Who are your 10 greatest cricketers of the 19th Century?

[Jarquis]

http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/48516-cricketweb-hall-fame-8.html IMO

 

[Days of Grace]

Johnny Briggs is worth a mention.

 

[Shri]

Careful there. Watch out for those jaw cramps.

 

[Burgey]

Careful there. Watch out for those jaw cramps.

Won't ask what makes your jaw cramp

 

[Shri]

Won't ask what makes your jaw cramp

Yeah but the chix dig it.

 

[Himannv]

Bit surprised not to see Trumper mentioned anywhere but I guess the argument could be that he reached his peak in 1902. Charles Bannerman and Jack Blackham worth mentioning I reckon.

 

[a massive zebra]

I am a little surprised no one has mentioned any of the great English batsmen from the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, and only one bowler. Allow me to post pen portraits of some of the leading English cricketers of the pre Test period not mentioned so far, taken from H.S. Altham's classic 'A History of Cricket'.

First up, Richard Daft.

To say that he was the greatest of all Notts batsmen would be to challenge criticism (for has not W.G. himself nominated Shrewsbury as his first choice from all the world ?), and it may be maintained that William Gunn equalled him in point of style, but to his contemporaries at least Daft stood alone as a model of grace and commanding execution. His was essentially what Mr. Cardus would call "the grand manner" in batting; there was none of that grubbing about the blockhole, which Pycroft so deplored; he stood up to his full height at the crease, and was the beau-ideal of that "upright and manly style" of play which the early "Lillywhites" always urged upon young cricketers. He was quick on his feet and always ready to drive; he made full use of his wrists, and he was a master of the under-leg stroke of which W.L. Murdoch was perhaps the last regular exponent; but the greatest feature of Daft's batting was his masterly treatment of the quick-rising ball on fast and for the most part fiery wickets. In his time he had to play many very great fast bowlers, and he was at his very best against them. Caffyn relates how Edgar Willsher once said to him: "When Richard plays that ball (a good length one on the off stump), I always feel as if he said, 'If that's all you can do, Ned, you'd better put somebody else on at once.' " As an offset to this evidence we may notice Pycroft's verdict that there was never a man so contemptuous of a shooter as Daft!

In 1862, on an impossible wicket at Lord's, he played an innings of 118 for the North v. South which was literally the talk of the season, four hours with not the ghost of a chance under conditions that the modern batsman would denounce if met with on the village green. Within two years of his first appearance in big cricket, Bell's Life could write of quite a modest innings: "Those who have witnessed Daft play an innings know that it is cricket, consequently we cannot say more than that it was obtained in his usual style."

 

[a massive zebra]

Next up, Bob Carpenter.

He was pre-eminently a back player, but he combined with his strength of defence great quickness of foot and driving power. He was at his very best against slow bowling, which he would punish unmercifully; in fact, he always liked to "nurse" a slow bowler in order to make the most out of him. There was no harder driver in England in the sixties. He would come down the wicket and hit "like a horse kicking," while he also favoured the genuine leg-hit, though in this respect he resembled the Hon. C.G. Lyttleton rather than Daft, and tended to lift the ball. He, like Hayward, twice exceeded the century against the Gentlemen, but at The Oval, and not Lord's. Carpenter was probably the most famous of all the members of the United Eleven, and made many runs in their great matches with the A.E.E. For a time he acted as a coach at Marlborough College, and within one generation no school can have enjoyed the services of two greater players than Carpenter and Stephenson.

 

[a massive zebra]

Now, William Beldham.

Born near Farnham in 1766, he died at Tilford in the ninety-seventh year of his life. Beldham first appeared for Hambledon in 1787, and for thirty-five years, without a break, his batting dominated the great matches, and for the greater part of that time he was the first pick in all England. For years he averaged 43 per match; in 1794 he scored 72 and 102 in one match for Surrey against England, and time after time - and particularly at Lord's - he is to be found with 50's, 60's, 70's against his name, when for all others a mere 20 carried renown. Even when he was verging on the Psalmist's alloted span, the was "barred" from inclusion in ordinary county fixtures.

He was "safer than the bank," says John Nyren, and yet a most brilliant hitter. There was no more beautiful sight than to see him make himself up to hit the ball, and no finer treat in cricketing than to watch him at the wicket face to face with David Harris. "He would get at the balls and hit them away in gallant style," wrote Nyren, "but when he could cut them at the point of his bat, he was in all his glory; and, upon my life, their speed was as the speed of thought." He was also a fine slow bowler and a wonderful field; twice he caught seven men out in a single match.

