Harold Gimblett
Encyclopedia
Harold Gimblett was a cricket
er who played for Somerset
and England. He was known for his fast scoring as an opening batsman and for the much-repeated story of his debut. In a book first published in 1982, the cricket writer and Somerset historian David Foot wrote: "Harold Gimblett is the greatest batsman Somerset has ever produced."
Gimblett scored at a fast rate throughout his career, and hit 265 sixes – "surely a record for a regular opening batsman", wrote Eric Hill
, his postwar opening partner and since then a long-time journalist watcher of Somerset. He appeared, however, in only three Tests, none of them against Australia, and he left first-class cricket abruptly, suffering from mental health problems that would remain with him to the end of his life.
in the Quantock Hills
in west Somerset
, where his family had been farmers since the 15th century. He was the youngest of three brothers and was educated at the local school at Williton
and then at the fee-paying West Buckland School
just over the border in Devon
.
He played cricket successfully at school and for Watchet
Cricket Club. In 1931, he left school; in August of that year, he made the first of his significant innings. In the match between Watchet and Wellington
Cricket Club, he came to the wicket with Watchet on 37 for seven, chasing a total of 160. With another teenage batsman, Allan Pearse
, Gimblett hit off the runs, making 91 himself. A year later, he was co-opted into the Somerset Stragglers team, a peripatetic amateur team which played matches across south west England, composed of former public school players of varying abilities, some of whom were the amateurs who formed a large contingent of Somerset county players up to the Second World War. In his first match for the Stragglers team, against Wellington School
, he made 142 in 75 minutes.
Gimblett briefly moved to London to work, but city life was not to his taste and he returned home, resuming cricket for the Watchet club. One of the patrons of Watchet cricket, the town tailor W. G. Penny, who was also prominent in Somerset County Cricket Club, recommended him for a trial with the county, though there appears to have been some reservations over his temperament and his impetuous batting. There is also, in the same source, some suggestion that Gimblett himself was reluctant to test himself against top-class cricketers.
Even so, at the start of the 1935 season, Gimblett was invited to go to Taunton for a two-week trial with the county. The trial seems not to have been a success, but it led directly to the sensation that was Gimblett's first-class cricket debut.
in May 1935 was instant legend. Wisden
, in its obituary of him in 1979, wrote: "The start of his career was so sensational that any novelist attributing it to his hero would have discredited the book."
Having a two-week trial with Somerset, Gimblett had been told, before the period was over, that he had no future as a first-class cricketer. Accounts vary as to how this decision was reached. Gimblett himself, quoted in David Foot's biography, which relies heavily on material taped by Gimblett in the years immediately before his death, said he was told by the county secretary and former captain, John Daniell
: "You may as well finish the week. We'll pay you 35 shillings and your bus fare. Afraid you're just not good enough." Daniell's son, quoted in the same book, said that the Somerset professional players had advised against taking Gimblett on to the county staff: "They used to tell my father they thought Harold was far too impulsive." A further factor may have been the almost permanent financial crisis that surrounded Somerset: the county club was probably not able to afford another professional player.
On the final Friday of Gimblett's trial, Somerset found themselves a player short for the match that started the following day against Essex
at Frome when the amateur Laurie Hawkins
reported in sick. Gimblett was told to get himself to Frome: Daniell arranged for the wicketkeeper Wally Luckes
, who had a car, to pick him up from Bridgwater
. Gimblett missed the bus from Taunton, and hitched a lift in a lorry. Somerset won the toss and chose to bat: three batsmen were out for 35, and at lunch the score was 105 for five. Soon after lunch, Dickie Burrough
was out and Gimblett came to the wicket with Somerset six wickets down for 107 runs, joining Arthur Wellard
.
Gimblett's first run came off his third ball, and shortly afterwards he was hitting the leg-break and googly bowler Peter Smith
for 15 in an over. He raced to his 50 in just 28 minutes, off 33 balls, reaching it with a six. Wellard, unusually for him, was outpaced and was out, followed swiftly by Luckes, but Gimblett was joined by Bill Andrews
, who also hit powerfully. Gimblett's century came in just 63 minutes, which proved to be the fastest century of the season, and it was made out of 130 runs added while he had been at the wicket. He finished with 123 out of 175 in 80 minutes, with three sixes and 17 fours. Somerset won the match with an innings to spare.
The innings turned Gimblett into an instant celebrity. Foot's biography records that Fleet Street writers and photographers descended on the Gimblett farm at Bicknoller; the former cricketer Jack Hobbs
congratulated Gimblett in his newspaper column, but also warned that such a start would be difficult to sustain.
So it proved. Gimblett retained his place for the next match, against Middlesex
at Lord's only because of another injury to a regular player, and though he top-scored with 53 in the second innings (still batting at No 8), he himself was injured and missed the next month. Returning to the side in mid-season, he played with little success, though he took a few wickets with his medium-pace, including four wickets for just 10 runs against Gloucestershire
at Bath, which would remain his best first-class bowling performance. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
summed up his first first-class season in its 1936 edition, noting that he "failed to maintain his early form". It went on: "Almost entirely a forward player, he appeared to pay little heed to defence, and in the end lack of experience contributed to his undoing. Still, shrewd observers maintain that he possesses distinct possibilities, and with further opportunities he may become more than a useful member of the side."
had been allowed to leave Somerset to become coach at Mill Hill School
, and Gimblett was promoted to open the innings against the Indians
in Somerset's first match of the season. He made 103 and then an unbeaten 46 as Somerset won the match by nine wickets after making the Indians follow on. In the very next match against Lancashire
at Old Trafford, he did even better with 93 in the first innings and an unbeaten 160 in the second, when he held on with the Somerset tail-enders to deny Lancashire victory. That gave him fleetingly a season's batting average of more than 200, and he followed that up with a third century a week later against the admittedly weak Northamptonshire
side. This form earned Gimblett selection for the Test trial match for the series against the Indian team, a match between North and South at Lord's that featured a mix of established Test players and up-and-coming young players. Gimblett failed in the match, scoring just four runs in his only innings. He was nonetheless selected for the England team for the first Test of the 1936 series in an experimental opening partnership with Arthur Mitchell
of Yorkshire
.
