1846.17

Cricketers Form All England Eleven

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Text	[Sensing a large new audience, cricket entrepreneur William] "Clark therefore created the All England Eleven (AEE), a squad of professionals available to play matches wherever and whenever he could arrange fixtures. Exploiting the improved communications of the industrial age - turnpike roads and the ever-expanding railway network [not to mention a reliable and affordable postal service] - Clark set out to take cricket to all the corners of the kingdom, and from its first match in 1846, the AEE proved a resounding success." Simon Rae, It's Not Cricket: A History of Skullduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game (Faber and Faber, 2001), page 70. Another facilitating factor that Rae might have mentioned was the rise of widely available and cheap newspapers. Caveat: Clark did not invent the AEE idea. Beth Hise, email of January 12, 2010, advises: "The name All-England dates back at least 100 years (1740s) to refer to a side put together from disparate players and not representing any particular place." She also notes that until 1903, the AEEs were all privately funded, so they are not to be thought of as "national" sides.
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