Over the south door of the Long Room at Lord's there hangs a very beautiful picture of him, seated, leaning on his bat, in tall hat and pleated smock: it must have been even so that Mitford found him when, in the evening of his days, he visited "the great, the glorious, the unrivalled William Beldham" in his cottage home at Tilford, and left of that visit a record which need never fear oblivion. "It was a study for Phidias to see Beldham rise to strike, the grandeur of the attitude, the settled composure of the look, the piercing lighting of the eye, the rapid glance of the bat, were electrical. Men's hearts throbbed within them, their cheeks turned pale and red. Michael Angelo should have painted him. Beldham was great in every hit, but his peculiar glory was the cut. Here he stood with no man beside him, the laurel was all his own; it was like the cut of a racket. His wrist seemed to turn on springs of the finest steel. He took the ball, as Burke did the House of Commons, between wind and water; not a moment too soon or too late. Beldham still survives. He lives near Farnham, and in his kitchen, black with age, but, like himself, still untouched with worms, hangs the trophy of his victories, the delight of his youth, the exercise of his manhood, and the glory of his age - his BAT."

 

[a massive zebra]

Fuller Pilch

He was a Norfolk man himself, and at an early age began to make a name for himself when playing with other members of his family for that county. His first appearance at Lord's was in that famous match in 1820 against the M.C.C., when William Ward made the record score of 278. Pilch's totals were but 0 and 2, but Ward, a very notable judge, was so impressed by his style that he prophesied great things of him.

From that date until his retirement in 1855 he was one of the leading batsmen in England, and for many years the consistency of his scoring was unrivalled. In 1832 he finds mention in the poem on the Crack Eleven of England, published in Pierce Egan's Book of Sport:-

Another "bold tailor," as fine a young man
As e'er hit a ball and then afterwards ran,
Is from Bury St. Edmund's, and Pilch they call him,
In a few years 'tis said he'll be better than all.
At present his batting's a little too wild,
Though the Nonpareil hitter he's sometimes been styled:
So free and so fine, with the hand of a master,
Spectators all grieve when he meets with disaster.

Sure enough in the next years he fulfilled that prophecy by his two overwhelming defeats of Marsden, the great Sheffield batsman, who had made history in 1826 by scoring 227 against Notts at the age of only twenty-two. The first match at Norwich Pilch won by an innings and 70, the second at Sheffield, which excited immense interest and attracted 20,000 spectators, by 128 runs, his scores being 82 and 108 against the Yorkshireman's 27 and 35.

In 1835 he was induced for a salary of £100 a year to take up his residence in Kent, at Town Malling, where he became manager of a tavern and a ground attendant. In 1842 he made his final move to Canterbury, and for the next thirteen years was the life and soul of the famous eleven that made history there.

In style Fuller Pilch was a most forward player, and it was by his grand forward play and power of placing the ball through the fields on the off-side that he met and mastered the new school of fast round-arm bowlers.

Gale's description of his batting is really too good to omit: "They may call it Pilch's 'poke,' if they please, but I rather fancy that Pilch's 'poke' would puzzle some of our present day bowlers. If a 'poke' means smothering the ball before it has time to rise and break, and placing it to the off or on with the greatest apparent ease, I shall much like to see it done again in these days; but from my recollections of Pilch... I hardly ever saw him let off an off-ball which was wide of the wicket, and he had a terrific hit between middle-off and cover, which gained him many a four or five runs."

 

[a massive zebra]

Lord Frederick Beauclerk

The greatest figure in all the long history of the Marylebone Club was the Reverend Lord Frederick Beauclerk, D.D. The fourth son of the fifth Duke of St. Albans, and therefore like Charles Lennox, descended from Charles II, his lordship, like many a younger son before him, took Holy Orders, but we are bound to admit that he never seems to have allowed his clerical duties to interfere materially with the claims of cricket. It was Lord Winchilsea who first discovered him, bowling for the Cambridge eleven - and brought him to Lord's at the age of eighteen to play for the M.C.C. against Kent. For thirty-five years he played in "great matches," and for wellnigh sixty he was a familiar figure at Lord's, where for the greater part of the time his word was absolute law. At first his fame rested principally on his bowling, which was slow, very accurate, remarkably quick from the pitch, and regulated by an unrivalled knowledge of the game. "He did find out a man's hit so very soon," said an old player, "and set his field to foil it without loss of time."