Gimblett's first Test appearance was the most successful of his short Test career. In a low-scoring match in which the Indian team led England by 13 on the first innings, it was Gimblett's top-scoring 67 not out in the second innings that brought victory to his side. England had been set 107 to win, but with a damp pitch and uncertain weather, "the task could not be regarded as an easy one," Wisden wrote. It went on: "As Gimblett got the pace of the wicket, he developed sound hitting powers and hooked superbly." In partnership with Maurice Turnbull
, who made 37, Gimblett hit off the runs in 100 minutes, playing "with much skill and verve".
Gimblett's status as one of the coming men of English cricket was confirmed by his selection on the Players' side for the Gentlemen v Players
match at Lord's, one of the centrepieces of the English cricket season. He was not a success, making just three and one. But he retained his place in the England team for the second Test at Old Trafford, opening this time with the Kent
batsman Arthur Fagg
, who was making his Test debut. This time, Gimblett failed, making just nine in England's single innings. The carrot at the end of the 1936 season was selection for the MCC team
to tour Australia and New Zealand in the 1936-37 season; the side was picked in early August, and Gimblett was not named in it, the young opening batsmen selected being Fagg and Charles Barnett
, who replaced Gimblett for the third and final Test match against India. In fact, Gimblett's form for the second half of the 1936 season was patchy, and from the high of averaging 200 with the bat in May he ended up at the end of the season with an aggregate of 1608 runs at an average of 32.81, half a dozen runs per innings less than both Fagg and Barnett. Wisden noted that he had achieved "nothing of note" in important matches apart from his "dashing" 67 in his first Test. It went on: "As his slip-fielding fell rather below international standard, it became abundantly clear that he could not yet be labelled an England player." And it repeated criticism of a year before about lack of discretion: "Using the horizontal bat with a great amount of freedom, he frequently fell, through lack of discrimination in selecting the right ball to hit, to catches on the leg-side. Still, most of his faults were due to inexperience, and as he is only 22 years of age his career will be watched with interest beyond the confines of his own county."
David Foot's biography of Gimblett indicates that this 1936 season, although one of his most successful, also showed early signs of the illness that was to afflict him later. He reacted badly to being criticised for dropping an easy catch in the Old Trafford Test, and when he himself was dropped from the team for the final Test, he responded with relief: "'Thank goodness that's over,' he said to anyone within earshot." Foot wrote: "The Lord's and Old Trafford Tests became painful rather than treasured memories; he pleaded silently that he would not ever be selected again."
In contrast to the drama of 1936, the 1937 and 1938 seasons were quiet ones for Gimblett. Other batsmen of his own age, such as Leonard Hutton, moved ahead of him in the Test pecking order, and he was at times not fully fit. He completed 1000 runs easily in both seasons and there were occasional innings of brilliance: at Wells in 1937, he made 141 in 150 minutes with nine sixes and 16 fours against Hampshire
. In 1938, Wisden noted that he was, at times, more defensive than he had been previously, and in run-getting he was overshadowed by his opening partner, Frank Lee
, who scored more than 2,000 runs in the season. For some matches in 1938, Gimblett batted at No 4, Bertie Buse
opening with Lee.
Gimblett had another of his "purple patches" early in the 1939 season, which was his most successful so far. He scored 905 runs in the first seven Somerset matches, including five centuries in successive matches. Wisden noted, though, that he now revealed "less of the electrifying methods that first brought him to the front". The return to form brought him back into Test contention. He was picked for the first Test against West Indies at Lord's, opening with Hutton and making 22 and 20. In the second innings, with England needing fast runs for victory, he hit the first two balls bowled by fast bowler Leslie Hylton
for four and six. He did not retain his place in the Test team, but played in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's, making 52 in the Players' first innings. In the season as a whole, he made 1922 runs at an average of 40.89.
for the Second World War, but was allocated instead to the Fire Service, and saw duty in badly bombed cities such as Plymouth
and Bristol
.
The return in 1947 was lower, but in 1948, with the Somerset batting seeming ever more dependent on him for runs, he responded with all of the four centuries scored by the team in the summer, and one of them was his own highest score and the highest innings made to that stage by a Somerset batsman: 310 against Sussex
at Eastbourne. The previous Somerset record had been 292, set by the late Victorian era amateur Lionel Palairet
. Gimblett told his biographer David Foot, on the tapes that form the backbone of the biography, that he had said on the pitch at Eastbourne to Sussex player James Langridge: "Well, that's got rid of one amateur's name in our county's record books." Gimblett went on to say that a collection had been proposed to mark the feat, but that Somerset's secretary had been dismissive of the idea. "I think that was when I first decided that my career with Somerset was going to end. I was deeply hurt," he said.
But it didn't end quite yet. In 1949, Gimblett passed 2000 runs for the season for the first time in his career, his 2093 in the season being a new record for Somerset at the time. He also hit two centuries in a match for the first time in his career, with 115 and an unbeaten 127 in the game against Hampshire at Taunton. "The feeling that if he got out almost all was over never affected his play," Wisden commented of his efforts across the season.
