Somerset against Yorkshire in 1892.
• 11 August: W.G. Grace becomes the first first-class cricketer to score a century before lunch on the first day, when he hits up 116 for the MCC against Kent. ^[15] Only John Sewell three seasons before had previously accomplished the feat on any day. In the process he beats Thomas Humphrey's 1865 record aggregate – Grace would set a new record in both 1870 and 1871.

Labels

^a Hampshire, though regarded until 1885 as first-class, played no inter-county matches between 1868 and 1869 or 1871 and 1874
^b The others were Allan Steel in 1877, Sammy Woods in 1886, Charlie Townsend in 1895 and Jack Crawford in 1904 and 1905

Notes

1. Some eleven-a-side matches played from 1772 to 1863 have been rated "first-class" by certain sources. ^[2] 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. ^[3] Matches of a similar standard since the beginning of the 1864 season are generally considered to have an unofficial first-class status. ^[4] Pre-1864 matches which are included in the ACS' "Important Match Guide" may generally be regarded as top-class or, at least, historically significant. ^[5] For further information, see First-class cricket.

References

1. Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Volume 16 (1869); p. 246
2. "First-Class matches in England in 1772" . CricketArchive. Retrieved 29 November 2025.
3. Wisden (1948). Preston, Hubert (ed.). Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (85th ed.). London: Sporting Handbooks Ltd. p. 813. OCLC   851705816.
4. ACS 1982, pp. 4–5.
5. ACS 1981, pp. 1–40.
6. Wynne-Thomas, Peter; The Rigby A-Z of Cricket Records; p. 53 ISBN   072701868X
7. First Class Batting in England in 1869
8. First Class Bowling in England in 1869
9. Hadley Centre Ranked England and Wales Precipitation
10. Marlborough college v Rugby School in 1869
11. Pardon, Sydney H. (editor); John Wisden’s Cricketers' Almanac ; Fifty-Seventh Edition (1920); part I, pp. 278–279
12. Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Volume 17 (1869); p. 95
13. Frindall, Bill (editor); The Wisden Book of Cricket Records (Fourth Edition); p. 255. ISBN   0747222037
14. Webber, Roy; The Playfair Book of Cricket Records; p. 18. Published 1951 by Playfair Books
15. Frindall (editor); The Wisden Book of Cricket Records; p. 131

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.
• Warner, Pelham (1946). Lords: 1787–1945. London: Harrap. OCLC   877106024.

Annual reviews

• John Lillywhite's Cricketer's Companion (Green Lilly), Lillywhite, 1871
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack , 1871

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.