Colonel Charles John Coventry, CB

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 (26 February 1867 in Marylebone

Marylebone

Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

–2 June 1929, Earls Croome

Earls Croome

Earls Croome is a village and civil parish in the Malvern Hills District in the county of Worcestershire, England.The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book, 1086, as Crumba. The first part of its name is derived from the Earl of Coventry who had Earl's Croome Court as a residence opposite the...

, Worcestershire

Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...

, England) 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...

 for England in the first two Test matches

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...

 they played against South Africa.

Coventry was the second son of George Coventry, 9th Earl of Coventry

George Coventry, 9th Earl of Coventry

George William Coventry, 9th Earl of Coventry PC , styled Viscount Deerhurst until 1843, was a British Conservative politician...

. He played his cricket for Worcestershire

Worcestershire County Cricket Club

Worcestershire 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 Worcestershire...

 when it was still a minor county, that is, a county without first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 status. He was described as "a fair bat with a free style who can hit hard". When the English tour to South Africa in 1888-89

History of cricket in South Africa to 1918

This article describes the history of South African cricket from its known beginnings until the end of the First World War in 1918.First-class cricket was introduced to South Africa in the 1888-89 season with the arrival of the first English touring team and the presentation by Sir Donald Currie of...

was being put together, because the South Africans were considered weak, weaker players were selected for the English team. Coventry was one of those players selected. England still won the two games against representative South African sides easily, though Coventry did not feature greatly in either game: he batted at number 10 and did not bowl. Coventry played no first-class cricket other than in those two Tests.