The First English Cricket Tour 1859

Martin Chandler | 9:05am BST 21 September 2025

Published: 2025
Pages: 180
Author: Smith, Steve
Publisher: Private
Rating: 3 stars

It is such an oft quoted piece of cricket trivia that there cannot be many people with a more than passing interest in the game that are not aware that the first international cricket match took place in North America, between Canada and the USA, as long ago as 1844, so more than thirty years before what has long been recognised as the inaugural Test between England and Australia at the MCG in 1877.

Slightly less well known is that the first international tour also pre dated the inaugural Test, this time by the best part of twenty years, and once again North America was involved. At the end of the 1859 English summer eleven of the best players of the two leading wandering teams of professional players in England, the United England Eleven and the All England Eleven, combined to make a five week trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

The twelve players who made the trip were led by George Parr, and other well known names who featured were John Wisden, William Caffyn, ‘Foghorn’ Jackson and John Lillywhite. No amateurs made the trip but the side was nonetheless a strong one. Accompanying the team was Lillywhite’s brother Fred and his printing press.

The Englishmen visited five venues altogether, playing two matches in each of Montreal, Hoboken, Philadelphia and Hamilton with a single fixture in Rochester to bring the trip to a close. The pattern was that the first fixture of each pair saw the Englishmen face 22 local players followed by a one innings 11 a side match in which the tourists divided into two and the numbers were made up with the best of their hosts,

After the tour was over Fred Lillywhite set about writing the first ever tour book, and in 1860 The English Cricketers in Canada and the United States duly appeared. It is, naturally, an expensive book in the twenty first century but, testament to the way in which it was put together, which was much more robustly than was the case for many Victorian books, not as rare as might be imagined.

In any event in 1980 the book was republished. The former Sussex off spinner and trenchant writer on the game Robin Marlar penned a short introduction, and then added to a facsimile of the book short biographies of Lillywhite and the twelve as well as the famous photograph that was taken in Liverpool before the party set off.

And that was that until 2014 when Scott Reeves, relying on other contemporary reports and material as well as Lillywhite’s book produced an entirely new account of the tour, The Champion Band. Steve Smith, whose books on the game in North America have been appearing regularly in recent months has added his contribution. His approach is somewhere between the two, although rather more Marlar than Reeves.

And what of the book itself? Does it create the template for the many tour books that were to appear over the coming century and or so? Not exactly is the answer to that. The cricket was one sided, the local sides being swept aside only the Philadelphians, unsurprisingly, putting up any sort of resistance. By way of illustration Wisden’s match figures in the final encounter were 29 for 65!

In truth most of the interest came off the field, and indeed not on land at all. The sea voyages were by far the greater challenge and it is, perhaps, as a travelogue that Lillywhite’s book makes its greater mark. And Smith’s interpretation? Each of the original and the three subsequent looks at this trip have their merits and in the case of Smith’s it has the benefit of being in print and being readily available now either direct from Amazon or, at a discounted price, from Red Rose Books.