Great Cricket Matches 1772-1800: The Players and The Records

SECTION 1: PLAYERS A-Z The A-Z follows the formula of the ACS county booklet series by including basic biographical information, where available, on those eighteenth-century cricketers who played in major matches. The list of players has been compiled from the surviving 237 full scores of matches from 1772-1800 that have been classified as ‘great’ by the ACS. Obviously, most of those playing in 1772 had previously appeared but no attempt has been made to trace their earlier careers as evidence and records are sparse and sketchy. Scores before 1772 are available for only a handful of matches, of which only two, in 1744, involve the leading players of the day. The format for the players’ A-Z entries is as follows: Full name; nickname in quotation marks (an entry applying to just a few players such as ‘Lumpy’, alias Edward Stevens); pseudonym in brackets and italics; date and place of birth and death (or in some cases date of baptism and burial); where educated (if at a major public school or university); relationships with other cricketers; playing style; major teams played for; and years covered by career. An entry in brackets after a player’s name, e.g., Bliss (of Ripley, Surrey), indicates the place associated with the player either for residence or as his club; this entry is used only when a birthplace is unknown. The post-1800 career details, where applicable, are shown separately at the end of the entry. In the case of noblemen, clergymen and army officers, the highest status they reached is given except where a nobleman was known as a cricketer under one title but later succeeded to another, e.g., Lord Strathavon who later became Earl of Aboyne and then Marquess of Huntly. However, knighthoods are shown even if they were gained after the cricket career was over, e.g. G.East = Sir Gilbert East. An army officer’s sequence of promotions, where known, is detailed further on in his entry. It should be noted that the spelling of surnames was not entirely fixed in the eighteenth century, even among the nobility and gentry. Even an educated, literate individual might not always be consistent about the spelling of his name, while various members or branches of the same family might spell their surname differently (e.g. Paulet/Powlett). It may therefore be that various spellings of a name are found in different sources. We have not noted instances of this in the following list, but examples include Amherst/Amhurst, Bennet(t) (Earls of Tankerville), Capel(l) (Earls of Essex), Marten/ Martin. Where cricketing sources are consistent in preferring a particular spelling of an individual's name, we have used that version. Where an exact birth or death date is not known, details of baptism or burial (where available) are given. Users should exercise caution in using baptismal dates to calculate players' ages, since it was not unusual for families to 'bunch up' christenings, having two or more children of different ages baptised on the same day to save on fees to officiating clergy. In some cases, therefore, there may be a lapse of some years between a player's birth and his baptism. 8 John Nyren (1764-1837) His father, Richard Nyren, was the ‘head and right arm’ of Hambledon in its glory days; John Nyren, however, made only intermittent appearances in top cricket but his celebrated memoir, The Cricketers of My Time , published in 1833, provides a vivid insight into the cricket and cricketers of the later eighteenth century.