Rockley Wilson: Remarkable Cricketer, Singular Man

Martin Howe

may 2008 · Lives in Cricket Libro 5 · Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians

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Though he was an outstanding schoolboy cricketer at Rugby, Rockley Wilson (1879-1957) was required to leave the school shortly before his final season, for ‘examination irregularities’. He moved on to Cambridge, where, brought in to make up a visiting side, he scored a century in his first innings in first-class cricket. Three years later, in 1902, he was Cambridge captain. Later, as a schoolmaster and cricket coach at Winchester College, he brought on 39 boys to play first-class cricket.

After he had been out of the side for ten years, playing only club and country house cricket, Yorkshire decided to give him, on merit, a regular place in his school vacation as a spin bowler of exceptional accuracy, in its mighty elevens on either side of the Great War. One August he took over the captaincy and steered the county home to the Championship. Selected for the 1920/21 tour of Australia, he upset the Australian crowd by writing for the Daily Express about a Test match he was playing in.

He was widely recognised as a leading authority on cricket and its heritage and helped to re-write the Laws of the game in 1947. He left much of his collection of cricketana to the Lord’s museum. His wit, laced with litotes and literary allusions, has been anthologised.

Few players of any era have matched the diversity of his contribution to the game. Martin Howe gives us a comprehensive account of a singular man of plural talents.

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Martin Howe was born in Sheffield in 1936. After twelve years as a lecturer in economics at the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, he joined the Civil Service where he held a number of senior posts. Since retiring from full-time employment in 1996, Martin has made a hobby of writing on Yorkshire cricket and cricketers.