1869 English cricket season

1869 English cricket season
1868
1870

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.

Playing record (by county)

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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]

[2]

Leading batsmen (qualification 15 innings)

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1869 English season leading batsmen[3]
Name Team Matches Innings Not outs Runs Highest score Average 100s 50s
WG Grace 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 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)

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1869 English season leading bowlers[4]
Name Team Balls bowled Runs conceded Wickets taken Average Best bowling 5 wickets
in innings
10 wickets
in match
Thomas Hearne 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

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  • 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.[5]
  • 23 and 24 June: Charles Francis takes 17 for 40 for Rugby against Marlborough on a typically rough Lord's pitch,[6] 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.[7]
  • 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".[8] 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).[9]
  • 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[10]
  • 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.[11] 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.

Notes

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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

References

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  1. ^ Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Volume 16 (1869); p. 246
  2. ^ Wynne-Thomas, Peter; The Rigby A-Z of Cricket Records; p. 53 ISBN 072701868X
  3. ^ First Class Batting in England in 1869
  4. ^ First Class Bowling in England in 1869
  5. ^ Hadley Centre Ranked England and Wales Precipitation
  6. ^ Marlborough college v Rugby School in 1869
  7. ^ Pardon, Sydney H. (editor); John Wisden’s Cricketers' Almanac; Fifty-Seventh Edition (1920); part I, pp. 278–279
  8. ^ Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, Volume 17 (1869); p. 95
  9. ^ Frindall, Bill (editor); The Wisden Book of Cricket Records (Fourth Edition); p. 255. ISBN 0747222037
  10. ^ Webber, Roy; The Playfair Book of Cricket Records; p. 18. Published 1951 by Playfair Books
  11. ^ Frindall (editor); The Wisden Book of Cricket Records; p. 131

Annual reviews

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