115 years ago today, the amateur England George Simpson-Hayward took six for 43 on Test debut, bowling lobs against South Africa. One of the last underarm bowlers to play first-class cricket, he was one of the few to have any success at Test level, although his career was otherwise undistinguished

He and Sarah Oldham had been together for around 4 years. She was separated from her husband but was relatively wealthy. But it was a turbulent relationship, fuelled by alcohol on both sides. Kesteven was often violent. But by 1894, everything seemed to have settled down and they seemed happy.

On Christmas Eve 1894, a journeyman professional cricketer called Edmund Kesteven — who never played first-class cricket but built a career playing for various clubs around England — brutally and inexplicably murdered his long-term partner, a woman called Sarah Oldham, in Sutton-in-Ashfield

He played from 1920 until 1935, taking 1,838 first-class wickets, of which 1,774 were for Yorkshire, for whom he remains the 4th highest wicket-taker. But in his final years, he was a shadow of his former self. After leaving Yorkshire, he played league cricket and died in 1940 on active service

George Gibson Macaulay, born in Thirsk on 7 December 1897, played 8 Tests for England. On debut against SA in 1923, he took a wicket 1st ball, took five for 64 in the 2nd innings and hit the winning run in a one-wicket victory. For the 1st half of the 1920s, he was one of the best bowlers in England

Born 153 years ago today, Archie MacLaren has the dubious distinction of being possibly the worst England captain of all time. He led the Test team against Australia 22 times, but won just 4 of those games and lost 11. But the manner of the results was even worse than the numerical record

Born 130 years ago today, Herbert Sutcliffe still has the highest Test batting average (60.73) of any England player to have a career of any lengHerbeth. His success came from determination and an ice-cold temperament rather than brilliance and he always put the team first

She was also a key figure in the other strand of the cricket team: evening performances in theatres and music halls. She organised musical numbers, military-style drills, and contributed herself by taking part in fencing displays and singing songs

She even became involved in a public dispute with Lord Willoughby de Broke, the President of Warwickshire County Cricket Club, over the merits of women's cricket. She fiercely defended the skill of her players and argued that sport was beneficial for women, something not widely accepted at the time

Although her abilities lay more in athletics (a less respectable sport for women at the time), she joined the professional Original English Lady Cricketers in 1890 and captained one of the teams. She worked tirelessly to publicise the enterprise, and wrote large parts of a promotional magazine

One of the most extraordinary figures in early women's cricket was known as Daisie Stanley (her real name was Daisy Berry). Born in 1870, the daughter of a clerk of works, she worked for a time as a gym instructor (possibly at the Regent Street Polytechnic and/or at the Alexandra House Gymnasium).

Two years later, in 1891, he was briefly associated with the world's first professional women's cricket team, the Original English Lady Cricketers. He travelled with them for a time as a coach/manager and claimed that they would have beaten the men's Yorkshire team.

Billy Bates, the Yorkshire and England professional cricketer, was born on 19 November 1855 at Lascelles Hall. He scored 656 runs and took 50 wickets (including England's first hat-trick) in 15 Tests. Wisden described his career as "exceptionally brilliant while it lasted". But it did not last long

On 18 November 1918 the South African Test player Reginald Schwarz — who played rugby 3 times for England — died of Spanish flu in France, aged 43, just a week after the end of the First World War, in which he had been awarded the Military Cross. Born in England, he made his career in South Africa