In the 1872

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

season, the first experiment in pitch covering was carried out.

Prince's Cricket Ground Prince's Cricket Ground in Chelsea, London was a cricket ground, created by the brothers George and James Prince as part of the Prince's Club, on which 37 first-class matches were played between 1872 and 1878. The ground was built on in 1883. The ...

opened in

Chelsea, London Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area. Chelsea histori ...

Playing record (by county)

Leading batsmen (qualification 15 innings)

Leading bowlers (qualification 800 balls)

Events

* An experiment took place at Lord's to study the effects of covering the pitch before the start of a match, the first time this is known to have been tried. Unlike the recently introduced

heavy roller The roller is an agricultural tool used for flattening land or breaking up large clumps of soil, especially after ploughing or disc harrowing. Typically, rollers are pulled by tractors or, prior to mechanisation, a team of animals such as horses ...

which became universally used by 1880 and produced significant changes in the game by eliminating previously ubiquitous shooters, covering was for a long time severely rejected in England: it was the wet summer of

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

before covering as regular practice was even considered and

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

before it was considered "acceptable". * 14 May: MCC lose seven wickets before their first run is scored on a sticky wicket at Lord's against James Southerton and William Marten of Surrey. Their ninth wicket falls at 8 - which would have been the lowest score in an important match for sixty-two years - but the last wicket doubles the score *

hosted its first first-class match being between North and South on 16 May. Before being built on, it was generally praised for its wicketsRae, Simon; ''W. G. Grace: A Life''; p. 106 and the scenery surrounding the ground.

Notes

Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire played a third match at the short-lived

, Chelsea

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

, though regarded until 1885 as first-class, played no inter-county matches between 1868 and 1869 or 1871 and 1874

References

Bibliography

* ''John Lillywhite’s Cricketer's Companion'' (Green Lilly), Lillywhite, 1873 * ''James Lillywhite’s Cricketers' Annual'' (Red Lilly), Lillywhite, 1873 * ''

John Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'', 1873 {{English cricket seasons 1872 in English cricket English cricket seasons from 1864 to 1889