Eventually the measure of his bowling was more or less taken by the new quick-footed, driving school of batsmen. In batting he was on the slow side, but a most finished forward player, and when in the mood his off-hitting was brilliant and severe. For many years he was the only amateur who played regularly for All England; he made eight hundreds at Lord's, and when fifty-one years old scored 99 for the "B's" against the Rest.

Unfortunately, Lord Frederick Beauclerk was wellnigh as unscrupulous as he was accomplished. He openly avowed that in match-making his cricket was worth 600 guineas a year to him, and though this in itself does not necessarily bespeak dishonesty, it is hardly consonant with a presidential speech when in 1838 he spoke of cricket as "unalloyed by love of lucre and mean jealousies." It is on record that he was the last man to "count the game beyond the prize," and frequently when batting with a rival could hardly be induced to run the other's "notches," and, when he lost a match or failed himself, would try to bribe Bentley, the official scorer, to suppress the score. Not for nothing, we may be sure, was the verse written:-

My Lord he comes next, and will make you all stare
With his little tricks, a long way from fair.

But-

Though his playing is fine - give the devil his due,
There is very few like him at the game take it through.

 

[a massive zebra]

Tom Hayward

No one, in Daft's opinion, with the exception of Arthur Shrewsbury, rose to such heights of batsmanship from such slender physical resources as did Hayward. He was rather below medium height and very spare of frame, weighing little more than 9 stone when he first began to play in big matches; added to this, he was never blessed with good health, or with the good temperament that so often goes along with it. He looked, indeed, but a frail figure as he stood at the wicket, holding the bat very lightly in his hands and at the end of its handle, and yet in all England there was no more graceful or masterly batsman, with the possible exception of Dick Daft himself. Hayward was essentially a forward player, with something of the pendulum correctness of swing that Pilch possessed. He was a beautiful off-driver, but his real forte was his on-side play, and especially his ability to force the ball off the leg-stump and his legs, between mid-on and short-leg, a stroke which his nephew played to perfection, and surely must have inherited. In spite of his natural disadvantages, Hayward was at his very best of fiery wickets, when his ability to keep down the rising ball was most marked. One weak point in his armour must be mentioned - he was a deplorable judge of a run. Like the younger Tom, he was a more than useful medium paced bowler, and an excellent field at cover. His long scores are innumerable. In 1859 he scored 220, playing as a given man for the Gentlemen of Cambridgeshire against the University, and twice he obtained a century for the Players against the Gentlemen at Lord's, an example which his nephew was to follow at an interval of thirty years.

 

[a massive zebra]

George Parr

If Clarke was the originator of the All England Eleven, George Parr was its captain and greatest batsman in its palmiest days. Like his famous predecessor who discovered him, he was a Nottinghamshire man, born and bred at Radcliffe-on-Trent, where his family had been gentlemen farmers on the same land for two centuries past. He was just nineteen when, on the strength of a successful appearance in one of Clarke's trial matches on the Trent Bridge ground, he was selected to play for the North against the M.C.C. with Fuller Pilch at Lords. His side, thanks to some typical bowling by their captain and Redgate, defeated the strong Marylebone team by an innings, but Parr made but a single run. Almost exactly a year later he appeared on the same ground in a match between two fine elevens captained by Fuller Pilch and Felix respectively, played in the latter gentleman's honour, and watched for a time by the Prince Consort; in the second innings he made 59, by far the highest score in the game, and his reputation was made. Prevented by illness from taking part in the first of the All-England matches, he made a really sensational debut for them in the next year, 1847, when in his first three games he scores 100 at Leicester, 78 not out at York, and 64 at Manchester, each the highest score in the game, and each against eighteen or more in the field. Two years later he was spoken of as the inevitable successor to Fuller Pilch as the champion batsman of England, and by the time of William Clarke's death, when he took over the captaincy of the All-England Eleven, the "Lion of the North," as he came to be called, stood alone.

Thick set, and on the shortish side, with the blue eyes so common among the greatest sportsmen, with a fine head of auburn hair and heavy moustache and side-whiskers, he was always a commanding figure on the field. He was apt to be hot-tempered and difficult except with his intimates, but the professionals who made history in his great elevens almost all speak of him with great admiration and affection. He was a great all-round sportsman, devoted to his gun and his rod, and impatient of the administrative side of his work as captain of the A.E.E. This he ultimately handed over to a lieutenant who was destined to win renown not inferior to his own - Richard Daft.

