1799 English cricket season

In the 1799 English cricket season, Surrey again beat All-England three times. As in the previous year, the number of matches may have declined due to the effect of the Napoleonic War. Fewer were reported but there was loose censorship in place.

A cricket club was formed at Seringapatam in south India after the successful British siege.

^ The two MCC games against its own Thursday Club are important matches as the majority of players on each side are recognised. The Thursday Club was effectively Middlesex.

^# The Montpelier v Richmond and Brentford games in S&B (p. 253-255) were important matches despite some "unknowns" in the Richmond & Brentford sides and the results went convincingly in favour of Montpelier. The match status dilemma is almost solved by MCC games against similar sides since 1797. Thus, if a good quality town club with given men or at any rate a full team of recognised players competes against a good quality MCC side (or against All-England or a recognised county team), that is an important match. If it is a case of two such town clubs playing each other without a good number of noted given men, the game is probably not important.

Evidently the Whitehead v Yarmouth game was arranged ad hoc on 1 Aug as the All-England v Surrey game finished on the same day (most of the players took part in both games)

Another case of an extra game starting immediately that the first one finished. There is some doubt about the exact date of the second game which ACS have on the 15th as S&B states that the first game carried over to the 16th.

In both these two games, Waltham & Herts was a minor team. Herts played several games in late C18 but needed given men.

Note that many scorecards in the 18th century are unknown or have missing details and so it is impossible to provide a complete analysis of batting performances: e.g., the missing not outs prevent computation of batting averages. The "runs scored" are in fact the runs known.

With few matches being played, only six batsmen exceeded 150 runs:

Note that the wickets credited to an 18th-century bowler were only those where he bowled the batsman out. The bowler was not credited with the wickets of batsmen who were caught out, even if it was "caught and bowled". In addition, the runs conceded by each bowler were not recorded so no analyses or averages can be computed.

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