1876 English cricket season

The 1876 English cricket season saw Gloucestershire reclaim its place as the unofficial "Champion County". A relatively dry summer^[1] and improvements to pitches via the heavy roller^[2] saw several batting records broken.

Champion County^[a]

Gloucestershire

Playing record (by county)^[3]

County	Played	Won	Lost	Tied	Drawn
Derbyshire	6	2	4	0	0
Gloucestershire	8	5	0	0	3
Hampshire	4	3	1	0	0
Kent	10	4	6	0	0
Lancashire	10	5	5	0	0
Middlesex	6	1	1	1	3
Nottinghamshire	10	4	3	0	3
Surrey	12	2	8	1	1
Sussex	8	3	4	0	1
Yorkshire	10	5	2	0	3

Leading batsmen (qualification 20 innings)

1876 English season leading batsmen^[4]
Name	Team	Matches	Innings	Not outs	Runs	Highest score	Average	100s	50s
WG Grace	Gloucestershire MCC	26	46	4	2622	344	62.42	7	10
Walter Gilbert	Gloucestershire	17	27	2	907	205 not out	36.28	2	1
Richard Daft	Nottinghamshire All England Eleven	18	30	2	976	99	34.85	0	6
Ephraim Lockwood	Yorkshire All England Eleven	25	44	5	1261	108 not out	32.33	1	9
Lord Harris	Kent MCC	17	30	1	916	154	31.58	1	4

Leading bowlers (qualification 1,000 balls)

1876 English season leading bowlers^[5]
Name	Team	Balls bowled	Runs conceded	Wickets taken	Average	Best bowling	5 wickets in innings	10 wickets in match
William McIntyre	Lancashire	2752	1016	89	11.41	7/33	9	1
Alec Watson	Lancashire	2161	640	51	12.54	7/61	3	2
William Mycroft	Derbyshire MCC All England Eleven	3091	1211	95	12.74	9/25	9	2
Arthur Ridley	Hampshire MCC	1885	705	53	13.30	6/36	6	3
Alfred Shaw	Nottinghamshire MCC All England Eleven	10526	2601	191	13.61	8/37	21	8

Events

14 January: Formation of Essex County Cricket Club at a meeting in the Shire Hall, Chelmsford. There had been previous county organisations in Essex going back to the 18th century, mainly around the famous Hornchurch club.
20 June: At the soon-to-be-built-on Prince's Cricket Ground, Oxford University made the first total of 600 in a first-class match^[6] when they scored 612 against Middlesex with William Game top scoring with 141.
27 June: Game became the first Oxonian to score a century against Cambridge, scoring 109^[7]
In August, W.G. Grace made his highest first-class score of 344, for MCC v Kent at Canterbury in August. Two days later he made 177 for Gloucestershire v Notts, and two days after that scored 318 not out for Gloucestershire v Yorkshire, the latter two innings against counties with exceptionally strong bowling attacks. Thus in three consecutive innings Grace scored 839 runs, and was only out twice. Grace’s 344 was the first triple century scored in first class cricket. William Ward’s 278 scored in 1820 had stood as a record for 56 years; within a week Grace had bettered it twice.
Grace also become the first player to score 2000 runs and take 100 wickets in a season: 2622 runs and 130 wickets in 26 matches. His feat was not equalled until Charlie Townsend in 1899.
Alfred Shaw became the first bowler to bowl 10,000 balls in a season, a feat he was to repeat in 1878 but was not equalled again until J.T. Hearne in 1896. His actual total of 10,526 balls was not bettered until Tich Freeman’s record season in 1928.

Notes

^a An unofficial seasonal title sometimes proclaimed by consensus of media and historians prior to December 1889 when the official County Championship was constituted. Although there are ante-dated claims prior to 1873, when residence qualifications were introduced, it is only since that ruling that any quasi-official status can be ascribed.

References

↑ England and Wales seasonal Precipitation
↑ "The Memorial biography of Dr. W.G. Grace"
↑ Wynne-Thomas, Peter; The Rigby A-Z of Cricket Records; p. 53 ISBN 072701868X
↑ First Class Batting in England in 1876
↑ First Class Bowling in England in 1876
↑ Webber, Roy; The Playfair Book of Cricket Records; p. 18. Published 1951 by Playfair Books
↑ Caine, C. Stewart (editor); John Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack; Seventieth Edition (1933); pp. 245-246

Annual reviews

John Lillywhite’s Cricketer’s Companion (Green Lilly), Lillywhite, 1877
James Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual (Red Lilly), Lillywhite, 1877
John Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack, 1877

External links

CricketArchive – season summaries

English cricket seasons

Historic era

1597 to 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729 1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 1739 1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763 1764 1765 1766 1767 1768 1769 1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824

Pre-County Championship era

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County Championship era

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