John Wisden (5 September 1826 – 5 April 1884) 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 187

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 ...

matches for three English county cricket teams,

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

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 ...

.John Wisden
CricketArchive He is now best known for launching the

eponym An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...

ous ''

Wisden 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 ...

'' in 1864, the year after he retired from first-class cricket.

Early life

Wisden was born in Crown Street,

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

.Eric Midwinter, ‘Wisden, John (1826–1884)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 201
accessed 13 September 2013
/ref> His father, William, was a builder. He attended Brighton's Middle Street School (formerly the Royal Union School, founded as a

charity school Charity schools, sometimes called blue coat schools, or simply the Blue School, were significant in the history of education in England. They were built and maintained in various parishes by the voluntary contributions of the inhabitants to ...

in 1805). He moved to London after his father died, and lived with the wicket-keeper Tom Box.John Wisden
ESPNcricinfo
ESPNcricinfo, July 1992

Cricket

In July 1845, aged 18, only 5 ft 4 in and weighing just , he made his first-class debut for Sussex against MCC, taking 6 wickets in the first innings and three in the second. He joined the

All-England Eleven In English cricket since the first half of the 18th century, various ''ad hoc'' teams have been formed for short-term purposes which have been called England (or sometimes "All-England"; i.e., in the sense of "the rest of England") to play against, ...

in 1846, moving allegiance to the

United All-England Eleven The United All-England Eleven (UEE) was an English cricket team formed in 1852 by players breaking away from William Clarke's All-England Eleven (AEE). Key UEE players included John Wisden and Jemmy Dean, who became joint secretaries of the team ...

in 1852. He was engaged to marry George Parr's sister Annie in 1849, but she died before the wedding, and he never married. Initially a fast roundarm bowler, before

overarm bowling In cricket, overarm bowling refers to a delivery in which the bowler's hand is above shoulder height. When cricket originated all bowlers delivered the ball underarm, where the bowler's hand is below waist height. However, so the story goes, Jo ...

was permitted, his pace slowed in later years so he bowled medium pace; he also bowled slow

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 superior ...

. While bowling fast, he took on average nearly 10

wicket In cricket, the term wicket has several meanings: * It is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch. The fielding team's players can hit the wicket with the ball in a number of ways to get a batsman out. ...

s in each game. In 1850, when he was playing for the North against the South at Lord's, his off-cutter technique won him 10 wickets in the second innings, all clean bowled (still the only instance of all ten wickets being taken "bowled" in any first-class match). He was also a competent batsman, and scored two first-class centuries, the first, exactly 100, against Kent at Tunbridge Wells in 1849, and in 1855 he notched up 148 against Yorkshire, the only first-class century scored in 1855. He played almost all of his cricket in England, mostly for Sussex, but once for Kent and thrice for Middlesex. He travelled with a touring team led by George Parr to Canada and the US in 1859, where eight matches in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

Hoboken Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,69 ...

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and

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were won easily. Of moderate height, he was nicknamed the "Little Wonder" after the winner of The Derby in 1840, and later the "Cardinal". He was said to be the best all-rounder of his day. In all, he took 1,109 first-class wickets with a bowling average of 10.32. He scored 4,140 first-class runs with a

batting average Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic. Cricket In cricket, a player's batting average is ...

of 14.12, an average which was very good for the time.

Business career and legacy

J Wisden & Company, 21 Cranbourn Street, London 03

Wisden began a cricket-equipment business in

Leamington Spa Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or simply Leamington (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Priors, it grew into a spa town in the 18th century following ...

in 1850 and five years later opened a "cricket and cigar" shop in Coventry Street near

The Haymarket Haymarket is a street in the St James's area of the City of Westminster, London. It runs from Piccadilly Circus in the north to Pall Mall at the southern end. Located on the street are the Theatre Royal, Her Majesty's Theatre, New Zealand H ...

in central London, in partnership with

Fred Lillywhite Frederick Lillywhite (7 July 1829 – 15 September 1866) was a sports outfitter and cricketing entrepreneur, who organised the first overseas cricket tour by an English team and published a number of reference works about cricket. Cricketing dyn ...

until 1858. He was also the cricket coach at Harrow School from 1852 to 1855, and owned ''The Cricketers'', a public house at

Duncton Duncton is a village and civil parish in the Chichester (district), District of Chichester in West Sussex, England. The village is in the South Downs south of Petworth on the A285 road. The civil parish is about long north – south and less t ...

in Sussex. He retired from cricket in 1863 at the relatively early age of 37 as a result of rheumatism, and started publishing his annual ''Cricketers' Almanack'' the following year. He also published in ''Cricket and How to Play It'' in 1866. In retirement, he developed his business into a manufacturer and retailer of equipment for many sports, not just cricket. The shop moved to Cranbourn Street near Leicester Square in 1872. After his death the business grew into a major international sports brand, receiving a Royal Warrant in 1911 as "Athletic Outfitters to the King". The business went into receivership in 1939, and was acquired in 1943 by a

Co-operative society A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomy, autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratical ...

, which sold it on to Grays of Cambridge in 1970. Grays then ceased to use Wisden as an equipment brand, but re-established

John Wisden & Co ''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 ...

as the publisher of the ''Cricketers' Almanack''. It is now an imprint of Wisden's owner,

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a ...

Death

Wisden died of cancer, at the age of 57, in the flat above his Cranbourn Street shop (next to

Leicester Square tube station Leicester Square is a London Underground station in Theatreland and Chinatown, in the West End of London. It is located on Charing Cross Road, a short distance to the east of Leicester Square itself. The station is on the Charing Cross branch o ...

). He was buried in

Brompton Cemetery Brompton Cemetery (originally the West of London and Westminster Cemetery) is a London cemetery, managed by The Royal Parks, in West Brompton in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries. Estab ...

, London. In 1913, 29 years after his death, he was the subject of a "Special Portrait" in the 50th edition of Wisden, replacing the usual

Wisden Cricketers of the Year The ''Wisden'' Cricketers of the Year are cricketers selected for the honour by the annual publication ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', based primarily on their "influence on the previous English season". The award began in 1889 with the naming ...

feature which was dropped from that edition. In 1984, a headstone was placed at his grave to mark the centenary of his death.

References

External links