1806.3

Mister Beldham Really Loads One Up on Cricket Pitch

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags
Location
City/State/Country:	[[{{{Country}}}]]
Modern Address
Game
Immediacy of Report
Age of Players
Holiday
Notables
Text	"Ball tampering has been around since time immemorial. The first recorded instance of a bowler deliberately changing the condition of a ball occurred in 1806, when Beldham, Robinson and Lambert played Bennett, Fennex, and Lord Frederisk Beauclerk in a single-wicket match at Lord's. It was a closely fought match, but Beauclerk's last innings looked to be winning the game. As Pycroft recalls in The Cricket Field: '"His lordship had then lately introduced sawdust when the ground was wet. Beldham, unseen, took a lump of wet dirt and sawdust, and stuck it on the ball, and took the wicket. This, I heard separately from Beldham, Bennett, and also Fennex, who used to mention it as among the wonders of his long life.'" Simon Rae, It's Not Cricket: A History of Skulduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game (Faber and Faber, 2001), page 199. Pycroft's account appears at John Pycroft, The Cricket Field: Or the History and Science of Cricket, American Edition (Mayhew and Baker, Boston, 1859), page 214 - as accessed via Google Books 10/20/2008.
Sources
Warning
Comment	Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:\|left\|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by
Submission Note
Has Supplemental Text

Comments