Horace sets Tony thinking

posted by John Winn

My reference earlier in the week to the poet Horace set Tony Hutton thinking about cricketers called Horace. Two came readily to mind: firstly the Yorkshireman Horace Fisher who played 52 games for his native county between 1928 and 1936. Unlucky to be understudy to Hedley Verity he was the first bowler to get a hat trick of LBW scalps when he took 5 for 12 against Somerset in 1932. Alex Skelding was the man who raised his finger three times. This Horace died at Middlestown in 1974.

Tony's second Horace was Horace Hazell who had a lengthy career either side of the war with Somerset. Born in Brislington, near Keynsham ( and older readers will know how to spell that), Horace had a trial for Gloucestershire but it was his native county who took him on and he developed into an excellent slow left arm bowler and an obdurate number 11. Horace, a rotund figure, died aged 80, back where he started in Brislington. Asked by Trevor Bailey how he passed the winter he replied 'I never get up before 12'.

Diverging from Horaces for a moment but pursuing an alliterative theme, in David Foot and Ivan Pontings 'Sixty Summers', a history of Somerset from 1946 to 2006, on the opposite page to their tribute to Hazell is one to  a man whose career with the county overlapped almost identically with that of Horace, Bertie Buse, unlucky enough to have a benefit match that failed to go as far as the second day. I can still here those poetic names rolling off John Arlott's tongue: will the cricketers of the future be called Horace and Bertie ? Not while parents are saddling their offspring with names like Zanzibar and Tait.

Beyond Messrs Fisher and Hazell the internet provided the long room think tank with more Horaces as we watched Sidebottom score 2 in three quarters of an hour. First was the Jamaican, Horace Miller, aged 24 and a left-hand bat and wicketkeeper and going further back we have Sir Horatio, but always called Horace in Scores and Biographies, Mann. MP for Maidstone and a patron of Kent cricket this Horace had his own ground at his seat, Bourne House near Canterbury. Bishopsbourne Paddock., as it was known, last hosted cricket in 1790 when Sir Horace's XI lost to Mr Stephen Amherst's XI by 130 runs. Wikipedia informs us that 'Sir Horatio moved out of Bourne House shortly afterwards'. The Baronet's equivalent of taking his bat home.

Finally  and a somewhat tenuous extension of the theme of Horaces, the umpire in the photograph above, John William Marshall, was a forebear of one Horace Marshall, who did much to revive my father's old club after the war and lived to be nearly 100. Sadly I have no photograph of Horace to hand. John Willy does not look like a man who would give three LBWs in a season never mind off consecutive deliveries.

Horace  Fisher