If Parr came to wear Pilch's mantle, it was by methods curiously contrasted with those of the great Kent player. Pilch, as we have seen, was the apostle of the upright, forward style. Parr crouched somewhat at the wicket, bending his left knee and arching his back, and keeping very low over the bat, both in forward and back play. He was one of the first men who discarded the "dead-bat" method of defence and played back hard. He was also a fine cutter, and a driver who used his feet and left his ground to a then unparalleled extent. But "the glory of his play" was his leg-hitting, and by common consent there has never been before or after him so masterly a player of the genuine sweep to leg. He would advance the left leg well down the wicket, with head well over the bent knee, catch the ball on the half volley or the rise, and swing it behind him to the ropes. Caffyn, in his book, 71 Not Out, gives the lie direct to the theory that Parr hit straight balls to leg - that was an innovation reserved for an even greater name in the next decade. Moreover, he rarely lifted the ball, though there is a story that when in one of the great matches at Lord's his opponents placed two long-legs for him, he hit the ball over their heads and out of the ground. One of his hits at Lord's, to square leg over the old Tavern, must have been worthy to rank with "the Duke's strike." On the old Trent bridge ground there stood a tree just on a line with his best leg-hits; this came to be known as "George Parr's tree," and when he died, where he had been born and had lived, at Radcliffe-on-Trent, in 1891, a branch from this tree was placed among the wreaths on his coffin. Parr, in his early years, was a magnificent deep-field, and could throw well over a hundred yards. In generalship, determination, and enthusiasm his contemporaries considered him a captain unsurpassed.

 

[a massive zebra]

George Freeman

George Freeman virtually played only five years in the County Eleven, retiring after the end of the 1871 season to take up a lucrative business, but in that short time he won for himself the unquestioned title of the best fast bowler in England; indeed, W.G., with all his fifty years experience, states unequivocally that he was the best he ever played. If figures go for anything, his are surely convincing enough: in those years he played in but 26 county matches, but captured in them 194 wickets for under 10 each. In pace he was not quite of the extreme school, but his accuracy and deadly off-break were unrivalled for a bowler that could not be termed even fast medium. It is delicious to read his own statement that he always preferred bowling on The Oval because there the wicket was perfect and he could regulate his breaks, while the rougher grounds were apt to upset his calculations. But for his habitual modesty Freeman would have been one of only three players to appear both for the Amateurs and Professionals in the great match at Lord's, for more than ten years after his retirement from county cricket he was asked to represent the Gentlemen, but declined on the grounds that his form hardly justified the compliment.

 

[a massive zebra]

John Jackson

1855 saw the first appearance in county cricket of John Jackson, by common agreement one of the greatest fast bowlers that ever lived. On the evidence of figures alone, his title to fame is unassailable. In the seven years, 1856-62, he captured 1,899 wickets, with an average bag of 345 for three consecutive seasons. From his earliest years, when, as a small boy, he used to run barefoot after hounds and throw stones at every legitimate and illegitimate mark, Jackson was big, strong, and active, and by the time he appeared for Notts he stood over 6 feet high and weighed 15 stone. His action was a true round-arm, and though he bowled like a machine, always well within himself, his pace was truly terrific, and like that of the best of his school, he made the ball go slightly with his arm. On the fiery wickets then prevalent, especially at Lord's, he was altogether intimidating, and not a few of the best batsmen of the time were known to retire precipitately towards square-leg. He never liked being hit, and when things looked troublesome was apt to try an extra fast full pitch somewhere in the neighbourhood of the batsman's head! To the twenty-twos he was literally a terror, and once for the A.E.E. against Twenty-Two of Uppingham he bowled six men in seven balls. Against Sixteen of Oxford University he captured, in 1858, 16 wickets for 62, and, in 1862, 17 wickets for 63. The feet in which he took most pride himself was when for the North he got 9 Southern wickets and lamed - sic visum superis - Johnny Wisden so that he couldn't bat. "Old Jack" was a great character; from his habit of blowing his nose violently whenever he got a wicket he was called "The Foghorn" by his colleagues, but with the world at large he soon earned the name of "The Demon," and well, we may believe, deserved it. Until the Champion became as much of a household word as G.O.M., Jackson, alone of cricketers, had appeared in the pages of Mr. Punch.

It is sad to read of his last years, when, but for the help of the Cricketers' Fund Friendly Society and the kindly aid of friends in the North, Jackson must indeed have known positive destitution. Even as things were the contrast with the days of his strength and fame must have been bitter enough. In 1861 the greatest bowler in the world; in 1901 a pauper, wellnigh unknown, dying in the infirmary of a Liverpool workhouse.

