1888 English cricket season

The 1888 English cricket season saw a complete contrast to the previous sunlit summer with its record-breaking run-getting: this time the summer was exceptionally cool^[1] and wet,^[2] resulting in the dominance of bowlers with many records for wicket-taking set.

After a run of disastrous results over a number of seasons, Derbyshire was demoted from first-class status and first-class county cricket was now played by only eight teams: Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Notts, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire. Derbyshire recovered first-class status in 1894 and rejoined the Championship in 1895.

Honours

Champion County^[a] – Surrey
Wisden (Six Great Bowlers of the Year) – George Lohmann, Johnny Briggs, John Ferris, Charles Turner, Sammy Woods, Bobby Peel

Playing record (by county)^[3]

County	Played	Won	Lost	Drawn	Points^[b]
Gloucestershire	14	5	5	4	7.0
Kent	14	7	5	2	8.0
Lancashire	14	4	5	5	6.5
Middlesex	12	4	7	1	4.5
Nottinghamshire	14	3	6	5	5.5
Surrey	14	12	1	1	12.5
Sussex	12	1	9	2	2.0
Yorkshire	14	6	4	4	8.0

Leading batsmen (qualification 20 innings)

1888 English season leading batsmen^[4]
Name	Team	Matches	Innings	Not outs	Runs	Highest score	Average	100s	50s
Walter Read	Surrey England	28	41	2	1414	338	36.25	4	3
WG Grace	Gloucestershire England	33	59	1	1886	215	32.51	4	7
Bobby Abel	Surrey England	29	44	2	1323	160	31.50	1	8
Joseph Eccles	Lancashire	16	28	2	660	184	25.38	1	2
Maurice Read	Surrey	23	32	1	786	109	25.35	1	4

Leading bowlers (qualification 1,000 balls)

1888 English season leading bowlers^[5]
Name	Team	Balls bowled	Runs conceded	Wickets taken	Average	Best bowling	5 wickets in innings	10 wickets in match
Johnny Briggs	Lancashire England	5802	1679	160	10.49	9/88	16	4
Alec Hearne	Kent	2750	786	73	10.76	8/30	5	1
Frederick Martin	Kent	3014	791	73	10.83	6/27	4	1
George Lohmann	Surrey England	6596	2280	209	10.90	8/13	25	9
Jim Phillips	MCC	1199	393	35	11.22	6/89	5	1

Australian tour and Test series

The sixth Australia team, under the captaincy of Percy McDonnell, toured England in 1888. The great team of 1882 under Billy Murdoch had largely disintegrated, and under McDonnell, the team was largely dependent on the sensational bowling of Turner and Ferris.^[6] Their overall record of nineteen victories and fourteen defeats was a minor improvement on the 1886 team, but the absence of Giffen weakened the batting in an exceptionally wet summer, whilst the support bowlers to Turner and Ferris, including the veteran Harry Boyle, were used so little that they could never get into form. When the weather improved after a dreadful mid-summer, the batting was much too poor to compete with England^[6] and the team’s results deteriorated with thrashings in the last two Test matches and poor results against the counties.

Thanks mainly to the bowling of Bobby Peel, well supported by Lohmann, Briggs and Barnes, England defeated Australia two Tests to one to retain the Ashes.

Notable events

Following the demotion of Derbyshire, the remaining eight counties arrange a nearly-complete program of home-and-away matches (except for Middlesex not playing Sussex) which paves the way for the first County Championship in 1890.
5 July – Formation of Glamorgan CCC took place at a meeting in the Angel Hotel, Cardiff.
11 August – Surrey beats Sussex by an innings and 485 runs,^[7] which remains the most one-sided match in county cricket history. Surrey’s score of 698 broke their own 1883 record of 650 as the highest innings total in county cricket.^[8]
23 August – Charles Turner takes his 215th wicket, beating Ted Peate’s 1882 record for most wickets in a season. Turner would finish with 283, a total beaten only by Tich Freeman in 1928 and 1933 and Tom Richardson in 1895.
Surrey’s feat of winning twelve of its fourteen games is a winning percentage that has not been equalled since in county cricket, with the best since being fourteen wins in seventeen matches by Warwickshire in 1995.^[9]
John Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack publishes its first “Cricketers of the Year” for this season.

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.
^b Between 1887 and 1889 an unofficial point system of 1 point for a win and 0.5 points for a draw, devised by the "Cricket Reporting Agency", was used to determine the unofficial "Champion County"

References

↑ Hadley Center Central England Temperature
↑ Hadley Center England and Wales Precipitation
↑ Wynne-Thomas, Peter; The Rigby A-Z of Cricket Records; p. 54 ISBN 072701868X
↑ First Class Batting in England in 1888
↑ First Class Bowling in England in 1888
1 2 The Australian team in England, 1888
↑ Surrey v Sussex in 1888
↑ Webber, Roy; The Playfair Book of Cricket Records; p. 18. Published 1951 by Playfair Books.
↑ Engel, Matthew (editor); Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, 133rd Edition (1996), pp. 396-397

Annual reviews

James Lillywhite’s Cricketers’ Annual (Red Lilly), Lillywhite, 1889
John Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack 1889

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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