The pattern was repeated in 1950, but with an odd mid-season twist. The England Test side was being outplayed by the West Indies, and specifically by two previously unknown spin bowlers, Sonny Ramadhin
and Alf Valentine
. After a bad defeat in the second Test at Lord's, the England selectors sent for Gimblett for the third match at Trent Bridge
with the apparent aim of having him hit the two spinners out of their rhythm. It would have been Gimblett's first Test for 11 years and the move, according to Foot, was highly popular, and not just in Somerset. But just before the match, Gimblett developed a large boil, a "carbuncle", on the back of his neck. He was dosed with penicillin and travelled to Nottingham. "A nation's sporting press meticulously documented the carbuncle's throb-rate," Foot writes. It was to no avail: Gimblett withdrew from the match, and was not picked again.
At the end of the 1950 English season, however, he ventured abroad for the first time, taking part in a Commonwealth
tour of India and Sri Lanka and opening the batting in all five of the representative games. He had some success on the tour, scoring one century, the only one of the 50 centuries in his career not to be made for Somerset. Perhaps more typically, he was homesick and unhappy: "At first I wondered whether I'd picked up a bug. But it was purely mental," he said in a tape transcribed in his biography. Lighter by about 12kg, he struggled for runs more than usually in the 1951 season, and took a long break from cricket in July, returning to some form afterwards.
Somerset awarded Gimblett a benefit match in 1952, though perhaps typically he grumbled that it was not the potentially lucrative bank holiday local derby match with Gloucestershire
but the game with Northamptonshire at Glastonbury
that he was allocated. Gimblett made a century in that match and had, in terms of run aggregate, his best-ever season in 1952. He scored 2134 runs in all matches, at an average of 39.51. Against Derbyshire
at Taunton, he became the first Somerset player to hit two centuries in a match twice, scoring 146 and 116 in a drawn game.
If 1952 was a good season for Gimblett, then it was a poor one for his team. After several years in which the side had defied predictions and finished mid-table in the County Championship, Somerset fell to bottom place in 1952, and stayed there for four years. But Gimblett's own performance drew one of the game's accolades: in the 1953 edition of Wisden, he was named one of the Five Cricketers of the Year
, alongside Tom Graveney
, David Sheppard
, Stuart Surridge
and Fred Trueman
.
The 1953 season, with 19 Championship defeats, was even worse than 1952: Gimblett's own performance was maintained, though three matches missed through injury meant his aggregate fell a little, but he "seldom received adequate support from his colleagues", wrote Wisden. The unbeaten 167 he made against Northamptonshire at Taunton was the 50th century of his first-class career. At the end of the 1953 season he played festival cricket at Hastings
and Kingston
and Wisden's notes on Somerset in 1954 announced that he had "accepted a five-year contract to remain with the club".
, the cricket writer who himself suffered from bouts of mental illness, wrote of him: "Most of those who watched him, or even met him, took him for a cheerful extrovert. This was wrong. He thought a lot, worried a lot, fretted a lot, all the more because he struggled to present a calm, bold front to the outer world."
David Foot, the author of Gimblett's biography, wrote in his history of Somerset cricket that Gimblett "retained obsessive complexes about class, money and health". In the biography, Foot writes of discovering the depth and the variety of Gimblett's different hatreds: "The hate – his uncompromising word – was spread over a wide area." He appears to have found congeniality difficult and resentment easy, and there were periods of depressive illness. These culminated at the end of the 1953 cricket season in what appears to have been a full-scale breakdown.
Gimblett's own words, quoted in the Foot biography, tell the story. "I couldn't take much more. I was taking sleeping pills to make me sleep and others to wake me up. By the end of 1953 the world was closing in on me. I couldn't offer any reason why and I don't think the medical profession knew either." In the winter of 1953-54, Gimblett spent 16 weeks in Tone Vale Hospital
, a psychiatric institution, where he was given electro-convulsive therapy, and was released in time to join the Somerset team for the start of the 1954 season. He played in the first two county matches of the new season, but was not fit enough mentally to continue and – though the details vary – Somerset agreed to give him time off. He did not appear in first-class cricket again. Later in the 1954 season, according to Gimblett's own report, he went to Somerset's Taunton ground to watch some of the cricket, and was "ordered out of the ground".
Out of first-class cricket, Gimblett took a job as a cricket professional with Ebbw Vale Cricket Club in South Wales. He then applied for and got a job with his old Somerset captain, Jack Meyer
, who was headmaster of Millfield School. The link with Meyer gave rise to continuing rumours of a possible comeback for Somerset across the 1950s, but it did not happen. In 1959, however, he appeared in a few Minor Counties matches for Dorset
. At Millfield, Gimblett helped with the cricket coaching, ran the school shop and did other tasks around the school such as driving minibuses. In the end, his mental and physical health problems – he suffered from arthritis – meant he fell out with Millfield in the same way that he had with county cricket, and he retired to live at Minehead
; he was involved in a minor way with coaching and fund-raising for Somerset, but his behaviour was sometimes unpredictable and he found it hard to reconcile his former fame with his reduced circumstances.
At the time of his death, Gimblett had moved from Minehead to a mobile home at Verwood, Dorset. He died after taking an overdose of prescription drugs. He was survived by his wife, Marguerita (Rita), whom he married in 1938, and by a son.
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...
er who played for Somerset
Somerset County Cricket Club
Somerset 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 Somerset...
and England. He was known for his fast scoring as an opening batsman and for the much-repeated story of his debut. In a book first published in 1982, the cricket writer and Somerset historian David Foot wrote: "Harold Gimblett is the greatest batsman Somerset has ever produced."
