John Higgins (cricketer)
Encyclopedia
John Bernard Higgins was an English
cricketer
and umpire
. As a player, he made 121 first-class
appearances between 1912 and 1930, having earlier played in the Minor Counties Championship for Staffordshire
. The great majority of his first-class matches were for Worcestershire
, though he also played in India
for the Europeans
and, once, a joint "Europeans and Parsees" side. He umpired four first-class games, including one Test match
.
Higgins was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham
, where he was in the cricket XI.
In his teens and early twenties, Higgins played football as an inside left
. He appeared once in the Football League First Division
for Birmingham
in the 1907–08 season, and was also on the books of Aston Villa
and Brierley Hill Alliance
, retaining his amateur
status throughout his football career.
He made his first-class cricket debut for Worcestershire against Leicestershire
at Amblecote
in 1912. Only one day's play was possible in the match, during which Higgins scored 5 and bowled five wicketless overs for 34. It was to be eight years before he played first-class cricket again.
His next game for Worcestershire came against Yorkshire
at Worcester
in 1920, on which occasion he again had an unproductive match: he scored 1 and 0, and took no wickets in 16 overs. Higgins finally claimed his first wicket — Kent
opener Wally Hardinge
, caught and bowled — in his fifth first-class game, at Tonbridge
a few days later,
and he ended the season with unattractive figures of 85 runs at 7.72
and four wickets at 88.25
.
Higgins played not at all in 1921, but in 1922 he had a considerably more successful time of it, scoring 605 runs at 16.35 — albeit with only one fifty — and taking 14 wickets, his highest season's aggregate, at 44.07. This year also saw him claim his only five-wicket haul, 5-72 against Gloucestershire
at Gloucester
, restricting the home team to 202 in their first innings. His performance was to no avail, however: Worcestershire were bowled out for 58 and 52, Mills
and Parker
bowling unchanged throughout the match, and lost by an innings.
Higgins was in India during the 1922-23 English winter, playing four first-class games including two for Europeans in the Lahore Tournament. He was to make further Indian appearances, five of them in the Bombay Quadrangular
, in 1923-24, 1924–25 and 1928–29, though he hit only one fifty (56 for Europeans against Parsees in 1923-24) and took just two wickets in his entire career of ten matches in that country.
Meanwhile, Higgins' English career was barely noticeable: he played twice in each of the 1924 and 1925 seasons, and not at all in 1926. The next three years, however, were to prove by some margin his most successful in the game. He played 19 or 20 matches for Worcestershire every summer, and hit one century in each, the highest of these being the first: 123 against Glamorgan
at Kidderminster
in July 1927. He scored those runs from number three in the order
, but his other two centuries were both made as an opener. In 1928 he reached 1,000 first-class runs in a season for the only time, hitting 1,041 at an average of 30.61.
Higgins played three final matches for Worcestershire in 1930, without conspicuous success. By this time he had already umpired two first-class games in India in 1926-27, and in 1933-34 he stood in two more, including the third Test between India and England at Madras
. He died in England, in a nursing home
in Malvern, aged 84.
His younger brother Harry
played nearly 100 times for Worcestershire in the 1920s.
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...
cricketer
Cricketer
A cricketer is a person who plays the sport of cricket. Official and long-established cricket publications prefer the traditional word "cricketer" over the rarely used term "cricket player"....
and umpire
Umpire (cricket)
In cricket, an umpire is a person who has the authority to make judgements on the cricket field, according to the Laws of Cricket...
. As a player, he made 121 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...
appearances between 1912 and 1930, having earlier played in the Minor Counties Championship for Staffordshire
Staffordshire County Cricket Club
Staffordshire 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 Staffordshire and playing in the Minor Counties Championship and the MCCA Knockout Trophy...
. The great majority of his first-class matches were 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...