 

[a massive zebra]

William Lillywhite

The great Sussex bowler was a little man, no more than 5 feet 4 inches in height, but from all we read of him, he must have made up in dignity and personality for what he lacked in inches. He always played in a tall hat and broad cotton braces, with a rather high Gladstone collar and deep black tie. Born near Goodwood in 1792, he was thirty-five years old before he made history in the "Experimental Matches," and fifty-two before he left Brighton to take a permanent place on the ground staff at Lord's. Here he remained until the year of his death, 1854, and in the preceding summer was accorded a benefit by the Marylebone Club, in which, despite his sixty-one years, he bowled excellently. He was also the first professional coach ever engaged at Winchester College, where he devoted himself especially to the bowling and wicket-keeping of the side, and so turned the tide once more in Winchester's favour against their school rivals.

Like nearly all the early round-arm bowlers, Lillywhite bowled round the wicket. His pace was slow-medium, with a pronounced bias from the leg, and there has never been a straighter bowler. But it was his accuracy of length, combined with his generalship, that more than anything else earned for him the title of "the Nonpareil." "I suppose," he once said, "that if I was to think every ball, they would never get a run!" He used to have tremendous duels with the two great Kent batsmen, Fuller Pilch and Felix. Pilch was a great master of forward play, and old Lilly would keep varying his pace and flight, hoping to catch him in two minds with his bat hung out to dry. "Sometimes he would a little overdo it," said Felix to Pycroft, "and Pilch, ever on the alert, would take a stride and hit him clean way, whereupon he would say to me at the other wicket, "There now, I shan't try that no more, Mr. Felix." To suggest to him that Pilch was his master was to ensure a "rise." "I wish I had as many pounds as I had bowled Pilch," the old man would snap back. For the younger generation of bowlers he had unmeasured contempt, chiefly on the score of their shortness of pitch and erratic direction. "These bowlers might run people out, or stump them out, or catch them out, but they can't bowl to bowl anyone out; that bowling isn't mediogrity!"

When the catapult was first introduced at Cambridge, Lillywhite, so Pycroft relates, undertook to beat it in hitting an undefended wicket, and he actually did hit down the stumps more frequently than did the catapult. His enthusiasm for bowling was such that he would sometimes hardly give his long-stop time to get into his proper place, and lengthening age seemed powerless to diminish either zeal or skill. In 1847, at the age of fifty-five, he bowled unchanged in the Gentlemen v. Players match, and his average bag of wickets per year was well over 200, for certainly a low single figure apiece.

 

[ankitj]

Thanks a lot for your contribution, massive zebra. I hadn't heard of most of them, so was an informative read.

 

[a massive zebra]

I think it would be wiser to put together one list covering the Test match era and another covering the period prior to that. The game changed to such an extent over the last third of the century as to render any comparison between players of different eras little short of meaningless.

When W.G. Grace emerged in the 1860s, roundarm bowling still played a crucial role, swing bowling was non existent, googlies and doosras were yet to be discovered, lob bowling was a respected art form, and most fast bowlers span the ball. On the batting front, footwork was looked down upon, there were no leg glances and very few hook shots, and it was considered bad manners to hit good balls for runs or off side balls to leg. By the end of the century, top class cricket had evolved into something comparable to the modern first class game.

With that in mind, here are my lists:

Top 10 19th Century Pre Test Cricketers
Alfred Mynn
George Freeman
Fuller Pilch
William Beldham
William Lillywhite
Richard Daft
George Parr
Bob Carpenter
John Jackson
Tom Hayward

Top 10 19th Century Test Cricketers
W.G. Grace
KS Ranjitsinhji
George Lohmann
Fred Spofforth
Charlie Turner
Jack Blackham
Arthur Shrewsbury
AG Steel
Tom Richardson
Johnny Briggs

Grace has been excluded from the pre Test team because he played a larger proportion of his 19th century career during the Test era.

 

[a massive zebra]

Thanks a lot for your contribution, massive zebra. I hadn't heard of most of them, so was an informative read.

Thanks 8ankitj, glad you enjoyed it.

 

[fredfertang]

The XI I chose, on the basis their careers ended before 1864 (I stretched it just a bit for Parr) was

John Small
William Beldham
Nicholas Felix
Fuller Pilch
George Parr
Alfred Mynn
John Wisden
*William Clarke
William Lillywhite
David Harris
Edward Stevens