Tom Marsden

Thomas Marsden (12 September 1803 – 27 February 1843) was an English cricketer whose career spanned the 1826 to 1841 seasons.^[1]

Born in Sheffield, Marsden was an all-rounder who batted left-handed and bowled either left-arm fast (underarm) or slow left-arm orthodox (roundarm). He played mostly for Sheffield Cricket Club at a time when it was representative of Yorkshire as a county and he was one of the first great Yorkshire cricketers.

Marsden's known career record consists of 55 first-class matches. He played 99 innings and scored 1724 runs. He made two centuries and three fifties. His highest score was 227 in his debut match, for Sheffield & Leicester versus Nottingham at Darnall New Ground, Sheffield in 1826.^[2] He is the first player to score a double century on first-class debut.^[3] He is believed to have been an outfielder and took 44 catches. As a bowler, he took 97 wickets with a best performance of seven wickets in one innings.^[1]

In 1833, Marsden came up against Fuller Pilch in a single-wicket competition for the Championship of England. Although Pilch had little interest in such abbreviated forms of the game, he won comfortably. Marsden died in Sheffield in 1843.