William Ward (cricketer)

William Ward (1787–1849) was an English financier, and noted cricketer.

Born at Highbury Place, Islington, 24 July 1787, he was the second son of George Ward (died 1829), of Northwood Park, Cowes, a London merchant and large landowner in the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, by his wife Mary (died 1813), daughter of Henry Sampson Woodfall. Robert Plumer Ward was his uncle. He was educated at Winchester College.

Ward was destined for commerce, and spent some time at Antwerp in a banking-house. On his return his father took him into partnership in 1810. In 1817 he was elected a director of the Bank of England, known as an expert on foreign exchanges. In 1819 he gave evidence before the parliamentary committees on the restrictions on payments in cash by the Bank of England.

On 9 June 1826 he became Member of Parliament in the Tory interest for the City of London, and in 1830 at the request of the Duke of Wellington, he acted as chairman of the committee appointed to investigate the affairs of the East India Company, before the opening of the China trade. In 1831, discontented at the spirit of reform, he declined to stand for parliament. In 1835 he presented himself as a candidate, and was defeated by the Whigs; and retired from public life.

Ward died on 30 June 1849 in London at Wyndham Place.

William Ward was a prominent right-handed batsman and an occasional slow lob bowler. His first-class career began in the 1810 English cricket season but it was interrupted by the Napoleonic War until 1816. Ward played until 1845.

His score of 278 for the MCC v Norfolk at Lord's in 1820 was the highest individual innings in first-class cricket until W. G. Grace scored first-class cricket's first triple-century in August 1876, more than 27 years after Ward's death. The ball used is thought to be the oldest in existence and is kept in the MCC Museum.

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