John Selby played cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 professionally for Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club

Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club

Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Nottinghamshire, and the current county champions. Its limited overs team is called the Nottinghamshire Outlaws...

 between 1870 and 1887. In 1878, he headed the English cricket

1878 English cricket season

The 1878 English cricket season is remembered for the first official tour by an Australian team, although it played no Test Matches; and for the match that inspired a famous poem.-Champion County:* Middlesex, Nottinghamshire -Events:...

 averages with 938 runs at average of 31.82.

He toured Australia in 1876-77 and 1881-82, playing a total of six Test match

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

es on those tours, and he toured North America in 1879.

Selby went on to become a pub landlord, but his financial dealings were unsuccessful and led to a run-in with the law. He died after suffering a paralytic stroke in Nottingham General Hospital in 1894. He had a wife, Annie.

His name was registered at birth as John Burrows.