, though he also played in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
for the Europeans
Europeans cricket team
The Europeans cricket team was an Indian first-class cricket team which took part in the annual Bombay tournament. The team was founded by members of the European community in Bombay who played cricket at the Bombay Gymkhana....
and, once, a joint "Europeans and Parsees" side. He umpired four first-class games, including one 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...
.
Higgins was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, where he was in the cricket XI.
In his teens and early twenties, Higgins played football as an inside left
Inside forward
In football, the position of inside forward was popularly used in the late nineteenth and first half of the 20th centuries. The inside forwards would support the centre forwards, running and making space in the opposition defence, and, as the passing game developed, supporting him with passes...
. He appeared once in the Football League First Division
Football League First Division
The First Division was a division of The Football League between 1888 and 2004 and the highest division in English football until the creation of the Premier League in 1992. The secondary tier in English football has since become known as the Championship....
for Birmingham
Birmingham City F.C.
Birmingham City Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, they became Small Heath in 1888, then Birmingham in 1905, finally becoming Birmingham City in 1943.They were relegated at the end of the...
in the 1907–08 season, and was also on the books of Aston Villa
Aston Villa F.C.
Aston Villa Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Witton, Birmingham. The club was founded in 1874 and have played at their current home ground, Villa Park, since 1897. Aston Villa were founder members of The Football League in 1888. They were also founder...
and Brierley Hill Alliance
Brierley Hill Alliance F.C.
Brierley Hill Alliance F.C. was an English football club based in Brierley Hill in the West Midlands.Formed in 1887 from a merger of Brockmoor Harriers and Brockmoor Pickwicks, the club joined the Birmingham & District League in 1890 and the team were league champions on two occasions and...
, retaining his amateur
Amateur
An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....
status throughout his football career.
He made his first-class cricket debut for Worcestershire against Leicestershire
Leicestershire County Cricket Club
Leicestershire 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 Leicestershire. It has also been representative of the county of Rutland....
at Amblecote
War Memorial Athletic Ground
The War Memorial Athletic Ground, often referred to as simply the War Memorial Ground, is a sports ground in the Amblecote region of Stourbridge, West Midlands, England...
in 1912. Only one day's play was possible in the match, during which Higgins scored 5 and bowled five wicketless overs for 34. It was to be eight years before he played first-class cricket again.
His next game for Worcestershire came against 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....
at Worcester
New Road, Worcester
New Road, Worcester, England, has been the home cricket ground of Worcestershire County Cricket Club since 1896. Immediately to the northwest is a road called New Road, part of the A44, hence the name.- Overview :...
in 1920, on which occasion he again had an unproductive match: he scored 1 and 0, and took no wickets in 16 overs. Higgins finally claimed his first wicket — 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...
opener Wally Hardinge
Wally Hardinge
Harold Thomas William "Wally" Hardinge, born 25 February 1886, and died at Cambridge on 8 May 1965, was a cricketer who played for Kent and England. He was also a football international for England.-Cricket career:...
, caught and bowled — in his fifth first-class game, at Tonbridge
Angel Ground
The Angel Ground was a cricket and later association football venue in Tonbridge, Kent. It was used by Kent County Cricket Club and Tonbridge Angels F.C., before being redeveloped by Tonbridge and Malling District Council in 1980.-Cricket venue:...
a few days later,
and he ended the season with unattractive figures of 85 runs at 7.72
Batting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...
and four wickets at 88.25
Bowling average
Bowling average is a statistic measuring the performance of bowlers in the sport of cricket.A bowler's bowling average is defined as the total number of runs conceded by the bowlers divided by the number of wickets taken by the bowler, so the lower the average the better. It is similar to earned...
.
Higgins played not at all in 1921, but in 1922 he had a considerably more successful time of it, scoring 605 runs at 16.35 — albeit with only one fifty — and taking 14 wickets, his highest season's aggregate, at 44.07. This year also saw him claim his only five-wicket haul, 5-72 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 Gloucester
Spa Ground
Spa Ground is a cricket ground in Gloucester, Gloucestershire. The first recorded match on the ground was in 1867, when Gloucester played an All-England Eleven.In 1882, Gloucestershire played Somerset in the grounds first first-class match...
