Last updated 05:32, Friday, 29 August 2008

Sam Bough’s cricket match is one of the most popular of his works in the Tullie House collections. It gives a fascinating snapshot of Victorian Carlisle.

Gently does it: Top-hatted cricketers play to a muscial backdrop provided by a military brass band

The action unfolds beneath a skyline that reveals the city’s hybrid identity of both medieval walled city and Victorian industrial powerhouse.

The castle and cathedral can be seen to the left with the 1836-built Dixon’s chimney towering in the background.

To the right, Carr's biscuit factory can be seen, and ships at the basin of the Carlisle canal, built in 1823.

On the Edenside ground, a match between Carlisle and the Northumberland clubs is underway.

We see a leg spinner's bowling action to a batsman waiting in eager anticipation.

Spectators enjoy the action before them to the musical backdrop provided by the brass band of the 43rd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

The players are sporting top hats, which were worn long before helmets became essential headwear against the fast-paced calypso cricket of West Indian bowlers who came to the Carlisle in 1950 and 1957.

The umpire of this match, Mr Howe, commissioned Sam Bough to produce this oil painting in 1844. Mr Howe himself can be seen facing beside the wicket.

Cricket in Carlisle was well supported in the early 19th century, and was played at Edenside from around 1819.

The Edenside ground became the home of Carlisle Cricket Club and a further pitch existed at Denton Holme.

Bough’s painting not only captures the ethos of the sport but also provides us with a strong image of a changing city.

Yet it is the cricket rather than the industry captured in the painting that survives today in Carlisle. Howzat?