Gimblett scored at a fast rate throughout his career, and hit 265 sixes – "surely a record for a regular opening batsman", wrote Eric Hill
Eric Hill (cricketer)
Eric Hill DFC DFM played first-class cricket for Somerset County Cricket Club as an opening batsman between 1947 and 1951, later serving as captain of the second team, a long-serving committeeman for the county, and as a journalist covering cricket for the local newspaper, the Somerset County...
, his postwar opening partner and since then a long-time journalist watcher of Somerset. He appeared, however, in only three Tests, none of them against Australia, and he left first-class cricket abruptly, suffering from mental health problems that would remain with him to the end of his life.
Background
Harold Gimblett was born at BicknollerBicknoller
Bicknoller is a village and civil parish on the western slopes of the Quantock Hills in the English county of Somerset.Administratively, the civil parish falls within the West Somerset local government district within the Somerset shire county, with administrative tasks shared between county,...
in the Quantock Hills
Quantock Hills
The Quantock Hills is a range of hills west of Bridgwater in Somerset, England. The Quantock Hills were England’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty being designated in 1956 and consists of large amounts of heathland, oak woodlands, ancient parklands and agricultural land.The hills run from...
in west Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
, where his family had been farmers since the 15th century. He was the youngest of three brothers and was educated at the local school at Williton
Williton
Williton is a medium-sized village and civil parish in West Somerset, England. It has many of the facilities of a small town, being the administrative centre for the district. Williton is situated at the junction of the A39, A358 and B3191 roads...
and then at the fee-paying West Buckland School
West Buckland School
West Buckland School is an English public school located on the outskirts of the village of West Buckland on the edge of Exmoor, 9 miles east of Barnstaple, Devon. It comprises a senior school , preparatory school and a nursery...
just over the border in Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
.
He played cricket successfully at school and for Watchet
Watchet
Watchet is a harbour town and civil parish in the English county of Somerset, with an approximate population of 4,400. It is situated west of Bridgwater, north-west of Taunton, and east of Minehead. The parish includes the hamlet of Beggearn Huish...
Cricket Club. In 1931, he left school; in August of that year, he made the first of his significant innings. In the match between Watchet and Wellington
Wellington, Somerset
Wellington is a small industrial town in rural Somerset, England, situated south west of Taunton in the Taunton Deane district, near the border with Devon, which runs along the Blackdown Hills to the south of the town...
Cricket Club, he came to the wicket with Watchet on 37 for seven, chasing a total of 160. With another teenage batsman, Allan Pearse
Allan Pearse
Allan Arthur Pearse played first-class cricket for Somerset in nine matches between 1936 and 1938. He was born and died at Watchet, Somerset....
, Gimblett hit off the runs, making 91 himself. A year later, he was co-opted into the Somerset Stragglers team, a peripatetic amateur team which played matches across south west England, composed of former public school players of varying abilities, some of whom were the amateurs who formed a large contingent of Somerset county players up to the Second World War. In his first match for the Stragglers team, against Wellington School
Wellington School, Somerset
Wellington School is a British co-educational independent school in Wellington, Somerset, England catering for both day pupils and boarders. There are currently 750 pupils on roll including 200 students in the sixth form. The Headmaster is Martin Reader....
, he made 142 in 75 minutes.
Gimblett briefly moved to London to work, but city life was not to his taste and he returned home, resuming cricket for the Watchet club. One of the patrons of Watchet cricket, the town tailor W. G. Penny, who was also prominent in Somerset County Cricket Club, recommended him for a trial with the county, though there appears to have been some reservations over his temperament and his impetuous batting. There is also, in the same source, some suggestion that Gimblett himself was reluctant to test himself against top-class cricketers.
Even so, at the start of the 1935 season, Gimblett was invited to go to Taunton for a two-week trial with the county. The trial seems not to have been a success, but it led directly to the sensation that was Gimblett's first-class cricket debut.
First-class debut
Gimblett's entry into first-class cricketFirst-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...
in May 1935 was instant legend. Wisden
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom...
, in its obituary of him in 1979, wrote: "The start of his career was so sensational that any novelist attributing it to his hero would have discredited the book."
Having a two-week trial with Somerset, Gimblett had been told, before the period was over, that he had no future as a first-class cricketer. Accounts vary as to how this decision was reached. Gimblett himself, quoted in David Foot's biography, which relies heavily on material taped by Gimblett in the years immediately before his death, said he was told by the county secretary and former captain, John Daniell
John Daniell (cricketer)
John Daniell, was an international rugby union player for England and a first-class cricketer for Somerset and Cambridge University Cricket Club....
: "You may as well finish the week. We'll pay you 35 shillings and your bus fare. Afraid you're just not good enough." Daniell's son, quoted in the same book, said that the Somerset professional players had advised against taking Gimblett on to the county staff: "They used to tell my father they thought Harold was far too impulsive." A further factor may have been the almost permanent financial crisis that surrounded Somerset: the county club was probably not able to afford another professional player.
On the final Friday of Gimblett's trial, Somerset found themselves a player short for the match that started the following day against Essex
Essex County Cricket Club
Essex County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Essex. Its limited overs team is called the Essex Eagles, their team colours this season are blue.The club plays most of its home games...
at Frome when the amateur Laurie Hawkins
Laurie Hawkins
Laurence Cyril Hawkins played first-class cricket for Somerset in 46 matches between 1928 and 1937. He was born in Solihull, Warwickshire, and died at Padstow, Cornwall....
reported in sick. Gimblett was told to get himself to Frome: Daniell arranged for the wicketkeeper Wally Luckes
Wally Luckes
Walter Thomas "Wally" Luckes, born in Lambeth, London on 1 January 1901 and died at Bridgwater, Somerset on 27 October 1982, was a cricketer who played for Somerset....
