The 1862 English cricket season saw the overarm

Overarm bowling

In cricket, overarm bowling refers to a delivery in which the bowler's hand is above shoulder height. This is in contrast to a roundarm delivery, where the hand is between shoulder height and waist height; and an underarm delivery where the bowler's hand is below waist height.After roundarm was...

 issue come to a head in a controversial match at The Oval

The Oval

The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...

.

First-class matches

• 1862 match list

Events

26 August. Surrey v. England at The Oval. Edgar Willsher of England was no-balled six times in succession by John Lillywhite (son of FW Lillywhite) for bowling with his hand above the shoulder. For some years previously, Willsher and others had bowled in this way and the incident at The Oval put the issue into context. The drama was exaggerated when Willsher and the other eight professionals in the England team walked off the field. Play continued next day but with a replacement umpire.

Leading batsmen

Thomas Hayward

Thomas Hayward (cricketer)

Thomas Hayward was a Cambridgeshire and All-England Eleven cricketer who was generally reckoned to be one of the outstanding batsmen of the 1850s and 1860s. In the early 1860s, he and Robert Carpenter, his Cambridgeshire colleague, were rated as the two finest batsmen in England...

 was the leading runscorer with 661 @ 31.47

External sources

• CricketArchive – season summaries

Annual reviews

• Fred Lillywhite
  Fred Lillywhite
  Frederick Lillywhite was a sports outfitter and cricketing entrepreneur, who organised the first overseas cricket tour by an English team and published a number of reference works about cricket.-Cricketing dynasty:...
  
  , The Guide to Cricketers, Lillywhite, 1863
• Arthur Haygarth
  Arthur Haygarth
  Arthur Haygarth was a noted amateur cricketer who became one of cricket's most significant historians....
  
  , Scores & Biographies, Volume 7 (1861-1862), Lillywhite, 1863

Further reading

• Derek Birley
  Derek Birley
  Sir Derek Birley was an English educator and writer who had a strong interest in sport, especially cricket.He was educated at grammar school in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, and at Queens' College, Cambridge University....
  
  , A Social History of English Cricket, Aurum, 1999