, restricting the home team to 202 in their first innings. His performance was to no avail, however: Worcestershire were bowled out for 58 and 52, Mills
Percy Mills (cricketer)
Percy Thomas Mills was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Gloucestershire between 1902 and 1929. In his long career, Mills scored over 5,000 runs and took more than 800 wickets.-References:...
and Parker
Charlie Parker (cricketer)
Charles Warrington Leonard "Charlie" Parker was an English cricketer, who stands as the third highest wicket taker in the history of first-class cricket, behind Wilfred Rhodes and Tich Freeman.-Life and career:Parker took no serious attention to cricket in his childhood, preferring to concentrate...
bowling unchanged throughout the match, and lost by an innings.
Higgins was in India during the 1922-23 English winter, playing four first-class games including two for Europeans in the Lahore Tournament. He was to make further Indian appearances, five of them in the Bombay Quadrangular
Bombay Quadrangular
The Bombay Quadrangular was an influential cricket tournament held in Bombay, India from 1912 to 1936. At other times it was known variously as the Presidency Match, Bombay Triangular, and the Bombay Pentangular....
, in 1923-24, 1924–25 and 1928–29, though he hit only one fifty (56 for Europeans against Parsees in 1923-24) and took just two wickets in his entire career of ten matches in that country.
Meanwhile, Higgins' English career was barely noticeable: he played twice in each of the 1924 and 1925 seasons, and not at all in 1926. The next three years, however, were to prove by some margin his most successful in the game. He played 19 or 20 matches for Worcestershire every summer, and hit one century in each, the highest of these being the first: 123 against Glamorgan
Glamorgan County Cricket Club
Glamorgan 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 Glamorgan aka Glamorganshire . Glamorgan CCC is the only Welsh first-class cricket club. Glamorgan CCC have won the English County...
at Kidderminster
Chester Road North Ground
The Chester Road North Ground, often referred to simply as Chester Road, is a cricket ground in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England. It is the home of Kidderminster Victoria Cricket Club, and is currently used for Worcestershire County Cricket Club's Second XI matches...
in July 1927. He scored those runs from number three in the order
Batting order (cricket)
In cricket, the batting order is the sequence in which batsmen play through their team's innings, there always being two batsmen taking part at any one time...
, but his other two centuries were both made as an opener. In 1928 he reached 1,000 first-class runs in a season for the only time, hitting 1,041 at an average of 30.61.
Higgins played three final matches for Worcestershire in 1930, without conspicuous success. By this time he had already umpired two first-class games in India in 1926-27, and in 1933-34 he stood in two more, including the third Test between India and England at Madras
M. A. Chidambaram Stadium
The M. A. Chidambaram Stadium is a cricket stadium in Chennai , India, named after M. A. Chidambaram, the former President of BCCI and the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. The stadium was formerly known as Madras Cricket Club Ground or Chepauk Stadium. Commonly known as Chepauk, its first match was...
. He died in England, in a nursing home
Nursing home
A nursing home, convalescent home, skilled nursing unit , care home, rest home, or old people's home provides a type of care of residents: it is a place of residence for people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living...
in Malvern, aged 84.
His younger brother Harry
Harry Higgins
Harry Leslie Higgins was an English cricketer who played 98 first-class matches in the 1920s. All but one of these were for Worcestershire; the exception was a Gentlemen v Players game in 1922 in which bad weather meant that Higgins did not get to bat...
played nearly 100 times for Worcestershire in the 1920s.
External links
- Statistical summary from CricketArchiveCricketArchiveCricketArchive is a website that aims to provide a comprehensive archive of records relating to the sport of cricket. It claims to be the most comprehensive cricket database on the internet, including scorecards for all matches of first-class cricket , List A cricket , Women's Test cricket and...