George Brown (27 April 1783 – 25 June 1857) was an English professional

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 ...

er who played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

from 1819 to 1838. A right-handed

batsman In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter (historically, the ...

and fast

underarm The axilla (also, armpit, underarm or oxter) is the area on the human body directly under the shoulder joint. It includes the axillary space, an anatomical space within the shoulder girdle between the arm and the thoracic cage, bounded superiorl ...

bowler who played for

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 ...

and

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

, he made 51 known appearances in first-class matches. He represented the Players in the

Gentlemen v Players Gentlemen v Players was a long-running series of English first-class cricket matches. Two matches were played in 1806, but the fixture was not played again until 1819. It became an annual event, usually played at least twice each season, exc ...

series. Brown was credited with 89 wickets in his career (i.e., bowled only) with a best return of six in one innings. He had a reputation for extreme pace and was widely known as "Brown of Brighton". He is said, though the story may be apocryphal, to have once killed a dog when a ball he had bowled went past the stumps and through a coat held by the longstop, hitting the dog which was behind the coat. Another of his longstops, a man called Dench, insisted on fielding with a sack of straw tied to his chest for protection. E H Budd played against both Brown and

Walter Marcon Walter Marcon (28 March 1824 – 14 November 1875) was an English cleric, noted as a cricketer who played six first-class matches for Oxford University in 1843 and 1844. He had previously established a reputation for extremely fast bowling at E ...

, who had a similar reputation, and Budd said that "Brown was not more terrific in his speed than Marcon", an elaborate way of saying that they were both extremely fast. Brown was a useful batsman and made 1053 runs at 11.44 with a top score of 70 which he scored during the first of the three

roundarm trial matches The roundarm trial matches were a series of cricket matches between Sussex and All-England during the 1827 English cricket season. Their purpose was to help the MCC, as the game's lawgivers, to decide if roundarm bowling should be legalised or i ...

. He died in

Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...

, Hampshire.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, George 1783 births 1857 deaths English cricketers English cricketers of 1787 to 1825 English cricketers of 1826 to 1863 Players cricketers Hampshire cricketers Sussex cricketers Cricketers from Oxford Left-Handed v Right-Handed cricketers The Bs cricketers Non-international England cricketers