John Nyren

John Nyren, from a copy made by Francis Grehan in 1844, of a drawing from life by Edward Novello. This is a scanned image from the book "The Hambledon Men".

John Nyren (born 15 December 1764 at Hambledon, Hampshire; died 30 June 1837 in Bromley-by-Bow, London) was an English cricketer turned author. He was the son of Richard Nyren, the captain of the Hambledon Club in its "Glory Days", and was brought up in the legendary Bat and Ball Inn, where his father was the landlord, immediately opposite Broadhalfpenny Down.

Nyren, who was left-handed, had a sporadic career in top-class cricket and made sixteen known appearances from 1786 to 1817. His playing career was not distinguished and he would now be remembered only as the son of a famous father if he had not turned his hand to literature in his later years.

In 1832, Nyren aged 67 was living in London and he began a collaboration with Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877), who recorded Nyren's reminiscences of the Hambledon era and published them serially in a periodical called The Town. The following year, the series of articles appeared in book form as The Cricketers of My Time, which became a major source for the history and personalities of Georgian cricket and also came to be regarded as the first classic in cricket's now rich literary history.