__NOTOC__ William Ashby (12 January 1786 – 10 April 1847) was an English

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 mainly for Kent teams.William Ashby

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2020-01-01.William Ashby
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2018-04-10. He was considered one of the best slow bowlers of his era and one of the pioneers of

roundarm bowling In cricket, roundarm bowling is a bowling style that was introduced in the first quarter of the 19th century and largely superseded underarm bowling by the 1830s. Using a roundarm action, the bowlers extend their arm about 90 degrees from their ...

. Ashby was born in 1786 at

Linton, Kent Linton is a village and civil parish in the Maidstone District of Kent, England. The parish is located on the southward slope of the Greensand ridge, south of Maidstone on the A229 Hastings road. The name Linton comes from Old English, probab ...

, the son of Thomas and Frances Ashby. He was a carpenter by trade who worked on the

Sutton Valence Sutton Valence (in the past also called Sudtone, Town Sutton and Sutton Hastings, see below) is a village about five miles (8 km) SE of Maidstone, Kent, England on the A274 road going south to Headcorn and Tenterden. It is on the Greensand ...

estate of John Willes, a Kent landowner and cricketer and an influential proponent of the roundarm method of bowling in the early 19th century. Ashby already had a reputation as a fine cricketer and is first known to have played for the county side in 1807 alongside Willes, developing a reputation as the best slow bowler in Kent.Carlaw, pp. 577–579. Retrieved 2022-04-08. ''

Scores and Biographies Arthur Haygarth (4 August 1825 – 1 May 1903) was a noted amateur cricketer who became one of cricket's most significant historians. He played first-class cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club and Sussex between 1844 and 1861, as well as num ...

'' described Ashby's bowling action as "not very high in delivery" and with what it described as an "unusual bias", although

William Denison Sir William Thomas Denison (3 May 1804 – 19 January 1871) was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1847 to 1855, Governor of New South Wales from 1855 to 1861, and Governor of Madras from 1861 to 1866. According to Percival Se ...

writing in 1846 in his ''Sketches of the Players'', records that his bowling action later saw his arm raised above his elbow. Later in 1807 Ashby made his

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 ...

debut, playing for an England side. He went on to make 45 appearances in top-class matches, most of them for Kent or England XIs. He also appeared 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 ...

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 ...

and Surrey sides as well as for MCC teams and played nine times for the Players against the Gentlemen. He played in the 1822 Kent match against MCC at

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

when

Lord Frederick Beauclerk The Reverend Lord Frederick de Vere Beauclerk (8 May 1773 – 22 April 1850), a 19th-century Anglican priest, was an outstanding but controversial English first-class cricketer, the leading "amateur" player of the Napoleonic period. Lord Freder ...

, a leading MCC member, contrived to have Willes

no-ball In cricket, a no-ball is a type of illegal delivery to a batter (the other type being a wide). It is also a type of extra, being the run awarded to the batting team as a consequence of the illegal delivery. For most cricket games, especially a ...

ed for throwing in an attempt to have roundarm bowling outlawed. Willes famously left the match although Ashby, whose bowling action was probably lower than Willes', continued to play. He also played in one of the

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 ...

of 1827 and was one of the signatories of the petition against the way that the Sussex bowlers in the matches had bowled.Rendell & Booth, pp. 22–24. Ashby played his last first-class match in 1830, but continued to play club cricket. He was employed as a professional at the Clarence Cricket Club in

Camberwell Camberwell () is a district of South London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark, southeast of Charing Cross. Camberwell was first a village associated with the church of St Giles and a common of which Goose Green is a remnant. This e ...

in 1836 and played there for 10 years. Ashby married Sarah Whatson in 1819 and had two children, a son and a daughter. He died of

bronchitis Bronchitis is inflammation of the bronchi (large and medium-sized airways) in the lungs that causes coughing. Bronchitis usually begins as an infection in the nose, ears, throat, or sinuses. The infection then makes its way down to the bronchi. ...

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth, historically in the County of Surrey. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The population of the London Borough of Lambeth was 303,086 in 2011. The area expe ...

in 1847 aged 61.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* Birley D (1999) ''A Social History of English Cricket''. London: Aurum Press. *Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition).
Available online
at

The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Statis ...

. Retrieved 2020-12-21.) * Denison W (1846) ''Sketches of the Players''. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.
Available online
at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

. Retrieved 2022-04-08.) *Moore D (1988) ''The History of Kent County Cricket Club''. London: Christopher Helm. *Rendell B, Booth K (2010) ''Fuller Pilch: A Straightforward Man''. Nottingham:

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ashby, William 1786 births 1847 deaths English cricketers English cricketers of 1787 to 1825 English cricketers of 1826 to 1863 Kent cricketers Hampshire cricketers Sussex cricketers Players cricketers People from Linton, Kent Marylebone Cricket Club First 9 with 3 Others cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club First 8 with 3 Others cricketers Cricketers from Kent