Eton Match Bicentenary

2026 marks two hundred years since the first cricket match between Winchester and Eton.  The bicentenary will be celebrated by a return to the two-day fixture in ten days’ time. The following description of Eton Match was penned by the Hon R H Lyttelton (OE), one of the editors of Fifty Years of Sport at Oxford, Cambridge and the Great Public Schools, 1922. He compares the Lord’s-hosted Eton v Harrow fixture to the more intimate atmosphere of the Eton v Winchester matches.

“As there is one glory of the sun and another of the moon, so there is one glory of Eton and Harrow and another of Eton and Winchester. The first belongs not only to the two schools but to some extent to the outside world as well, the second to the two schools alone. Till 1854 Eton and Winchester played at Lord’s.  In 1855 they met at Eton, and in the following year at Winchester, and ever since then the match has been a domestic festival, and a wonderfully delightful one. There is just the right proportion of pretty frocks and strawberries and cream, an intense keenness on the cricket, and an unrivalled opportunity for meeting old friends.  The players on the two sides get to know each other much better than they do at Lord’s, since they practically live together for the two days, whereas each night after Lords’s they are separated and swallowed up into the vastness of London.”

When the major public schools first played cricket matches against each other, the constraints are easily envisaged. Firstly, the poor quality of facility on which to practice and compete. For Winchester, the game of cricket (often known locally as crocketts) had largely migrated from Hills to Meads (which became the preserve of Scholars from 1768) and to Commoner Field. But it was not until Headmaster Ridding levelled New Field in the 1860s that something approaching a first class ground could be offered to visitors or practiced upon.

Add to this the problem of team transport and the modern concept of school matches becomes a very remote possibility indeed. The first organised inter-school cricket match involving Winchester (against Harrow) took place in 1825, two months before the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

So, it is no surprise that Eton and Harrow had developed the custom of playing each other during the school holidays and at a central location (Lord’s) to which all players could get easy access. Thanks to two brothers (Charles Wordsworth (Captain of Harrow), later Second Master of Winchester and Bishop of St Andrews; and Christopher Wordsworth (Captain of Winchester), later Headmaster of Harrow and Bishop of Lincoln), both nephews of William Wordsworth and each captaining their school team, Winchester were admitted to the mix.

The first Harrow v Winchester match was proposed in 1824 but blocked by the Harrow Headmaster, presumably so as not to play host to the betting that would have accompanied the game. It is worth noting that Winchester was familiar with ‘foreign’ matches (not College v Commoners, for instance), although detailed records are scant before 1826. ‘Eleven gentlemen of Winchester College’ played a match against ‘eleven gentlemen of the Town’ in 1803. Other foreign matches were played separately by College and by Commoners.

Following the success of Winchester’s match against Harrow in 1825, Winchester played both Eton and Harrow in August 1826, marking the first ‘Eton Match’. However, it was not until 1834 that all three schools played each other every year, and this arrangement continued until 1854. After 1854 Eton and Winchester decided to exercise some control over the matches, which up to then had taken place with little reference to the school authorities. The teams were in London on their own, away from parental or school control, and largely dependent on the benevolence of their London hosts to keep them out of trouble. Spectators included large numbers of alumni from each school, who generally stayed to watch the third match, in which their own school was not represented, so it is not surprising that the atmosphere was sometimes quite rowdy. 

In 1854, Eton and Winchester asked that the matches take place in term time and preferably on school premises. This caused considerable upset, with much correspondence in The Times. Winchester and Eton soon reached agreement on a formula that would last for over 100 years but Harrow was less inclined to agree and so the match between Winchester and Harrow ceased to be played, only to be revived in 1916 as a one-day match alternating between the two schools as hosts.

Matches were played on Upper Club at Eton and on Meads when at Winchester.  The first match against Eton played on New Field was in 1870 and Winchester won that year, rather a fitting way to mark the opening of the new ground and the first win since 1859 (the team photograph from that year can be seen below). Agar’s Plough replaced Upper Club in 1902.

Although the Centenary arrived in 1926, much more was made of the 100th Eton Match, played at Eton in 1933 (the match was drawn).

Records show occasional disruption to the matches: in 1914, a group of suffragettes attempted to ruin the pitch, and the match was cancelled in 1947 because of an outbreak of Polio-myelitis at Winchester. The weather in 1985 was atrocious and is the only occasion on which the match wasn’t competed.

From the 1960s, Eton Match took on some of characteristics we recognise in today’s Wykeham Day, with exhibitions and other sporting competitions, plus all the obligatory entertaining, and for some years, a dinner dance.

The match became a one-day fixture in 1986, which it had previously been in the war years of 1915-1918 and 1940-1945. From 2001, the match against Eton was moved to a separate fixture, while the festivities were retained under the title of Winchester Day, subsequently Winchester Match and now Wykeham Day. Cricket is still played, but as Old Wykehamist matches against the school. 

Anyone wanting to read more about the early history of Winchester cricket should read:

A History of Winchester Cricket by E H Fellowes 1930

Winchester College Cricket by E B Noel 1926

The Elevens of Three Great Schools by W R Lyon 1930