, who had a car, to pick him up from Bridgwater
Bridgwater
Bridgwater is a market town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is the administrative centre of the Sedgemoor district, and a major industrial centre. Bridgwater is located on the major communication routes through South West England...
. Gimblett missed the bus from Taunton, and hitched a lift in a lorry. Somerset won the toss and chose to bat: three batsmen were out for 35, and at lunch the score was 105 for five. Soon after lunch, Dickie Burrough
Dickie Burrough
Herbert Dickinson "Dickie" Burrough, born at Wedmore, Somerset, on 6 February 1909, and died at Padstow, Cornwall, on 9 April 1994, played 171 first-class cricket matches for Somerset in a career that last for 20 years from 1927....
was out and Gimblett came to the wicket with Somerset six wickets down for 107 runs, joining Arthur Wellard
Arthur Wellard
Arthur William Wellard was a cricketer who played for Somerset and England. A late starter in county cricket, having been told by his native county, Kent, that he would be better off taking up a career as a policeman, Wellard played on into his late 40s...
.
Gimblett's first run came off his third ball, and shortly afterwards he was hitting the leg-break and googly bowler Peter Smith
Peter Smith (cricketer)
Peter Smith, was an English cricketer, who played for Essex and England. Smith was one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1947. An all-rounder, Smith played for Essex from 1929 to 1951.-Life and career:...
for 15 in an over. He raced to his 50 in just 28 minutes, off 33 balls, reaching it with a six. Wellard, unusually for him, was outpaced and was out, followed swiftly by Luckes, but Gimblett was joined by Bill Andrews
Bill Andrews (cricketer)
Bill Andrews was an English cricketer who played for Somerset. He was a right-arm fast-medium pace bowler and useful middle-order right-handed batsman...
, who also hit powerfully. Gimblett's century came in just 63 minutes, which proved to be the fastest century of the season, and it was made out of 130 runs added while he had been at the wicket. He finished with 123 out of 175 in 80 minutes, with three sixes and 17 fours. Somerset won the match with an innings to spare.
The innings turned Gimblett into an instant celebrity. Foot's biography records that Fleet Street writers and photographers descended on the Gimblett farm at Bicknoller; the former cricketer Jack Hobbs
Jack Hobbs
Sir John Berry "Jack" Hobbs was an English professional cricketer who played for Surrey from 1905 to 1934 and for England in 61 Test matches from 1908 to 1930....
congratulated Gimblett in his newspaper column, but also warned that such a start would be difficult to sustain.
So it proved. Gimblett retained his place for the next match, against Middlesex
Middlesex County Cricket Club
Middlesex 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 Middlesex. It was announced in February 2009 that Middlesex changed their limited overs name from the Middlesex Crusaders, to the...
at Lord's only because of another injury to a regular player, and though he top-scored with 53 in the second innings (still batting at No 8), he himself was injured and missed the next month. Returning to the side in mid-season, he played with little success, though he took a few wickets with his medium-pace, including four wickets for just 10 runs against Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Gloucestershire. Its limited overs team is called the Gloucestershire Gladiators....
at Bath, which would remain his best first-class bowling performance. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom...
summed up his first first-class season in its 1936 edition, noting that he "failed to maintain his early form". It went on: "Almost entirely a forward player, he appeared to pay little heed to defence, and in the end lack of experience contributed to his undoing. Still, shrewd observers maintain that he possesses distinct possibilities, and with further opportunities he may become more than a useful member of the side."
Test cricketer
That Wisden assessment was made to look unduly modest within weeks of the start of the 1936 season. Regular opening batsman Jack LeeJack Lee (cricketer)
John William Lee , generally known as Jack Lee, was an English cricketer who played for Somerset from 1925 to 1936, having played one match for Middlesex in 1923. He was an all-rounder, scoring six centuries and taking ten wickets in a match on two occasions by the end of his career...
had been allowed to leave Somerset to become coach at Mill Hill School
Mill Hill School
Mill Hill School, in Mill Hill, London, is a coeducational independent school for boarding and day pupils aged 13–18. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, an organisation of public schools in the United Kingdom....
, and Gimblett was promoted to open the innings against the Indians
Indian cricket team
The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , it is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status....
in Somerset's first match of the season. He made 103 and then an unbeaten 46 as Somerset won the match by nine wickets after making the Indians follow on. In the very next match against Lancashire
Lancashire County Cricket Club
Lancashire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Lancashire in cricket's County Championship. The club was founded in 1864 as a successor to Manchester Cricket Club and has played at Old Trafford since then...
at Old Trafford, he did even better with 93 in the first innings and an unbeaten 160 in the second, when he held on with the Somerset tail-enders to deny Lancashire victory. That gave him fleetingly a season's batting average of more than 200, and he followed that up with a third century a week later against the admittedly weak Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire County Cricket Club
Northamptonshire 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 Northamptonshire. Its limited overs team is called the Northants Steelbacks. The traditional club colour is Maroon. During the...
side. This form earned Gimblett selection for the Test trial match for the series against the Indian team, a match between North and South at Lord's that featured a mix of established Test players and up-and-coming young players. Gimblett failed in the match, scoring just four runs in his only innings. He was nonetheless selected for the England team for the first Test of the 1936 series in an experimental opening partnership with Arthur Mitchell
Arthur Mitchell (cricketer)
Arthur "Ticker" Mitchell was an English first-class cricketer, who played both for Yorkshire County Cricket Club and England....
of Yorkshire
Yorkshire County Cricket Club
Yorkshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Yorkshire as one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure....
