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Cricket may not have reached the English counties of Leicestershire and Rutland until the 18th century. A notice in the Leicester Journal dated 17 August 1776 is the earliest known mention of cricket in the area. A few years later, a Leicestershire & Rutland Cricket Club was taking part in important matches. Note that in some contemporary reports the club is called simply Leicester but the personnel involved are the same whichever title is used.
The Leicester Journal on 4 August 1781 reported Leicester v Melton Mowbray at Barrowcliffe Meadow near Leicester. Melton Mowbray won by 16 runs.
Later the same season, the first reports have been found of a match between Leicester and Nottingham Cricket Club. These two old clubs forged quite a fierce rivalry. They met at Loughborough on 17 & 18 September 1781 and the game was incomplete due to a dispute. [1] Nottingham scored 50 & 73; Leicester had scored 73 & 9-2 when the game ended prematurely because of a dispute about wide deliveries. The repercussions dragged on and the dispute remained unresolved for some years.
In 1787, Leicester played matches against Coventry and Melton Mowbray. The Coventry game is extensively recorded in Buckley. Leicester lost by an innings to Melton Mowbray but defeated Coventry by 45 runs. In September 1788, they defeated Coventry by 28 runs in another match which Buckley records.
In 1789, Leicester played Nottingham again in two matches at Loughborough. They won one each and full scorecards have survived. It is evident that by this time these teams were representative of their counties and, in 1791, they were both deemed good enough to play against MCC, but they were both well beaten. This was hardly surprising as northern cricket was still developing while the southern teams had considerable match experience.
Leicester's game against MCC was played at Burley-on-the-Hill in Rutland, which was the Earl of Winchilsea's country retreat, used as his base for foxhunting parties. It is not far from the Great North Road so communication with London was relatively easy at the time.
In 1792, Burley-on-the-Hill staged "Leicestershire & Rutland v Nottingham", the home side winning by 4 wickets and providing a historical example of the fact that Leicestershire cricket encompasses Rutland.
In a further game at Leicester in 1800, Nottingham won by an innings and the old Leicestershire & Rutland club seemed to fade away after that, apart from a couple of mentions in the early 19th century.
Little more is heard of Leicestershire cricket until the formation of the present club on 25 March 1879.
Leicestershire County Cricket Club played its inaugural first-class match on 14, 15 & 16 May 1894 versus Essex County Cricket Club at Leyton. It was the initial first-class match played by either club. In 1895, Leicestershire County Cricket Club joined the County Championship.
For the history of Leicestershire cricket since the foundation of the county club, see : Leicestershire County Cricket Club.
Leicestershire or the County of Leicester is a ceremonial county and a historic county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire to the north, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warwickshire to the south-west, and Staffordshire to the west. The city of Leicester is the largest settlement and the county town.
Melton Mowbray is a town in the Melton district in Leicestershire, England, 19 miles (31 km) north-east of Leicester, and 20 miles (32 km) south-east of Nottingham. It lies on the River Eye, known below Melton as the Wreake. The town had a population of 27,670 in 2019. The town is sometimes promoted as Britain's "Rural Capital of Food"; it is the home of the Melton Mowbray pork pie and is the location of one of six licensed makers of Stilton cheese.
Leicestershire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Leicestershire. It has also been representative of the county of Rutland. The club's limited overs team is called the Leicestershire Foxes. Founded in 1879, the club had minor county status until 1894, when it was promoted to first-class status pending its entry into the County Championship in 1895. Since then, Leicestershire have played in every top-level domestic cricket competition in England.
In the 1772 English cricket season, it became normal practice to complete match scorecards and there are surviving examples from every subsequent season. Scorecards from 1772 have been found for three eleven-a-side matches in which the Hampshire county team played against an England team, and for one top-class single wicket match between Kent and Hampshire. The three Hampshire v England matches have been unofficially recognised by certain sources as first-class, although no such standard existed at the time. Prior to 1772, only four scorecards have survived, the last from a minor match in 1769.
Arthur Dick Pougher was an English professional cricketer and umpire who played for Leicestershire County Cricket Club from 1885 to 1901, and in one Test match for England in 1891–92. He was born at Humberstone, Leicestershire and died at Aylestone Park, Leicester.
