Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

71 on a particular ground regarding ‘booth’ balls, then all runs were actually run. Clarke scored 22 in all, but the total was a poor 71 and Sheffield won the game by 17 wickets – one of the worst defeats the AEE ever suffered. Lillywhite was aged 55 at the time of this match and very near the end of his long career. He played five matches for the AEE in 1848 and one final game in 1849. He was to die in 1854, two years before Clarke. The Barker mentioned in the Sheffield team was not Tom Barker of Nottingham, but Thomas Rawson Barker, born in Bakewell in 1812 and a lead merchant in Sheffield; he was later Mayor of that town. The other Sussex bowler to make a first appearance for the side was John Wisden, but he was not a regular member of the eleven until 1849, so will be discussed in that season. The overall results − won three, lost three and four drawn − were not too impressive, but in no way affected the public interest in the team. Clarke certainly broke new ground in taking the AEE to Newcastle and Stockton. Pycroft in The Cricket Field recalls the following comments made by James Dark: Soon after that [ i.e. the formation of the AEE] I heard of Clarke with the same eleven having made a match against some side at Newcastle, where as I told Clarke, there were no players at all fit to stand against him. ‘Never you mind,’ replied Clarke, ‘I shall play sides, strong or weak, with numbers or with bowlers given, and shall play all over the country too – mark my words – and it will make good for cricket and for your trade too.’ … And sure enough the increase in my bat-and-ball trade bears witness to Clarke’s long-sighted speculation. Allied to the subsequent boom in sales of cricket equipment, due to Clarke’s pioneering fixtures, came the demand for professional cricketers. Before the mid-1840s the number of salaried positions available to talented cricketers was very, very limited. The MCC at Lord’s employed a handful, while what few organized counties there were to that date simply paid players per match, except that Fuller Pilch at Town Malling received an annual payment of £100. Eton College signed their first professional, Sam Redgate, in 1840, but it was not until the 1850s that public schools in general began to believe that a cricket professional was a vital piece of school equipment. Similarly, well-to-do local cricket clubs started to sort out good quality professionals rather than just employ a local man to act as a general factotum to the club. Clarke’s enterprise played a major part in this growth in cricket professionals: indeed one might with justification say that Clarke created the modern professional player/coach. Returning to that notable Newcastle game, the local side included Barker and Skelton, the bowlers who had caused the AEE such trouble in Sheffield, and the game itself was an even draw. The match was organized by the Northumberland Club, a social club which organized cricket matches for its members and had a cricket ground on Bath Road. When the club Incredible Success of the All-England Eleven