.
Gimblett's first Test appearance was the most successful of his short Test career. In a low-scoring match in which the Indian team led England by 13 on the first innings, it was Gimblett's top-scoring 67 not out in the second innings that brought victory to his side. England had been set 107 to win, but with a damp pitch and uncertain weather, "the task could not be regarded as an easy one," Wisden wrote. It went on: "As Gimblett got the pace of the wicket, he developed sound hitting powers and hooked superbly." In partnership with Maurice Turnbull
Maurice Turnbull
Turnbull was an eager sportsman as a youth, and played rugby for Downside School. He matriculated to Cambridge, and at university joined not only the cricket team, but also Cambridge University Rugby Club. One of the earliest rugby clubs he represented was St. Peters in Cardiff. His elder brother,...
, who made 37, Gimblett hit off the runs in 100 minutes, playing "with much skill and verve".
Gimblett's status as one of the coming men of English cricket was confirmed by his selection on the Players' side for the Gentlemen v Players
Gentlemen v Players
The Gentlemen v Players game was a first-class cricket match that was generally played on an annual basis between one team consisting of amateurs and one of professionals . The first two games took place in 1806 but the fixture was not revived until 1819. It was more or less annual thereafter...
match at Lord's, one of the centrepieces of the English cricket season. He was not a success, making just three and one. But he retained his place in the England team for the second Test at Old Trafford, opening this time with the Kent
Kent County Cricket Club
Kent County Cricket Club is one of the 18 first class county county cricket clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the county of Kent...
batsman Arthur Fagg
Arthur Fagg
Arthur Edward Fagg was an English cricketer, who played for Kent and England....
, who was making his Test debut. This time, Gimblett failed, making just nine in England's single innings. The carrot at the end of the 1936 season was selection for the MCC team
English cricket team in Australia in 1936-37
The England cricket team toured Australia in the 1936-37 season to play a five-match Test series against Australia for The Ashes. The tour was organised by the Marylebone Cricket Club and matches outside the Tests were played under the MCC name....
to tour Australia and New Zealand in the 1936-37 season; the side was picked in early August, and Gimblett was not named in it, the young opening batsmen selected being Fagg and Charles Barnett
Charlie Barnett (cricketer)
Charles John Barnett was an English cricketer, who played in 20 Tests from 1933 to 1948...
, who replaced Gimblett for the third and final Test match against India. In fact, Gimblett's form for the second half of the 1936 season was patchy, and from the high of averaging 200 with the bat in May he ended up at the end of the season with an aggregate of 1608 runs at an average of 32.81, half a dozen runs per innings less than both Fagg and Barnett. Wisden noted that he had achieved "nothing of note" in important matches apart from his "dashing" 67 in his first Test. It went on: "As his slip-fielding fell rather below international standard, it became abundantly clear that he could not yet be labelled an England player." And it repeated criticism of a year before about lack of discretion: "Using the horizontal bat with a great amount of freedom, he frequently fell, through lack of discrimination in selecting the right ball to hit, to catches on the leg-side. Still, most of his faults were due to inexperience, and as he is only 22 years of age his career will be watched with interest beyond the confines of his own county."
David Foot's biography of Gimblett indicates that this 1936 season, although one of his most successful, also showed early signs of the illness that was to afflict him later. He reacted badly to being criticised for dropping an easy catch in the Old Trafford Test, and when he himself was dropped from the team for the final Test, he responded with relief: "'Thank goodness that's over,' he said to anyone within earshot." Foot wrote: "The Lord's and Old Trafford Tests became painful rather than treasured memories; he pleaded silently that he would not ever be selected again."
In contrast to the drama of 1936, the 1937 and 1938 seasons were quiet ones for Gimblett. Other batsmen of his own age, such as Leonard Hutton, moved ahead of him in the Test pecking order, and he was at times not fully fit. He completed 1000 runs easily in both seasons and there were occasional innings of brilliance: at Wells in 1937, he made 141 in 150 minutes with nine sixes and 16 fours against Hampshire
Hampshire County Cricket Club
Hampshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Hampshire in cricket's County Championship. The club was founded in 1863 as a successor to the Hampshire county cricket teams and has played at the Antelope Ground from then until 1885, before moving to the County Ground where it...
. In 1938, Wisden noted that he was, at times, more defensive than he had been previously, and in run-getting he was overshadowed by his opening partner, Frank Lee
Frank Lee (cricketer)
Frank Stanley Lee, born at St. John's Wood on July 24, 1905 and died in Westminster on March 30, 1982 was an English first-class cricketer and an umpire who officiated in Test matches....
, who scored more than 2,000 runs in the season. For some matches in 1938, Gimblett batted at No 4, Bertie Buse
Bertie Buse
Herbert Francis Thomas "Bertie" Buse, born at Ashley Down, Bristol, on 5 August 1910 and died at Bath on 23 February 1992, was a cricketer who played 304 first-class matches for Somerset before and after the Second World War.-Cricket career:...
opening with Lee.
Gimblett had another of his "purple patches" early in the 1939 season, which was his most successful so far. He scored 905 runs in the first seven Somerset matches, including five centuries in successive matches. Wisden noted, though, that he now revealed "less of the electrifying methods that first brought him to the front". The return to form brought him back into Test contention. He was picked for the first Test against West Indies at Lord's, opening with Hutton and making 22 and 20. In the second innings, with England needing fast runs for victory, he hit the first two balls bowled by fast bowler Leslie Hylton
Leslie Hylton
Leslie George Hylton was a West Indian cricketer, a fast bowler who played in six Test matches between 1935 and 1939 for the West Indies...
for four and six. He did not retain his place in the Test team, but played in the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord's, making 52 in the Players' first innings. In the season as a whole, he made 1922 runs at an average of 40.89.