Egerton Park is a cricket ground in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The land for the park was purchased from the Egerton Lodge Estate by the Melton Mowbray Town Estate in 1931. Egerton Park was used as an outground by Leicestershire following the Second World War, playing three first-class cricket matches there against Somerset, Lancashire and Kent in the 1946, 1947 and 1948 County Championship's respectively. Egerton Park played host to international cricket in 1986, when Malaysia played Zimbabwe in the ICC Trophy, though the match carried no official status.
The Sheffield Cricket Club was founded in the 18th century and soon began to play a key role in the development of cricket in northern England. It was the direct forerunner of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and some of the teams fielded by Sheffield were styled Yorkshire. Sheffield generally held first-class status, depending on the quality of their opponents, from 1827 to 1855.
In the 1773 English cricket season, there was a downturn in the fortunes of the Hambledon Club as their Hampshire team lost every match they are known to have played, and some of their defeats were heavy. Their poor results owed much to star bowler Thomas Brett having been injured. Three other county teams were active: Kent, Middlesex and Surrey. Teams called England took part in five matches, all against Hampshire, and won all five.
The 1787 cricket season in England is noteworthy for the foundation of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) after the opening of Thomas Lord's first ground in the parish of Marylebone, north of London. MCC soon became the sport's governing body with the new ground as its feature venue. The first match known to have been played at Lord's was on Monday, 21 May, between the White Conduit Club and a Middlesex county team. The first match known to involve a team representing MCC was against White Conduit on Monday, 30 July. Including these two, reports and/or match scorecards have survived of numerous eleven-a-side matches played in 1787. Eleven are retrospectively, but unofficially, recognised as first-class.
In the 1788 English cricket season, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) published a revised code of the Laws of Cricket, thereby confirming itself as the body in sole charge of the Laws, and taking responsibility for the sport's governance. MCC was then called "The Cricket Club at St. Marylebone", contrasting with its predecessor, the White Conduit Club of Islington, which remained active in 1788. As in 1787, their two teams played against each other at Lord's. A total of fifteen match scorecards have survived and there are brief newspaper mentions of five other matches, including two played under single wicket rules.
The A606 is an A road in England that starts in West Bridgford, on the outskirts of Nottingham, and heads southeastwards through Leicestershire and the towns of Melton Mowbray and Oakham, terminating at Stamford, Lincolnshire on the former Great North Road.
Charles Cumberland was an English cricketer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who is known to have played in 26 matches which are retrospectively rated first-class.
Thorpe Arnold is a farming village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Waltham on the Wolds and Thorpe Arnold in the district of Melton, which is approximately 1.2 miles (1.9 km) northeast of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, England. In 1931 the parish had a population of 128. On 1 April 1936 the parish was abolished and to form Waltham.
James William Arthur Taylor is an English former cricketer and cricket selector who played for Nottinghamshire and England. A right-handed batsman and occasional right-arm leg break bowler, Taylor made his debut in first-class cricket in 2008 for Leicestershire and made major impressions in his first county seasons. He is noted as being a fine fielder in the covers. He became the youngest Leicestershire one-day centurion and first-class double centurion. In 2009, Taylor also became the youngest player in Leicestershire's history to score 1,000 championship runs in a season. A promising talent in his 34 white-ball appearances for England, Taylor was forced into retirement at just 26 years of age due to a previously undiagnosed heart condition.
William Jefferies or William Jeffries, was an English cricketer. He was active through the years 1800–1818 when he played for Nottingham Cricket Club. He was christened in Nottingham in July 1777.
The Park was a cricket ground situated in the grounds of the mansion of George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea at Burley-on-the-Hill in Rutland.
Thomas Oliver Flowers is an English cricketer. Flowers is a right-handed batsman who bowls right-arm off break. He was born in Leicester, Leicestershire.
Lorenzo Valentine was a British organ builder based in Nottingham and Melton Mowbray.
Gareth Collins is a former English-Welsh rugby union player who is currently head coach at Leicester Lions and Head of Psychology at The King's School Grantham. A Leicester Tigers youth player, Collins was a versatile back who made his name scoring tries, being one of the most prolific finishers in National League 2 North history with 152 tries scored during his time with Rugby Lions and Leicester Lions, which included a joint divisional record 32 tries in a season. As well as playing club rugby he has also represented Warwickshire in the county championships and has captained the England Counties XV.