‘Mr W.Clarke, the celebrated slow bowler, is removing from Nottingham and will in future be found on Lord’s Ground.’

This seemingly bland statement was published in the Nottingham Review of March 20 1846. How many cricket lovers, reading that sentence, realised the seismic change which was to affect cricket throughout the British Isles? On the purely Nottingham front, in the next 11 seasons, Nottinghamshire played just 18 matches of importance. The reason was not only that Clarke, the controller of Nottingham cricket for the last 20 years had left the County, but that he, having failed to make any money from his laying out of the Trent Bridge Ground, decided on an unique experiment, which the proprietor of Lord’s thought completely stupid.

Clarke aimed to sign up a dozen of the best known cricketers in England and tour the British Isles in the manner of a travelling circus, playing matches against local opposition and hopefully attracting crowds to see, for the first time, in their own locality, the greatest sportsmen of the day. Clarke, having spent most of the 1846 summer in London at Lord’s, gathered his chosen men and, being cautious arranged for just three fixtures in large industrial towns - Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds.

The result was all he could have desired, despite the games being in September. The crowds and the money rolled in. In 1847 he arranged 10 such matches, beginning in mid-August and ending the first week of October. More crowds, more money. In 1848 there were 16 matches beginning in mid-June; the following year, 21 matches right through from May 3 to September 27. These were all three-day games and almost all against an opposition of 18 or 22 opponents, all of whom batted and fielded.

To be picked to represent your town against the most famous cricketers in England was the greatest ambition of most local players. At first Clarke employed in his new side only two or three Notts players, such as Joe Guy and George Parr, but by 1855, when a rival England side was also operating, his team often comprised seven or eight Nottingham men.

The effect of first Clarke’s move to London and then his new England side, was immediate. Nottinghamshire played no matches in 1846 and only one in 1847 - that being for the benefit of the old county cricketer, Tom Barker. In 1848, John Chapman, Clarke’s step-son, who ran the Trent Bridge Inn and Ground following Clarke’s departure, made a serious attempt to revive county matches at Trent Bridge, but lost money on the venture.

No other promoter gambled on further Trent Bridge County matches and the ground was the venue of no such games from 1849 to 1851. The sole revenue from the ground was, seemingly, the rent paid by the two or three local clubs who used it. There was no income from spectators. In 1851, Surrey - who had been resuscitated in 1845 - paid for the Notts team to play a match at The Oval. The success of that fixture led Charley Brown, the Notts wicketkeeper, to collect together subscribers for home and away matches with Surrey in 1852 - Notts won both fixtures by large margins.

In 1853 Notts began by playing and beating England at Lord’s and were for the first time acclaimed in the press as ‘County Champions’. The two major clubs who used Trent Bridge as their home ground - Nottm Commercial and Notts Amateurs - provided the personnel to form a loose County Cricket Club Committee, with brothers John and Charles Thornton and John Johnson as the main officers, and several other matches were arranged that summer.

In 1854 they ambitiously arranged home and away games with England, but both games were lost. In the match at Lord’s, William Clarke disputed an umpiring decision, walked off the field, appealed to the MCC Committee and got the umpire’s decision changed. The twin defeats appear to have dampened the enthusiasm of the Notts supporters. In 1855 and in 1856 Notts had just one home match, though in the latter summer it was played at Newark, rather than Trent Bridge.

Clarke died on August 25, 1856 – he had played his final Notts match in August 1855. This time it was his death that altered the cricket scene. From the following year, county cricket, in Nottinghamshire and throughout England was to rise again.