War service
Gimblett volunteered for the Royal Air ForceRoyal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
for the Second World War, but was allocated instead to the Fire Service, and saw duty in badly bombed cities such as Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
and Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
.
Postwar county stalwart
In the eight seasons after the Second World War Gimblett was the mainstay of the Somerset batting. Without taming his aggressive instincts, he had become more judicious in his shot selection, and though he remained until the end of his career likely to smash the first ball of a match for six, he also took on the role of senior batsman in a Somerset side that was usually weak in batting. In the 1946 season, Somerset's best for more than 50 years, he made 1947 runs at an average of 49.92 runs per innings, the highest seasonal average of his career. There were seven centuries, the most of any season, and they included 231 against Middlesex at Taunton, his first double century and part of what Wisden termed a "merciless onslaught" by the Somerset batsmen.The return in 1947 was lower, but in 1948, with the Somerset batting seeming ever more dependent on him for runs, he responded with all of the four centuries scored by the team in the summer, and one of them was his own highest score and the highest innings made to that stage by a Somerset batsman: 310 against Sussex
Sussex County Cricket Club
Sussex County Cricket Club is the oldest of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Sussex. The club was founded as a successor to Brighton Cricket Club which was a representative of the county of Sussex as a...
at Eastbourne. The previous Somerset record had been 292, set by the late Victorian era amateur Lionel Palairet
Lionel Palairet
Lionel Charles Hamilton Palairet was a famous cricketer of the so-called "Golden Age" of English cricket before the First World War...
. Gimblett told his biographer David Foot, on the tapes that form the backbone of the biography, that he had said on the pitch at Eastbourne to Sussex player James Langridge: "Well, that's got rid of one amateur's name in our county's record books." Gimblett went on to say that a collection had been proposed to mark the feat, but that Somerset's secretary had been dismissive of the idea. "I think that was when I first decided that my career with Somerset was going to end. I was deeply hurt," he said.
But it didn't end quite yet. In 1949, Gimblett passed 2000 runs for the season for the first time in his career, his 2093 in the season being a new record for Somerset at the time. He also hit two centuries in a match for the first time in his career, with 115 and an unbeaten 127 in the game against Hampshire at Taunton. "The feeling that if he got out almost all was over never affected his play," Wisden commented of his efforts across the season.
The pattern was repeated in 1950, but with an odd mid-season twist. The England Test side was being outplayed by the West Indies, and specifically by two previously unknown spin bowlers, Sonny Ramadhin
Sonny Ramadhin
Sonny Ramadhin was a West Indian cricketer, and a dominant bowler of the 1950s. He was the first West Indian cricketers of Indian origin, and was one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1951.- Biography and career :...
and Alf Valentine
Alf Valentine
Alfred Louis Valentine, April 28, 1930–11 May 2004 , was a West Indian cricketer in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most famous for his performance in the West Indies' 1950 tour of England, which was immortalised in the Victory Calypso.-The 1950 tour:...
. After a bad defeat in the second Test at Lord's, the England selectors sent for Gimblett for the third match at Trent Bridge
Trent Bridge
Trent Bridge is a Test, One-day international and County cricket ground located in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England and is also the headquarters of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. As well as International cricket and Nottinghamshire's home games, the ground has hosted the Finals Day of...
with the apparent aim of having him hit the two spinners out of their rhythm. It would have been Gimblett's first Test for 11 years and the move, according to Foot, was highly popular, and not just in Somerset. But just before the match, Gimblett developed a large boil, a "carbuncle", on the back of his neck. He was dosed with penicillin and travelled to Nottingham. "A nation's sporting press meticulously documented the carbuncle's throb-rate," Foot writes. It was to no avail: Gimblett withdrew from the match, and was not picked again.
At the end of the 1950 English season, however, he ventured abroad for the first time, taking part in a Commonwealth
Commonwealth XI cricket team
The Commonwealth XI cricket team played over 100 first-class cricket matches from 1949 to 1968. The team started out as a side made up of mostly English, Australian and West Indian cricketers, that toured the subcontinent but later on played first-class fixtures in England...
tour of India and Sri Lanka and opening the batting in all five of the representative games. He had some success on the tour, scoring one century, the only one of the 50 centuries in his career not to be made for Somerset. Perhaps more typically, he was homesick and unhappy: "At first I wondered whether I'd picked up a bug. But it was purely mental," he said in a tape transcribed in his biography. Lighter by about 12kg, he struggled for runs more than usually in the 1951 season, and took a long break from cricket in July, returning to some form afterwards.
Somerset awarded Gimblett a benefit match in 1952, though perhaps typically he grumbled that it was not the potentially lucrative bank holiday local derby match with Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Gloucestershire. Its limited overs team is called the Gloucestershire Gladiators....
but the game with Northamptonshire at Glastonbury
Glastonbury
Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,784 in the 2001 census...
that he was allocated. Gimblett made a century in that match and had, in terms of run aggregate, his best-ever season in 1952. He scored 2134 runs in all matches, at an average of 39.51. Against Derbyshire
Derbyshire County Cricket Club
Derbyshire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the England and Wales domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Derbyshire...
at Taunton, he became the first Somerset player to hit two centuries in a match twice, scoring 146 and 116 in a drawn game.
If 1952 was a good season for Gimblett, then it was a poor one for his team. After several years in which the side had defied predictions and finished mid-table in the County Championship, Somerset fell to bottom place in 1952, and stayed there for four years. But Gimblett's own performance drew one of the game's accolades: in the 1953 edition of Wisden, he was named one of the Five Cricketers of the Year
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
The Wisden Cricketers of the Year are cricketers selected for the honour by the annual publication Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, based primarily on their "influence on the previous English season"...
, alongside Tom Graveney
Tom Graveney
Thomas William Graveney in Riding Mill, Northumberland, is a former English cricketer and was the President of the Marylebone Cricket Club for 2004/5. He went to Bristol Grammar School...
, David Sheppard
David Sheppard
David Stuart Sheppard, Baron Sheppard of Liverpool was the high-profile Bishop of Liverpool in the Church of England who played cricket for Sussex and England in his youth...
, Stuart Surridge
Stuart Surridge
Walter Stuart Surridge was a cricketer who played for Surrey. He was born at Herne Hill in south London, educated at Emanuel School, and died at Glossop in Derbyshire....
and Fred Trueman
Fred Trueman
Frederick Sewards Trueman OBE was an English cricketer, generally acknowledged as one of the greatest fast bowlers in history. A bowler of genuinely fast pace who was widely known as Fiery Fred, Trueman played first-class cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club from 1949 until he retired in 1968...
.
The 1953 season, with 19 Championship defeats, was even worse than 1952: Gimblett's own performance was maintained, though three matches missed through injury meant his aggregate fell a little, but he "seldom received adequate support from his colleagues", wrote Wisden. The unbeaten 167 he made against Northamptonshire at Taunton was the 50th century of his first-class career. At the end of the 1953 season he played festival cricket at Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
and Kingston
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
and Wisden's notes on Somerset in 1954 announced that he had "accepted a five-year contract to remain with the club".
Health problems and later career
Throughout his life, Gimblett's personality was inclined to be morose and depressive, and there is evidence from across his cricket career of a gulf between his entertaining cricket style and his own personal negativism. Alan GibsonAlan Gibson
Norman Alan Stanley Gibson was an English journalist, writer and radio broadcaster, best known for his work in connection with cricket, though he also sometimes covered football and rugby union...
, the cricket writer who himself suffered from bouts of mental illness, wrote of him: "Most of those who watched him, or even met him, took him for a cheerful extrovert. This was wrong. He thought a lot, worried a lot, fretted a lot, all the more because he struggled to present a calm, bold front to the outer world."
David Foot, the author of Gimblett's biography, wrote in his history of Somerset cricket that Gimblett "retained obsessive complexes about class, money and health". In the biography, Foot writes of discovering the depth and the variety of Gimblett's different hatreds: "The hate – his uncompromising word – was spread over a wide area." He appears to have found congeniality difficult and resentment easy, and there were periods of depressive illness. These culminated at the end of the 1953 cricket season in what appears to have been a full-scale breakdown.
Gimblett's own words, quoted in the Foot biography, tell the story. "I couldn't take much more. I was taking sleeping pills to make me sleep and others to wake me up. By the end of 1953 the world was closing in on me. I couldn't offer any reason why and I don't think the medical profession knew either." In the winter of 1953-54, Gimblett spent 16 weeks in Tone Vale Hospital
Tone Vale Hospital
Tone Vale Hospital was a psychiatric hospital located approximately to the north west of Norton Fitzwarren, near Taunton, Somerset, England, in what is now the village of Cotford St Luke...
, a psychiatric institution, where he was given electro-convulsive therapy, and was released in time to join the Somerset team for the start of the 1954 season. He played in the first two county matches of the new season, but was not fit enough mentally to continue and – though the details vary – Somerset agreed to give him time off. He did not appear in first-class cricket again. Later in the 1954 season, according to Gimblett's own report, he went to Somerset's Taunton ground to watch some of the cricket, and was "ordered out of the ground".
Out of first-class cricket, Gimblett took a job as a cricket professional with Ebbw Vale Cricket Club in South Wales. He then applied for and got a job with his old Somerset captain, Jack Meyer
Jack Meyer (educator and cricketer)
Rollo John Oliver Meyer , known generally as 'Jack', and at Millfield mainly as 'Boss', was an English educationalist who founded Millfield School and Millfield Preparatory School in Somerset; he was also an all-round sportsman who played cricket at first-class level in both England and in India...
, who was headmaster of Millfield School. The link with Meyer gave rise to continuing rumours of a possible comeback for Somerset across the 1950s, but it did not happen. In 1959, however, he appeared in a few Minor Counties matches for Dorset
Dorset County Cricket Club
Dorset County Cricket Club is one of the county clubs which make up the Minor Counties in the English domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Dorset and playing in the Minor Counties Championship and the MCCA Knockout Trophy...
. At Millfield, Gimblett helped with the cricket coaching, ran the school shop and did other tasks around the school such as driving minibuses. In the end, his mental and physical health problems – he suffered from arthritis – meant he fell out with Millfield in the same way that he had with county cricket, and he retired to live at Minehead
Minehead
Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, north-west of the county town of Taunton, from the border with the county of Devon and in proximity of the Exmoor National Park...
; he was involved in a minor way with coaching and fund-raising for Somerset, but his behaviour was sometimes unpredictable and he found it hard to reconcile his former fame with his reduced circumstances.
At the time of his death, Gimblett had moved from Minehead to a mobile home at Verwood, Dorset. He died after taking an overdose of prescription drugs. He was survived by his wife, Marguerita (Rita), whom he married in 1938, and by a son.